You can't be a girly-girl around here...

Last weekend the U of I program went to Mindo and it was great! For me, it was a huge step outside of my comfort zone because I'm not very outdoorsy. While we were there we:

1. Went white-water rafting (lots of fun!!)
2. Went ZIPLINING through the forest (also a ton of fun! there were 10 different ziplines and I did all 10. the final one was super high in the sky, higher than all of the trees. it was beautiful!)
3. hiked a lot (not so fun for me lol but it was great to see the scenery)
4. visited a butterfly garden
5. went swimming in a waterfall
   

The hostel where we stayed had lots of hummingbirds, which was a beautiful sight. The best part of the trip was probably when the power went out. A few of us took a walk around the city in the late afternoon and when we got back to the hostel, there was no power. There was no power till around midnight, and the majority of Mindo (including our hostel) did not operate on generators. When it got dark, we basically just bought some candles and explored some more, walking around the city in complete darkness. It was incredibly relaxing! No electricity, no distractions, no nothing. Just me and nature.

Overall I've been having a lot of fun on this trip. At first I wasn't sure if my Spanish was improving, until I opened up a book the other day and realized that I could pretty much read through it with ease. I also realized that expressing my ideas and opinions to my host family has gotten a lot easier. Yay for immersion!

This weekend is the beginning of the vacation "carnival" which takes place right before Lent begins. It lasts until Tuesday and its basically an excuse for everyone to be crazy and do all of the things they cant do during Lent. Pretty much everyone is going to the beach, but I decided to stay in Lumbisí to spend time with myself and God. I do plan on having some fun with my family, and my next blog post will probably be about that.

Keeping up with this blog has been harder than I had imagined. For one, I don't have internet at home so I have to update whenever I find time at school. Also, surprisingly its becoming a bit difficult to type in English...I keep misspelling things and am so tempted to just type in Spanish but I wont. Despite everything, I will continue mainly for the sake of not having to answer the question "So hows Ecuador?" a million times.

chao!