2nd weeeekend!

12/9
Today was the all-family picnic at Parque Metropolitana with everyone in the program. Ohh my what an amazing view! I hiked around a bit in the "woodland" area. The picnic was good…delicious food! That took up most of the morning/afternoon. After that, I went with Leo and his friends (Philip, Sebastian, Sesar) to Quitofest, a huge music festival. The location was awesome! It was in Itchimbia Park, which is up on a big hill that looks over the city. And of course mountains all around! The music wasn’t exactly my style—metal—but it was still pretty good. It was also freeeezing! Yikes. But I had a good time jumping around. I didn’t talk much, it’s still a bit hard for me to communicate. I made it an early night and just read a little before going to bed.

13/9
Whew. What a day! This morning I went to the English Fellowship Christian church service. I really liked it. It was mostly all in English, which may not be the best in the long run, but it was a lot more beneficial right now. It compared pretty well with The Crossing (or as close as you can get to that in Ecuador). It was weird to see so many white American type in one place! There was a good share of native Ecuadorians there, too. After church we ate soup and then packed lunch for the road. I didn’t quite get where we were going, my parents said, but I thought we were going to someone’s house. It turns out we were going to an archeological park called Cochasqui. I’d call it Ecuador’s version of Machu Pichu, but on a much, much smaller scale. Definitely not as sweet- but it was still cool to see and hear the history behind the building of the pyramids and calendars. It was about an hour and a half drive to get there…and the scenery was amazing! (like usual) Mountains everywhere…and I got a picture with Cayambe, one of the volcanoes near by. It was great- to get up there we had to go on this suuuper bumpy (or more huge stone-y) road, and my dad was just flying up it. We were going all over the place, and I just smiled and laughed out loud. It was way fun.
On the way back, there was a huge line of backed up traffic. It turns out there was an accident so they had to close one of the direct roads into Quito. This was bad news for us because we had to take a large round about way back into Quito. It ended up taking us over 4 1/2 hours to get back! Yikes. But like I’ve heard many times before, and now experienced, these types of things happen all the time in Ecuador. You just need to let it roll of your shoulders and go with it! And the drivers- wow, let me tell you. I would piss my pants driving in Ecuador! It’s a normal for cars to drive 3 wide on a 2 lane road in the mountains. People just drive right in the middle of the lane to pass (at any time) with oncoming traffic. And everyone seems to be in some sort of hurry! When traffic was backed up, and we were at a dead stop, cars would just come zooming around in the other lane and have to find a place to sneak in when oncoming traffic came. Amidst our detour, we stopped in the town of Cachi (?) and saw an amazing cathedral. (I guess that is ALL this town is about). It was another gold plated one, and we happened to get there during a service, so the music was beautifully echoing off the walls.

It was so nice of my parents to take me to Cochasqui and to see the area around Quito. They were very patient on the way back (I guess you have to be living there). The only bad part is I hardly got any homework done this weekend…Good thing I’m not here to study! Oh wait…