Alicia's Trip to Ecuador

I made friends! Finally, I was about to strangle Emily with the internet cable.
Being stuck in the house all the time sucks. Now I have friends that speak Spanish so I can learn. When I was here last time, I met Eduardo. He is one of the guys that works in the tourist information center. I finally saw him for the first time the other day and we hung out and talked all day! It was so fun, and then I met a bunch of his friends and became good friends with this guy named William who is a tour guide in the fanciest resort in the area. He works with a lot of English speakers so he knows quite a bit. I was suprised to learn that he had an ipod and digital camera and all sorts of stuff! He even invited me over to watch a movie, on his ipod! I thought that was hilarious, but he did have some good movies on there! Eduardo, William and I played pool on Saturday night, and then went to the discotek and danced the night away. Eduardo is a really funny dancer, he showed me how to dance Salsa. It is very hard! My abs and legs hurt the next day. Eduardo, William, Danielo, Pepe and I went into Los Bancos for lunch one day and it was pretty tasty. That is where I am right now, trying to send some pdfs to a client. The internet is so slow, it has been working on these pdfs for about 20 minutes. I´m not sure it is going to work

I went into Quito yesterday but it was like going to the United States. We went to a shopping mall to buy some necessities and it was like being in America, all the clothing stores...it was crazy. I think it might have been the biggest shopping mall I have ever been in. Quito is really high altitude so breathing there is a little straining if you are not used to it. When we went to the mall, which was about 5 stories up, I felt like a feeble old man because I couldn´t speak without hyperventilating and walking up the stairs was nearly impossible.

Oh, geeze. I am going to give up on this stuff ever loading. I am going to miss my ride back to Mindo if I don´t move my booty soon!

I miss you guys!

.:Alicia:.

I am in Mindo and finally have some internet access. We arrived yesterday at about 4pm and went to eat lunch. Then we went to my parent's property and looked around there, it is pretty nice, a lot of beautiful trees and a great location! It's just right outside of town. The next door neighbor just built a really nice house on his piece of land, so I have confidence that we are going to have a pretty neat little house.

Mindo has changed a lot since I left in August 2006. There are a lot of new buildings and new businesses everywhere. A lot of the same people are here and I have met up with a few old friends.

Today I woke up around 9 am and went straight to the school where my parents want Emily to attend in April. We had to go talk to the principal and see if it was a possibility. Then we met up with a couple of kids that my parents knew from last time and they all hung out with us for the rest of the afternoon. These kids are so cute and really amazing! You can see all the pictures I took with them, they loved using the camera and being silly. After the kids went home, the family went to the internet cafe. I took my computer in hopes that I could figure a way to get my computer connected to the internet so I could take the photos right from my computer rather than having to move them over to my sister's computer (which has a internet connect thing from the phone place). But, no luck. I couldn't connect to the internet. I think it may have been that cord that the guy had. It was all chewed up. Then me and my mother went and got popcorn and then went back to the house. We had a delicious dinner and played some cards, the game was rummy. It was also Tatiana's birthday. We are staying with Alicia (who agreed to be called Ali so we wouldn't be confused) and Tatiana is her daughter. She turned 17 and is graduating high school! We had some delicious cake and tea.

I guess that is it for now. I need to go to sleep, we are going to Los Bancos tomorrow. That's where they sell the rubber boots! I'm gonna get me a pair of those because I am sick of my feetsies always being wet!

I will post the url for the pictures later, it is taking over an hour to upload these pictures on this internet speed!

Adios y hasta luego!

.:Alicia:.

Hey all,

I am finally here in Ecuador! After a long day of traveling yesterday, we finally made it to Quito, Ecuador. Some family picked us up at the airport and took us to their very fancy and beautiful home for the night. I had some delicious food: rice, chicken with tomato sauce and some yuca! Oh how I missed the yuca, so delicious. I also had some agua quitig which is a drink that comes from Ecuador. It is naturally carbonated water. I slept pretty well despite the fact that there was a dog right outside the door that barked ALL NIGHT!

It is rainy and cloudy but pretty warm, maybe about 55 or 60. Not much different from Michigan a couple weeks ago!

I am going to Mindo today at noon and that's where I will stay for a majority of the trip. It takes about 2.5 hours to get there by bus, but we have so much stuff that we had to hire a guy to take us up there!

I have to go, a delicious Ecuadorian breakfast awaits me!

.:Alicia:.

I am able to upload some pictures onto this site, but Facebook does it so much better.

Check these pictures out from my August 2006 trip to Ecuador!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2000060&l=a8d77&id=1267470047
(copy and paste this link into the address bar at the top to view pictures)

.:Alicia:.

Hey all,
I'm going to motherflippin' Ecuador! I wanted to start this travel blog to let everyone know that I am leaving, and I wanted to let people know where they could find information and pictures of my travels. I will have access to the internet while I am in South America for most of the time, but I'm not sure how fast it will be, I might get impatient at times...

Hope you find this blog entertaining and interesting, and I wish you all well while I am gone! See you in three months!

-Alicia