sand & sun & fun

welll....evidently the last update was last monday. sorry its been a while :)

last week was pretty blah. i was sick. i felt horrible. my head was killing me most of the time. and nothing exciting happened really except that we didnt have classes on wednesday....thursday was international womens day. i think its more of a feminist holiday but they celebrate it here. a bunch of guys bought flowers for their girl friends (friends that are girls) and every guy i passed on campus told me to 'tenga un buen dia' which was really nice. that night, cathy, whitney, and i went to Casa Hood for some food, wine, and to listen to the indigenous music there. it was nice.

Friday night we left for Canoa beach. We left at 11pm from the most ghetto bus stop I have ever seen haha. It was seriously a one room shack and a driveway with a huge bus haha. The ride there wasnt so great. The driver kept turning the AC on for abut 30 minute intervals, but the AC was about 10 degrees below 0 so we were all freezing. I couldnt sleep on the way there so basically I just watched everyone else sleep haha.
We arrived at the beach around 7 or 8am and got rooms at the Hotel Bambu. It was a really sweet hotel. All the rooms were like their own little bambu shacks, the hotel had a restaurant (outside), bar, tons of hammocks, beautiful trees, and was right on the beach. It was really nice. The room was only $16 for the night! Whitney and I shared a room, and it had a private bathroom. sweet :)
We had breakfast at the hotel and then changed and headed to the beach. We basically just laid out our towells and hung out all day on the beach. Whitney, Andrea and I ate at a restaurant, we had rice & shrimp, it was pretty good, a little bit on the cajun side.
There were these sweet cliffs at the end of the beach so we walked down to them but we werent dressed properly to climb onto them so we just headed back haha. It was really warm, but we didnt really care haha. We saw the most GORGEOUS sunsets both nights we were there....
Saturday night we went out to a bar that one of Aaron's (another guy from Wisconsin) friends suggested to us. I came back to the hotel and passed out early but everyone else seems to have had a good time. There were a bunch of bonfires on the beach that they checked out.

Sunday morning Whitney and I got up around 8:30 and had breakfast and woke up the rest of the crew. We headed to the beach again. They have these canopy deals that they set up on the beach (much like the umbrellas that you can reserve at Myrtle Beach, etc) but MUCH cooler haha. They were all really bright colors and you could fit up to 5 people under them. Costs $5 to have it for the day, for 5 people under the shade - which was good because everyone got burnt....except me haha. I was pretty proud of my self. We stayed there all day again, I took a nap in a hammock at the hotel after lunch. We saw the sunset again and left Canoa at 10:15pm Sunday night.

We got back to Quito around 6am Monday morning. I came home and slept for a few hours and then headed to class. After class we all hurried to the Marriott hotel where there was fashion show going on.
My friend Katy's host sister was modelling in this fashion show and they were having problems with a lot of the models and they asked her if she wanted to model for them. Basically we all told her she HAD to do it. She did SO well, too!!! I was so proud of her!!! Her family is here for the week, too. She had told her brothers ahead of time but her parents didn't know and they were SUPER surprised and really proud, as we were all. I still can't believe she did it.
It was definitely an experience though. It cost $15, but the money went to an organization that is helping these sick children. I dont know what diseases they have but some of them can't walk and others have other problems. There were 2 of them there and they walked down the runway at the end of the show and it was super cute. They were really cute kids.
The fashion show in itself got a little boring at the end, considering it lasted about 4.5 hours but it was worth it. I'll probably never get to go to a fashion show again, and my friend was in this one!!!

No news from today. Mom & B get here on Thursday :)


ohh...and all of you had better enjoy March Madness for me, double enjoyment :)