New Apartment, New Friends

Now that I have been working consistently, most of my weeks are pretty much the same. I work for 2 hours in the morning Tuesday - Friday and 2 hours at night Monday - Thursday, in addition to my 2 hour Spanish class in the afternoons.   The only big change from this week was that I moved to an apartment much closer to my job and school.  The apartment is at the end of the 11th floor so we have a huge wrap around balcony.  Obviously, that is Dakota's favorite place.  The building is located right in the middle of everything, which I love!

Thursday night, I met some friends at a karaoke bar.  This place was interesting because we were sitting outside but there were also 2 or 3 other rooms inside doing karaoke as well.  Every room had different karaoke going on at the same time.  Since there were only 2 tables of people sitting outside, we were having to constantly sing.  I was sick and can't sing, so I decided to only sing without a microphone-which I'm sure everyone appreciated.

Friday night a friend hosted a pot luck dinner, where you bring something that represents your home country.  I was going to bake something but I was gone all day long with Dad since that was his last day in Quito before returning back to the US, so I had to buy a dessert instead- sorry Mom.  I was able to meet so many new people that night and we had TONS of food. Here is just a little preview of what we had.

There was so much more food than that picture shows.  Every time I thought I had tried all of the food, more would come out of the kitchen.  We were all stuffed for sure.

Saturday night, I joined some other friends for a true Ecuadorean experience on the Chiva.  Basically, this is a giant dance party on the back of a truck/bus.

There is a dj and a bar on the truck, and it drives (slowly) around town making every single person that passes by in one of the local busses extremely jealous.  Seriously,  how can you not be jealous when you pass by a dance party on the back of the bus playing the Macarena?  This was absolutely amazing and needs to happen back home in the states!  Once we were finished driving around, it was just after 9pm, and not an acceptable time to end a Saturday night, so a friend and I decided to go to a bar to play some billiards.  In case you are wondering, No I cannot play billiards.  This was my second time playing and I must say that I am getting better but I'm still horrendous.  Luckily, most people are pretty patient with me and let me try again when I completely mess up a shot (or whatever it's called).

Sunday was a rainy, ugly day filled with errands.  I had to get some stuff for my new apartment and finish unpacking, so not much to say about that.

This coming Friday is Good Friday and since Ecuador is a very Catholic country, no one works that day, which means weekend trip!  I am headed to the jungle with some people from the Spanish school. I was told the town that we are going to is "more jungle than Tena"(the jungle city that most people go to.)  I have no idea what that means, but lets hope I make it back alive so I can tell y'all about it next week!