La Laguna Quilotoa

Hey Team,

here´s a little update, sorry I havent written too many blogs in this country- the rainy weather everyday supresses my writing style.

This Saturday I went to a huge lake/lagoon called Quilotoa. It´s about 4 hours from Quito- I went with 8 other students from my school and the english speaking director of the school from Germany. Weather was completely awesome when we arrived at the lake-it was cloudy and pouring down rain!! What an exciting climate to do a 5 hour hike around the lake in- and knowing me and my extreme love of exercise you´ll know how excited I was to find out about the hike in the first place. Luckily for me, there was an older lady (I won´t say old because I know I have a wide range of ages in my audience) and she also did not want to walk for 5 hours in the pouring cold rain. Instead we compromised and walked for 2, and then met some local indigena people and upon making friends they invited us to their house in the little village and we practiced my favorite sport Shopping! I got an alpaca scarf for 5$ and a cute little handpainted picture of the lake.

In the meantime, the others were hiking around the lake and got hit by lightning not once but twice!!(as we found out later when they returned soaking wet) YES i am very glad I didn´t go on that hike. The path they were hiking is high above the lake crater and there aren´t any trees so appàrently when the storm started they were the highest points in sight. Luckily no one was hurt and everyone had a good time.

I think that might be the first excited Ecuadorian story I can add to my year´s list of stories.

In terms of other news, volunteer work is going well- things were a lot less hectic this week and I´m actually now enjoying the children.

Recently I have met a nice young man who is teaching me salsa and he only speaks Spanish-thus provided a prime opportunity to practice my español!!!!! and I am TERRIBLE AT SALSA. terrible....seriously I don´t think I´m ever going to be able to dance it . It´s actually quite funny when I go out and attempt it, the ecuadorian girls actually come up to me and try to help me after of course having a good laugh at me attempting their dance. ha-

I have 4 more weeks in Quito, and plan to continue doing volunteer work . I may travel to the beach for a weekend and I would also like to go to Otavalo (the country´s biggest mercado) for some shoping.-

Chow chow.
Still practicing her salsa and getting nowhere,
Elyse.

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