Hmmm long time no....

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Ahh, Im almost scared to start writing this, breaking the silence of however long!....hmmm yeah sorry bout that, it has been very hard to get to a computer for long enough for various reasons, including the fact that the internet in the house is a SPAZZ!
Firstly, just to get everybodies sympathy, I've been so ill! Haha, in fact the entirity of the "Cuenca crew" have been ill, and so in the past two weeks i have been to the doctors three times, the first two as moral support from Bel and Sophie, then I finally decided to give in, pay the $25 for an appointment, grrrr, and find out what was wrong with me....well apparently I have little tiny amebas living inside me making me sick, urkk, something to do with food/water, but now with my meds, ( $10 for one type, once a day when I wake up, $10 for the other two types which are antibiotics (NO alcohol!) which I have to take two a day of. Ans which I could buy straight over the counter without a prescription! This is a crazy place....) So, so far I have had to fork out $40 for medical things which i cant claim from insurance, which i am not pleased about, especially with the immense amount of innoculations I had before I came, which should have made me immune to everyting going....grr. But anyway, I am back on my way to normallity....
....I say this because a part of all our ilnesses made us walk round like zombies, completely out of it and looking half asleep, forgetting entire conversations ever happened, things like that. Ands then, Maria, the maid, she is lovely, decided she knew a magical cure ( this is when I was refusing to pay doctors money). Maria's magical cure? I know you're all dying to know...well she told told me it was 'hojas con limon y agua caliente' which is hot water with leaves and lemon. What she didnt tell me was that the leaves were just bits of dried oregano. So now imagine drinking oregano tea, no in fact imagine drinking watery pureed pizza, becuase that is exactly what it was like...mmmmm...
Anyway, i think the last time I wrote it was before semana santa....and what an exciting couple of weeks we had! Firstly, just before we left for our travels, there was an eventful couple of days, oh yes....I bought an acoustic guitar wooo! So excting my fingers were having withdrawal symptoms...but perhaps more excitingly, for those of you who dont know, about 4 hours before we were due to set off on our 10 hour bus trek to Quito, we all headed to the local piercing joint. Heheh, i know what your imagining but really, it was very clean and professional, we even search out the needle bin to make sure they used clean ones every time, you know, just to make sure we didnt get aids...
So i went first ( yup, 5 out of 7 of us got pierced, it was a group activity, how sad but amazingly cool are we?!) I had an anasthetic in my tongue!! Within moments my mouth was just a hole with no feeling, so when the guy clamped my tongue and stabbed a huge metal implement through it i could kind of feel it going through, but there was no pain involved, and surprisingly no sangre. Like at all. Then i had the the waiting whilst everyone else got done, Sophie next with her nose ( she nearly fainted...can you believe it! The piercing guy was giggling...) Matt and his eyebrow, lou and her bellybutton, and Jack and his ear. Jack actauly had anasthetic for his ear...how much that was necessary I do not know. Anyway my tongue cost $17 dollars...thats less than a doctors appointment! thats about hmmm 8.50 hehehe how scary is that! But dont you all be worrying, I think out of everyone, mine has caused the least trouble, my tongue only swelled slightly, and yes it was alittle difficult to eat for a couple of days but that was it....So I just ate soup and jelly and spazz milk(chocolate millk..mmmm) which I have now become addicted to, the name is derived from the fact that while everyone else had reall choclate al i could consume was liquid through a straw...heheherh
Which takes us to our weeek of travelling the north of ecaudor. I never knew so much could be accomplished and so much fun could be had in just one week ( and so much bus travelling could be done...heh) So first stop Quito. We stayed with crazy Lorena woop! You'll be glad to hear she's just as crazy as ever, we brought her out to our usual Quito live salsa spot and she dragged jack up to dance hehehe, If only you'd been there to see. Unfortunalety, not an insanely crazy night, cos danee was stressed ( as the next day he was one of the couples who could be eliminated from Slightly come dancing ecuadorian stylee) and all he wanted to do was follow Kat round like a lost child all night, plus we had to set of to Mindo early the next day ! Waheyy....
.....Mindo is a butterfly cloudforest, and very very beautiful! we stayed in a hostel made of wood, with hammocks, again...we are just loving the hammock style...which looks out over some amazing rainforest and fruit trees. Unfortunately, ants and mosquitoes also love mindo, so as we innocently bounced around bare footed on our wooden balcony, doing gentle stretches...(dont ask) the ants were having a whale of a time chewing our feet off. Mmmm. The point that we realised this, our gentle bouncing and stretching was transformed into hardcore stomping and exclamaitions of horror. Thinking about it, Im not sure which was more fun....Anyway, mindo is extreme sport heaven. Some of the guys went tubing down the river, but i decided to save my money for Zipwiring over the canopy of the rainforest! It was amazing, imagine 10 thick metal wires zigzagging over the canopy of this massive selva, you get clipped to the wireand flung out over the massive drops and you just fly along. There is a method for breaking and stopping however, which i just couldnt seem to master, so everytime i came in to land the poor miniture ecuadorian man at the other end would be taken out by the screaming english girl twice his height...ooops. there were alsp tricks that you could do on these wires, the first was you get attatched to one of the guides, so you go upside down, then you wagle yor legs and arms about so you look like a butterfly to the people already on the otherside! So basically theres no holding on , and you get an amazing view of the drop unpside down....then the other is callleeed superman...Im sure you can imagine...its like flyong! And im also sure you can imgaine the scream of horror as I fly into the meeting point head first and with no way of stopping..hehe
Righty ho, I have to go, im off to the beach..we decided that the beach has healing properties...nothing abput tanning my legs which glow a stunning shade of WHITE!
Love you all! XXX

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