Elections and Goodbyes

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Elections this weekend! Finally! All the propoganda will finally end! In Ecuador during elections there is the Ley Seca, which basically means that no one is allowed to buy or sell alcohol from Friday to Monday. Voting is mandatory so they want to make sure that everyone makes a sober decision. Not many people go out anyway on Fridays in Otavalo, Saturday is the big night, but this Friday it was even more deserted than usual! Literally just us in the whole town I'm pretty sure!

Nicole and Troy left Saturday and it was definitely the hardest goodbye! The two of them, Lyndsey, and I went out for dinner Friday night. Just the 4 of us. A lot of fun! Then we met everyone else for dessert and then went to Buena Vista for the rest of the evening to just hang out. A lot of weekends we go dancing or talk to locals or whatever but this weekend it was just us and it was perfect! We're a smaller group again, still not tiny, but smaller. We sat out on the balcony and just talked until after midnight. Then we moved the party out onto the plaza when Buena Vista closed because no one was ready to say goodbye. It was a really good night! One of my favorites, if not the favorite night!

Saturday morning we met to walk around the market but none of us really had anything to buy so Nicole, Troy, Marko, Lyndsey, and I went for brunch instead. Much better idea! But then we had to say goodbye. Nicole and Troy have definitely made Ecuador a lot of fun and it would've been way different without them, so thanks guys for all the fun!

Then Lyndsey, Trisha, Emily, and I went to Quito and stayed at the Marriott. One of the top hotels in Ecuador! Emily's dad travels a bunch for work and they always stay at Marriotts so he has accrued a bunch of points so she got a free room. We met up with Shannon, Brittany, and Laura (who went in later) for dinner at the Thai restaurant (spectacularly delicious!) and then we wandered around for a bit before the 4 of us just went back to the hotel to watch movies and relax on the amazingly comfortable king bed. It was good to just relax because we all were out late the night before. And not much was going on in Quito anyway because of election weekend. It was definitely one of the nicer hotels I've ever been to! And the pool looked amazing! And huge! And we were all wishing for our swimming suits! Then this morning we had a spectacular breakfast at the Magic Bean cafe (we split a banana nut pancake and then I had a bagel egg ham cheese sandwich...amazing!). Then back to Otavalo. And tomorrow starts my last week of school! Ahhhhhh!

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Comments

[doug eby]

elections
so...what happened with the elections? Anything interesting or surprising? any big changes?