Miss Laura's Birthday!!

Yesterday was my friend Laura’s birthday!  How amazing is it that she got to spend her 23^rd birthday in ECUADOR?!?  Laura is actually my roommate as well as a close friend.  We weren’t really sure what to expect because we had no idea how they celebrate birthdays here!  It ended up being a great day and I thought that I’d share how it went.

Each morning we have to get up between 5:45 and 6:00 a.m.  I made sure to sing to her throughout the day…which she thoroughly enjoyed!  After teaching we come home and eat lunch with our host family.  Ahhh it was so sweet of them…our host mom made lasagna and garlic bread for lunch and we even got to drink coke as our beverage.  You have no idea…this was such a big change for us.  Our host dad brought home a chocolate cake that was absolutely delicious!  Of course all of the food didn’t taste like it would at home, but it was still really good! 

~ Our delicious lunch that our host family made us~

~Chocolate cake for Laura's birthday!!!

 On our walk to class all of us stopped to get ice cream…MMMM!!  We found this place that’s super close to where we take our classes and they have 95 cent ice cream cones.  How can you beat that?!  Now, at this point we were absolutely stuffed because our bodies are not used to that type of food along with the amount of food that we had eaten. Then we get to class and five minutes later some of the staff members walk in singing happy birthday and they have more cake for us.  I felt so bad, but I couldn’t get myself to eat it…I was SOOO full.  It was super thoughtful of them though.

Our professor for our culture class (Bill), which took place yesterday, is a retired professor from UW-Whitewater and we adore him.  We call him “pops” because he is kind of like our adopted dad during our stay in Ecuador.  He’s just all around great and helps us with anything we need!  We ended class early and he took us to put minutes on our cell phones.  Each pair of roommates bought a phone so that we could communicate amongst one another.  I think we all feel a lot better having a cell phone, especially in case of an emergency.  We really didn’t get them for any other reason than to communicate with one another and in case of an emergency.  Laura and I each payed about 18 dollars.  In the end we will actually get most of that money back because the CEDEI School where we take our classes wants to buy the phones from us for the study abroad students next semester/year.

After the cell phone situation, he took us to a hippie market I guess you could call it.  We only stayed for a little while, but we will definitely be going back there.  I was soooo overwhelmed because they had a ton of pretty jewelry for cheap!  Our last event for the night was a dinner to celebrate Laura’s birthday; even Pops ended up coming!  We went to a pizza place that’s pretty close to our neighborhood.  I actually thought that it was pretty good pizza for being in a different country!  All of us ate a lot and were stuffed afterwards.  I can’t believe how much “American” food I ate in one day.  I had not felt that full in a long time!  

~The small "hippie" market from a distance~

~One of the 3 pizzas that we ordered (Hawaiian style) YUMMY~

 Lets just say that it’s only week two and we’re all craving different foods from back home.  BUT we learned our lesson tonight; our bodies are going to have a lot of adjusting to do once we arrive back home.  It was all worth it though…you have to splurge on food like this once in a while!  What a great day it was!  HaPpY bIrThDaY lAuRa!!

Missing you all…

Sending my love…

Aimee