Baños.

This past weekend was the only free weekend we're going to have in Ecuador. The rest are taken up with trips that are part of the program.  My class has been hammered with work so far, so we were extremely grateful for a chance to take a break and relax. We ended up with a group of twenty two total, so we all split a bus down to a small town called Baños, which means baths. Its named that because of the hot springs you can find at the base of the volcano, Tungurahua.  The volcano heats the water naturally.  A group of us went to some of the springs on Saturday afternoon. We've named it the "Gringos in the Pool" incident.  We thought it was going to be a super touristy spot, because Baños is crawling with tourists from all over.  However, we were the only gringos there. It was hysterical, actually.  We were literally in a group in the middle of one of the pools surrounded by Latinos.  I'm sure it would have made a fantastic ariel view.  After that adventure, we paid four bucks to go on a tour of the waterfalls that surround the city.  The tour was on a chiva, which is basically an open bus that drives you around and blasts music. When we got to the first waterfall, we paid another dollar fifty to go on this thing called a Tarabita.  Its basically a trolley on a zip line that takes you over the water right up to the waterfall. It was incredible. I have a video, but I can't get it to upload on here.  We also could have bungee jumped for ten dollars, but none of us were feeling that stupid.  After the tour, we went up to a restaurant called el café del cielo (cielo=sky). Its really high up on the side of the volcano in this incredible resort.  We literally got out of the cabs and walked through clouds to get inside.  After we ordered our food, we were directed to a terrace that had an absolutely gorgeous view of the city all lit up.  A few of the girls and I had been itching to get a massage all weekend, because Baños has several spas.  The resort has its own spa, so Rachel, Ryan, and I finished dinner quickly and went and got a thirty minute back massage. I had never had a massage before. I can't even describe how amazing it was. We all walked out and looked at each other and just started giggling haha.  Baños was so beautiful, even though it rained most of the time we were there.  Small towns like that are my favorite part of Latin America.  Even though there's a lot of tourism, there's still a wonderful sense of authenticity.  There's always something interesting to see and do, but there's still a small town sense of safety, and its super easy to get around. I love big cities too, but since we're not living in Quito proper but the suburbs, its not quite the same.  Cumbaya isn't very easy to negotiate unless you have a car, which most people do because they drive to Quito to work. But not many places are accessible on foot. I really enjoyed living in the center of La Paz where everything we needed was right in our neighborhood.  Also, I want to learn the bus system here. I have no need to take the bus, because I can walk to the university in ten minutes, but I feel like its something I should learn how to do.  I think my favorite part of the weekend was just getting to hang out with everyone and get to know people better.  There are so many people on this trip I don't know, and we haven't gotten an opportunity to get to know each other, because we're always in class. And then our class has four or five hours of homework every night. The segregation is getting to me. I love my friends in my Spanish class, but I feel like I could be in class in Oxford and be having almost the same experience.  We're hoping that these next few weeks will lighten up a little, because we're going to be doing some traveling during the week.  We will see.  I am learning a lot in class, I'm just itching to utilize it in real life. I'm trying really hard to do so whenever I have the slightest chance. I might start being obnoxious and refusing to speak to my friends in English. We started out speaking to each other in Spanish, but that fell apart quickly, as you can imagine ha.  This is my current favorite song: Danza Kuduro. It is literally everywhere in South America, I heard it in Bolivia, Peru, and now here. I can't get it out of my head haha. I'm trying to figure out the words without looking them up.  

All in all, we had a wonderful weekend. I was in awe during the waterfall tour thinking about how impressive the nature was, and how what we were seeing was only a tiny part of a tiny town in what is a relatively tiny country. There's so much of the world out there, and I'm luckier than most people in what I've had a chance to see, but there's still so much to take in.  Its moments like those that make me resent sitting in a classroom for five hours a day, no matter how beneficial it may be to my language skills.  Sometimes you just need to breathe the air, smell the smells, talk to the people, and kind of find you own way. 

Friday, we leave for Tiputini Biodiversity Station in the Amazon. I'll update after with tons of cool animal pictures, hopefully.