Positivity!

This post is for my mother. She's pointed out that my last post only listed things that, without much interpretation from me, made it seem like I was a little down in the dumps with culture shock and such.  While I can see where she's coming from, I was just trying to share interesting things that I've noticed or have happened to me. I'd just like to make an official statement that I am not hating it here.  In fact, it's quite the opposite. So, in the face of the danger of you readers dying from list overload, here is a list of some of the fabulous things I've had the chance to experience in lovely Ecuador.

1. ORANGE JUICE. If I could choose my favorite thing about Ecuador, it would have to be the orange juice. It might be a little sad, but seriously, juice here is fresh squeezed from fresh fruit. And it's so. crazy. good.

2. Manicures! Instead of giving our nails the occasional trim and such, this lady comes to our house and gives us legit mani/pedis every Thursday. (As a side note, I would just like to let the world know that spell-check accepts "legit" as a word)

3. The ocean! It's just a five minute bike ride to the beach from my house. And the beach is beaUTIFUL. I don't have pictures of the beach itself, but here are some exciting pictures of what happens sometimes when the tide comes in:

First this (if you're wondering, yes. It is exactly like standing on the bridge after the wave ride at valley fair.)

Which results in this (those are roads, fyi)

4. Watching soccer with my host parents. We'll just sit on their bed in the evening and watch soccer.  It's hilarious for two reasons (gahh! List within a list!): there's a GIANT rivalry here about Emelec or Barcelona that my host dad gets really into, and the commentators do the great GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL thing for like two minutes whenever someone scores, which is entertaining. Also, watching soccer with your parents is just such a normal thing to do; I love it.

5. Having all my toes intact. This one is a recent development.  I've finally stopped stubbing my toes on this ledge thing whenever I go into the kitchen:

As far as I can tell, my host parents had it installed so they could learn how to swear in English, because I can't see it serving any other purpose. HOWEVER. I have defeated it, and almost never stub my toes on it anymore. 

6. Helping out at a kindergarten. I only did this a couple times before school started, but it was really really fun to play tag with all the kids or help them color in big number 4s.  Also, I had the chance to help out with their English lesson one day, which mostly consisted of me singing "Mary had a Little Lamb" to them like four times and trying to get them to repeat it, which they didn't. But it's the most rewarding thing in the world to be watching a little girl search for the number 5 to cut out of magazines and hear her humming "Mary had a Little Lamb."

7. Going to the ZOO! Though it was mostly birds, fish, bunnies and dogs, there was some pretty exciting stuff, I must say. Observe: 

I have no clue how I accidentally turned that into a collage type thing, but it's kind of cool, right? Anyway, the zoo was definitely awesome, but that's like 95% because of the baby bunnies.

8. Hammocks. Most people have one, either in their room, on the patio, on the balcony... where ever there's even a smidgeon of room. The best part is that whenever I have any down time at anyone's house they offer up their hammock to me. And really, how can I refuse soaking up the sun on a hammock that's swinging in the breeze? The ocean breeze. In Ecuador. It's times like that that I realize how very, very lucky I am to be having such an amazing experience here.

Though there are gazillions (also a spell-check accepted word) of other things I could add to this list, I need to go to bed because tomorrow I'm going to Spanish Camp on the beach for five days! Woo hoo! Anyway, I promise promise promise that next post won't be a list. I guess that's just how I think, because I'm up to 3/5 of my posts being lists. Oh my. (I was considering doing a "lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" type thing, but then I realized that I'd just end up filling in lions and tigers and bears in with the word "lists." Which you probably didn't need to know.)
Well, folks, until next time. Actually, as a parting gift, I will tell you the most exciting coincidence (for you Minnesotans to understand) that I've discovered here: the radio station that only plays American pop songs is 101.3. My mind was so blown, and I hope yours is too. And I mean that in a nice way.