I'm practicing blogging more often.

Yesterday after breakfast Liz, Lily, and I went to the botanical gardens in Quito. It was the perfect weather to just stroll around and of course everything was beautiful. The gardens are in El Parque Carolina and there were so many people out and so much going on. Ahh it was such a nice day. We ate a bunch of things from random vendors for lunch and then walked 500 miles to the mall. Quicentro has become "our mall" solely because there is the best ice cream place in the world in it, but we can't actually afford to shop there. All the malls here target the upper-upper class of Ecuador and everything is ridiculously expensive. I seriously don't know where middle-class families buy their clothes.

After dinner I had a really long gossip session with my Ecua-mom, sister, and cousin. It was such awesome family bonding :) I'm never leaving. Really.
It's weird(I don't know if that's the right word..) but I really like when it's just my mom and sister or just my dad and brother at dinner. I don't know if it's because when everyone is there so much conversation is going on that I can't follow, but when it's only like half the family I talk so much. This week my dad went to Peru on business for 3 days and the night he got back I had dinner with just him and my brother and we talked for seriously like an hour straight. It was amazing.

Last night 9 of us went to Tapas & Vinos, my new favorite place in the world. It costs $25 a person, which is ridiculously pricey for Ecuador, but you get UNLIMITED wine and food allllll night. We were there for over 4 hours. Ahhh the food was so good- they just bring out these plates of the most random assortment of everything one after another. Random vegetable assortments, breads, cheeses, sausages, quail eggs, empanadas, shrimp, Spanish omelettes, French fries... and your glass is literally NEVER empty. They refill it when it's like half-empty. Obviously it doesn't make that much sense to go there after dinner but I didn't know... Unfortunately though, as a result of the whole "unlimited wine" bit, I doubt I'll be getting all that much work done today. My head seems to hate me.

I love Ecuador.