School has been great…well, as great as school can be. Aside from school, I have been doing just a little bit of traveling on weekends. Ambato is a city about two or three hours south of Quito. It is home to CEBI, the school where I will potentially be working for the next year. Odd thing is, it's a very nice private school with an IB program…not exactly the place I would have imagined myself working while abroad, but, hey, a job is a job! Well, I probably shouldn't get too ahead of myself; it's not exactly confirmed as of yet. We went to a market in Ambato, and that was a cool experience!
Our main objective in going to Ambato was to visit CEBI. We (three of my classmates and I) figured that since we were going to be in Ambato, we would make our way to Baños, a touristy small town. Man alive, Baños was gorgeous!! We didn't do much of the touristy things -- we didn't go to any of the waterfalls, or any of the baños (hot springs), we didn't even go on any of the hikes. But we DID walk around town a lot and familiarized ourselves with the town: we will DEFINITELY be going back there at some point. The following picture is one that I took while on one of our walks through the town:
We decided to stay in Quito last weekend. We went to La Mitad del Mundo (middle of the world) on Saturday, and that was such a great experience!! This is the place that was thought to be the "middle of the world," but, with the invention of GPS, it was discovered that the real center of the world was actually just north of there. Regardless, I can still say that I've been to the middle of the world and as such, I have been in multiple hemispheres at once!
This past weekend we went on a hike up Pichincha, which is actually a volcano (don't worry, it's not in danger of erupting anytime soon). I like hiking, and I've done it plenty of times before, but oh. my. goodness. It has never been as difficult at it was this time. The altitude is harsh, and although my body has done pretty well with adapting to it, climbing up mountains was a completely different circumstance. Being up there was breathtaking -- figuratively and literally. 4100 meters wasn't the highest I got, but that's the only picture I have of me with a sign.
We're planning on going to Otavalo this weekend, which apparently has a huge market of artesanias. And lakes. And fun. I'll let y'all know how that goes!!
Love you ALL!
Steph
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