La Pata de Vaca

Today I got on a bus at 8am to drive to Nono for the international student party. The drive was up a mountain and over hairpin turns. The view of the mountains was amazing but it was sometimes scary to look down. We got to our destination after an hour and a half. The town we arrived in was very rural and had [adorably nice] stray dogs everywhere. We had to walk about a 1/2 mile to a bed and breakfast type place where we were hanging out for the day. Everyone go to mingle and meet; I made so many new friends! 4 other Tech boys and I were the only ones to go from our school so we all hung out too and met the others. We played games and stayed outside all day. The first game was to find a way to have your group climb a 20 foot [greased] pole. Our team didn't win but everyone helped the last group finish [thankfully with no injuries]. We went down a slip and slide and did relays. We were served carne asada with potato cakes and fresh avocado. Clouds began to build more and more as the day went on so we were basically playing inside the clouds. It was misty and foggy but still beautiful. I still got sunburned though :( I need to be more careful about re-applying my sunscreen even when I'm in the middle of a cloud all day.

Ruth picked me and my VT friend, Mark, up from the bus stop so we didn't have to call a taxi. It's actually raining for the first time since I've been here! When I got home I ate dinner which consisted of rice, chicken, soup and apple/celery/yogurt salad [anything with veggies or fruit mixed together is called salad here]. The soup had some funny looking meat in it and I asked Ruth what it was. She said she would tell me after I tried it. Immediately, I thought it was liver or intestines. I tried the meat and it was the consistency of shrimp. It tasted okay and then Ruth told me it's called la pata de vaca- aka cow foot. I ATE COW FOOT SOUP and kinda liked it too!

I am going to sleep in tomorrow and finally get a long night sleep. With my 8:30am classes Mon-Thurs and plans on Fri and today, I haven't had much rest.

I forgot to mention a really interesting law that Ecuador has. The system is called Pico y Placa. Every license plate has two important final digits that indicate what day of the week they CAN'T drive their cars. This law is to help decrease traffic and pollution. Example- if the license plate ends with a 1 or 2 you can't drive on Mon, 3 or 4 and you can drive on Tues... If you're caught driving on your day off, you can get a ticket. It's a really weird system and everyone has to take the bus on their day banned from driving.

This was the area we stayed at during the day

Another view of the site (pre-cloud invasion)

                 This was the view of the mountains as we drove on the dirt road to our destination