Don't say oh well.

 It's been awhile since I've updated this thing..

 

Let's see, my cough has gotten better, which is quite nice!

 

Tomorrow will be my one month benchmark. It's been a interesting month. I want to say it has been a long month, but at the same time I feel like time has flown by. I can't believe I'm almost finished here in Ecuador. This is my last full week of teaching.. Next week I have Monday and Tuesday off for carnavel, then wed thurs fri I am training a new volunteer who will be taking my class. Ugh, I dont want somebody else taking my kids. Oh well.. 

 

This past weekend, went to banos with a few of the other volunteers. Almost 7 hours of sitting on a bus. Ugh. Haha, it was a good trip though. We left right after school on Friday and got there around 9:30 pm.

 

Saturday, we decided to make pancakes. Surprisingly we found pancake mix at the supermarket. So equipped with dulce de leche, cream cheese, butter, and strawberry jam we prepared pancakes in the hostel. 

They actually turned out halfalright, I'm not much of a pancake person.. But I enjoyed these ones, maybe because it was a little taste of familiarity. :) 

So after pancakes, we set off to go rent bikes. $5 for the day.. Not too bad of a price, but the (lack of) quality of the bikes really showed.

We followed a road, ruta de las cascadas, but didn't see as many waterfalls as advertised, but it still felt great to be on a bike exploring the natural beauty of equator. 

 

 

Well, that was until I taco'ed the rim of my back tire in the first mile. Somehow after kicking it a few times it bent back to 'rideable' more or less.. I thought for sure the rim was just going to sheer in half going down one of the hills, but amazingly it stayed intact and the girls that had joined us decided to catch a truck back to baños. I was able to switch out my bike and continue on with the three other guys. 

 

The heavy downpours eventually turned us back as well, and we retreated to the hostel to make the rest of the pancakes for dinner and have a little nap before going out for the night. 

 

5 pancakes covered in random condiments later, I passed out in a food coma for 3 hours. Felt amazing. 

 

The next day, we had to catch our bus at 10am back to otavalo. Just as we had gotten on the bus in banos, a guy and a girl followed us to the back of the bus. And after pretending to ask us for our tickets and saying random things in Spanish, Johan realized they had gotten his camera out of his bag and snatched it back as they took off out of the bus before we could even realize what they had tried to do. 

We were tempted to go after them, but the bus was about to leave so we were just relieved that Johan had noticed and saved his camera, which at the time had my 18-200 lens on it.. 

 

So that's mainly all the excitement from this weekend. Long bus rides, and nice bike rides!

Onward.