Monday, December 25, 2006

Monday, Dec 25, 2006 – Feliz Navidad!!!

Today we woke up bright and early. We were supposed to go for a hike today, but Dave is still feeling sick (although better than yesterday) and I need to enter my final grades. So, we grabbed breakfast, packed up, and headed to an internet café, which is where I am now. On the way to the internet café, we saw more kids dressed up and more floats – apparently the celebration is not limited to the parade! We also saw some Ecuadorian dancers in a park. There was music blasting from a vehicle with a loudspeaker hooked up to it, and people were crowded around the dancers. The dancers were good – from what we could see. They were wearing a strange mix of traditional tribal clothing and toques (I think that’s one of those words that we Canadians use that Americans find funny – not sure what they call it though. Maybe something clever like “winter hat?” Ha ha, just kidding guys.) Anyway, one of the dancers was even wearing a balaclava, for unknown reasons. Did I mention that it is about 28 degrees Celsius (82 Fahrenheit) here?

The internet here is SOOOO slow, so I have been trying to enter my grades for about 2 hours – I’m about halfway done. At home, the entire process would take maybe 15 minutes. Oh well. After we finish up here, we have a 6-8 hour bus ride ahead of us. We’re headed to a place called Banos – it’s a little town near a volcano with hot springs, mountain biking, hiking, and other fun stuff. We’re going to spend a couple of nights there. We’ll miss Cuenca – it’s been so good to us – but we are looking forward to letting the real adventures begin! Merry Christmas everyone!

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