Puppies and Pedicures

Since a good portion of my Ecuador pictures are of dogs that I have encountered here, I decided to dedicate a blog to them. There are so many dogs here that live on the streets. It is sad and disgusting. In the recent years the government has started to put them in shelters to take care of this problem so there are less homeless dogs than past years. Other than that, the rest of the dogs that people have as pets are clean and super cute! That means I get to play with them :) Here are the dogs I have fallen in love with so far.

 

This was the first dog I could actually hold here! It looks like a coyote. It was at the welcome party for the international students in December. 

 This is a ONE month old puppy that someone brought to the university one day! So cute and relaxed! 

Here is a dog named Coco that we encountered in Baños. 

I think this is the most beautiful puppy I have ever seen. Her name is "Tormenta" which means storm in Spanish. Absolutely beautiful dog. 

These are my friend's two German Shepherds 

(Pastor Aleman). He has three in total!

The other part of this post is about pedicures. You can get a pedicure for 5 bucks here! I am totally going to miss that when I go home :( I have only gotten 2 since being here. I plan on getting a Christmas inspired pedicure right before heading back to the USA.

Los Bancos

On Friday, September 21st the students from my school in Michigan (MSU) took our first trip together for the weekend. The initial plan was to go to Mindo which has waterfalls and ziplining. Therefore, that is where we thought we were going. However, we ended up going 20 minutes past Mindo and into Los Bancos. Our director had planned the trip and did not communicate well with us. We still had a fun weekend and did some cool activities.

La Liga

On Wednesday September 19th, I went to a soccer game with a friend from MSU named Mike. The game was La Liga versus Macará. 

Centro Histórico de Quito

On Sunday September 16th I went to Centro Histórico with my friend Juan Fernando (Juan Fer). Centro Histórico is the oldest part of town and it is in the center. Quito has grown so much since then. There is the President's (Rafael Correra) House there, a few churches, and museums, lots of plazas, stores, and restaurants.

Here is the President's House.

 Here is a theatrical show in the middle of the main plaza.

This is a church called San Francisco (the name of my university) . It was all gold inside but we were not allowed to take pictures :( 

There are so many types of pigeons here! 

The Spanish word for pigeons is "palomas". 

Seeing them here reminded me of 

St. Mark's Square in Italy. 

Here is one of the most famous views in Quito. This is the statue of the Virgin and it's called "El Panecillo" which means small piece of bread. 

Another part of the Centro Histórico is called La Ronda. 

 It is a long, old street with restaurants, bars, and traditional children's games such as hop-skotch and ring toss.

La Ronda reminds me of the streets of Italy. 

Here are some kids playing Foosball in the street.

The architecture reminds me of Europe, specifically a few buildings in France.

¡Viva Ecuador!

On Friday, September 7th a big group of us went to the Ecuador vs. Bolivia game. These games are to qualify for the FIFA World Cup in Brazil in 2014. There are three main teams here in Quito. There is the national team (yellow jerseys), La Liga (white jerseys), and Deportivo Quito (blue). Pretty much everyone in Ecuador is a fan of the national team so game day is very exciting since everyone in town is wearing their jerseys that day.

We all met up outside the mall to enjoy a few beers before the 4pm start of the game. Then we headed into the stadium. Our seats were right behind the goal which was awesome, but not so awesome for pictures because there was a fence. However, in the second half we scored the game-winning goal off of a penalty kick, and the shot was taken on the net right in front of us!

As soon as we scored everyone went crazy and started throwing beer.

There was also a lot of colored smoke (red, blue, yellow for the national colors). The atmosphere of the game was awesome! The next game we are going to is Ecuador vs. Chile on October 12th.

El TeleferiQo

      Ecuador is surrounded by mountains since it has part of the Andes Mountain range. On Sunday, September 2nd I went up in a cable car to the top of one of the near by mountains named Pichincha Rucu. At the top you could hike around and explore.

 There was a spot where tourists could take pictures with llamas/ alpacas. The Ecuatorians have a huge obsession with these animals. They have pictures of them on all of their clothes and other handmade things.

You could also put your bike on the cable car with you and then bike back all the way down the mountain!  The picture below is of the bike trail and there are two bikers on it but they are hard to see.  Another activity at the top was horseback riding.

The view was incredible up there! 

Fiesta Para Los Estudiantes Internacionales

      On September 1st the university had a huge party for all of the international students and our Ecuabuddies.  An Ecuabuddie is an Ecuadorian student at USFQ that is assigned to about 4 or 5 international students to guide them through their semester. The party was at the farm house of one of the friends from the university. The house was so beautiful!

We met at 8am to leave on a bus from Quito. It was a good hour or hour and a half bus ride to the place.  We made some super disorganized teams and played a few relay games such as sack races and an obstacle course.

We also had some drinks and ate lunch there. We stayed until about 6pm and then took the bus back to Quito.

The party was a great way to make new friends and to get the foreigners to interact with the Ecuadorians.