Monday, February 25, 2008

Dancing and the Zoo!

This weekend I stayed in Quito because the weather has been pretty bad (rain, rain, and some more rain), but that definitly doesn't mean I didn't have fun.

On Friday the girls and I decided we wanted to go to a live music place. As usual, I called the taxi and picked up Jessica, Emily, and then Anina. (I'm the one that always ends up calling the taxi first bc I live the furthest away from pretty much everything. I pick up all the the girls and it ends up being way cheaper that way since all four of us take just the one cab). We ended up riding all around el centro historico de Quito, which is pretty sketch, but bright with all kinds of lights and beautiful nontheless, and did not find our destination place. We ended up going to Ñucanchi Peña, suggested by the taxi driver, which was an Ecuadorian live music place. The place was pretty cool in the way it was set up. It had a stage, two dance floors, seating that was sectioned off in little groups so that you could kinda have your little privacy with your friends, but still be part of the greater audience, and a bar. There was an older crowd there, mostly couples, and the live music was all Ecuadorian folk music. We got to listen to two bands. The first were old men that wore great red panchos and the second played pretty slow/romantic music. The place was not necessarily what we expected but we had a pretty good time anyways.




On Saturday we took a bus to Guayllabamba (about 30 mins north of Quito) and went to the zoo. The zoo is pretty small but there were a lot of cute animals to see including monkeys, Galapagos tortoises, and the Andean condor!

Later that night we went salsa dancing, which was pretty much the best time I've had here. The place is called Seseribo and it was a great atmosphere with pretty much only amazing dancers. This made us a little hesitant to start dancing but the live music was so great that we had to. All of us, including Emily who has taken salsa and Anina who is a dancer, decided we need to take salsa classes. Maria Paulina told me that my host mom has actually taught pretty much all of her host students (which have been about 30 now) because she is so great at dancing so I'm thinking I should ask her to help us out.

On Sunday I went to el Parque Metropolitano with Bruno, Maria Paulina and Tistikiri. It was definitely not the kind of park I expected seeing as it was pretty much a forest filled with so many beautiful, tall trees. Although it was pretty muddy, it was really fun to walk around (for like 2 hours) and great to actually breathe fresh air. After jumping in all kinds of puddles, Bruno and Tistikiri came home pretty much covered in mud, ha, if only I was a kid again.

I didn't take my camara but here is a picture of Tistikiri from a while back. She is adorable and always jumps on me and cries when she sees me. It's weird because I've never in my life had a dog before, but when Bruno is not around, Tisti is mine :)