Relaxing in Baños

Friday night Alex, Anina, Maureen and I took off to Baños to meet Emily and Jessica who had gone earlier to get us a nice place to stay. When we arrived to Terminal Terrestre, where we would take the bus to Baños, we were told that there were only 2 seats left, the rest were for people going further on the trip and therefore had to pay more. After negotiating a little, we got ourselves some seats, unfortunately NOT what we wanted. Alex, Maureen and I had to sit in the very back next to the gross, smelly bathroom that had just been sprayed with some flowery smell, therefore making the smell 10 times worse. Poor Anina had to sit in the very front, in a seat we didn't even know was for passangers, next to the bus driver. Turns out, the seats weren't that bad considering there were about 15 people that ended up getting on the bus and traveling the entire way standing up.

After sleeping in a very comfy room with 3 bunked beds, for all six of us, we woke up Saturday morning ready for some fun. We decided to rent some bikes for the day so that we could ride down a waterfall route. Despite my initial hesitation about how much fun it would be to ride the 23 km to el Pallon del Diablo (the Devil's Cauldron), or the biggest waterfall on the route, it ended up being a great experience. We saw various little waterfalls on the way and got to ride through a completely dark tunnel (super freaky considering I literally couldn't see where I was going) and a bridge (where people were bungie jumping).

When we arrived in the little town of el Pallon del Diablo we heard the Lion King's "the circle of life" and all sang it, very excitingly, only to get strange looks from the locals. It was great! After locking our bikes there and hiking down to see the huge waterfall, we rode the in the back of a truck back to Baños, singing various other well known songs and once again getting starred at by the others on riding with us :)

In Baños we found a Mexican food place and ate gorditas, burritos, enchiladas and limonada. Yummy! We then went to El Refugio Spa and got the cajon de baño (Box Steam Bath) treatment. For this treatment we had to sit in a wodden box that only allowed our heads to stick out. Inside the box was a lever where we could allow steam to come out, as well as a bunch of eucalyptus leaves for aromatherapy. We also had tea next to our heads, which these two girls would come and hold for us to drink when we wanted some. After sitting in the steaming cajas for a while we would come out and the girls would poor buckets of freezing water on us. Chilly, but it felt great after being completely covered in sweat. After three little sessions of the steam bath/cold water treatment, we ate some watermelon while we had a mud-mask on our faces. It was a very interesting and different experience, especialy the "spiritual walk," which I forgot to mention, came before our cajon treatment. We went on a walk that involved us walking barefoot on river and volcano rocks, yelling out in towards the mountains, and crawling in grass. Needless to say, my feet hurt afterwards.

For dinner we went to Cafe Good where Anina and I shared a very diverse meal: pita and hummus, nachos, and pad thai, all a delish. We then hopped on the top of this bus, called a Chiva (goat) bus, that took us up a mountain to see the volcano Tungurahua (which errupted a few weeks ago). It was a great ride because we drank some Pilsners and looked at the beautiful stars above (something which is obv unheard of in LA). Although we didn't get to see the volcano because it was cloudy, we did get to see a great view of Baños as well as a fire juggling show put on by two attractive brothers. We then went to a bar and played Janga, completely random I know, then to a discoteca where they played completely random, yet great, music (like Mana's "Me Vale") and danced with non other than one of the fire bros.

Sunday morning we went back to El Refugio to get awesome rock massages then headed back to Quito (to finish my Marketing project, which today, is still not done).

Baños was so much fun and hopefully we'll be going back. Especially because we didn't get to it's main tourist attraction, the reason it's called Baños, the thermal baths.

Viernes Loco!

Friday was one of the busiest days I've had since I've been in Ecuador, mostly on the school work side. On Fridays I only have two classes, Moneda y Banca at nine in the a.m. and then Antropologia Cultural, with a two hour gap in between.

As usual I woke up dreading Moneda y Banca because I had a project due which I hadn't finished. Me not finishing my hw for this class is nothing out of the ordinary considering I understand pretty much nothing. Moneda y Banca is supposed to be an Econ class but somehow the professor thinks it perfectly fine to ramble on and on about finance, accounting, and the Ecuadorian financial laws. All of this would be okay, since after all they are all related, but I do not have any background, whatsoever, in any of those things, so I understand nothing. Also, if he didn't read everything word for word and bore the entire class to death, I wouldn't mind it so much.

I came in to class worried because I hadn't finished the project, but turns out, it's okay, we can turn it in on Monday. ---Changing the dates of things due is very typical of Jaime Maya, SO ANNOYING!! Today we had a quiz on some accounting crap which he refused to teach us, but when we got to class, he decided Friday would be better. Good in the sense that I have more time to figure out something I've never done in my life (literally figure out how numbers are related, in finding equations for them, then doing it in class without any references), bad because it means I probably won't do it.---- Good thing for me, when I went to the ONLY computer lab that has ProBanker (the program we had to use) installed in it after class, I found a girl working on the same project and allowed me to be in her group, which I didn't even realize we didn't have to do it on our own. Basically, I hate this class, and I am bound to fail, oh well...

After anthro I had to get together with two Ecuadorina kids from my marketing class for a group project we had. We have to launch a new product (ours is a social magazine with social pics and nightlife info) and do all kinds of investigation for it. This has been the biggest pain ever because the guys in my group don't want to do anything. I've been trying to get Alex(an Ecuadorian, not the one from Pitzer), Andres, and Francisco to help me out with the project but they hadn't been worried about it at all until this week. Because Francisco had to go out of town, he said he would do the telephone interviews, a professional interview, and a "hidden consumer" interview all on his own. Alex, Andres and I had to do surveys in the mall and a focus group (ugh!).

So we took off to Cumbaya to the local bougie mall where we figured we could find the most USFQ students (since our product is aimed at them). After parking we found out that the camara didn't work, and since we had to videotape everything, we were forced to drive all around Cumbaya to Alex's friends' houses to find one that we could use. It was a pain, yet cool because I got a tour of the town, which I'd never been to (I hadn't been past the university). They guys showed me the local restaurants, hospital and schools, and SWEET homes, or mansions really, where their friends lived. We also got stopped by the police and Alex got a ticket for having "a distracting object" in his hand while driving. I found it hilarious that after making an illegal u turn and not having his seatbelt on, he only got a ticket for being on the phone, although this was a 3rd degree ticket, meaning the worst kind. Even more hilarious, was the fine, a total of SIX bucks, haha.

When we finally made it back to the mall and started interviewing random young people we were approached by the mall's security guy who told us we couldn't survey people here. Even though we only got to survey a total of 4 people (since the security guy followed us around after he approached us), we left back to school to do our focus group (but only after picking up 4 guys on the way to help us out). I ended up trusting the guys to finish the focus group on their own and headed to none other than McDonald's for Bruno's birthday party.

At McDonald's there were about 22 of Bruno's friends playing a game that two girls, dressed in Ronald McDonald costumes, were leading for them. It was the most intense Mickey D's bday party ever. They played all kinds of games, sang songs, danced, ate Happy Meals (of course) and even had a piñata with candy and prizes (each kid got coloring books, free meal coupons, and toys), all in the middle of the restaurant, where all around them regular customers enjoyed their food. The kids loved it. And I did too, especially because I got eat!! Chicken nuggets and fries, and Bruno cake (the same one from my bday)! SO good! But probably tasted better to me because it turns out that I had been so busy all day that I had gone about 11 hours without food.

As soon as it ended I pretty much booked it home to pack to go to Baños!