si ves

Loja is boring. Usually anyway. But occasionally, we find something to do. This past weekend, I went to the botanical gardens on the very south side of the city, which was interesting. There were some cool plants there, but mostly it was just something to do on an otherwise boring day. Life is so boring without TV. I realize that's completely ridiculous to say, but it's true. Try to go 5 months without watching TV and tell me what you think. I suppose it depends where you live though definitely because if you lived in a booming metropolis, there would be tons of stuff to do on weekends. On the other hand, if you live in Loja, you'd feel differently.

I'm coming home in 30 days. I am really happy about that because I have had it up to *here* with the bed in my bedroom. It's probably the most uncomfortable bed ever.... It seems that most beds here, unless you're richy rich, have a frame, and boards that fit on the frame, and a foam mattress that's about three inches thick. Because the mattress is foam, it gets flat and stays that way, so honestly, the part of the mattress that I sleep on it maybe a half inch thick...so I wake up with a sore back and if I sleep on my side if feels like I have bruises in the morning. Awesome, I know. So I can't wait to get home for that reason, among others, but I'm pretty glad about leaving this horrible bed behind.

I would have liked to travel more while in Ecuador. I may still go to Quito before I leave, but I guess it would have been nice to see more of Ecuador and even other countries. However, traveling on a 4 dollar an hour salary is pretty much out of the question and the school I work at requires that if you want to take a vacation, you have to get someone to cover all your classes. Soooooo.... yeah. Some day I will come back to South America so I can see Macchu Pichu, Iguazu Falls, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Patagonia, and the Galapagos Islands (when I'm super rich. ha!) Plus, traveling in Ecuador requires that you sit on a bus for long periods of time and I've always hated buses so I just don't want to travel to avoid a several hour bus ride. The ride to Quito is 14 hours, and I think I might do it just because I want to see Quito for sure and stand on the equator. Plus, I've heard that if you take a night bus, it's not so bad. We'll see about that.

I have four weeks left of classes. I think I'm really going to miss some of my students. Of course, they are not even close to me age-wise, but I've become attached to some of my junior tweens, tweens, and teens. They're pretty awesome people and I wish I could stay here to see how much they change and how much more English they learn as they grow older, but alas, I won't be doing that so I'll just enjoy the last weeks classes I have with all of them.

Hope everyone reading this is well! See you in a month, USA.


PS. here are couple pictures from at the botanical gardens. gigantic leaves, fake swinging and real swinging from vines, and a bonsai garden. Click on them to enlarge.