Three Weeks

Sorry I have not updated in quite some time, I really need to be better about that. It has been a good week. I could go over every little detail, but why bore you all with that. Instead I will just cover some highlights.

I am really likeing my work. I get to take part in a lot of different projects, which keeps things interesting. This week I designed a brochure, sticker and business card for us to send with someone traveling to Peru to give to businesses to create interest in our company and hopefully get some more advertisors. I also am now going to be helping with the Metamorf, which is basically Viva Travel Guides's parent company. They develop and design Web sites for businesses. I am really excited to learn more about that sort of thing, but it is a bit challenging since they all speak spanish. I attended a meeting last week and really thought I was keeping up with what was going on. All of the sudden they all stopped talking and looked it me. You can get that done by Wednesday right Erin. Right. Luckily George speaks really good English and filled me in later. I feel my spanish getting better by the day, which makes things easier.

Things in my house are also going well. At times, it is a bit trying to live with two other people in a room, but the social aspects of it are nice. I get along really well with Andrew and Lindsey, so it works. I have met a lot of their friends, and most of them are really cool as well. The majority go to school in Beloit Wisconsin, random. I find it odd so many of them are here. On Wednesday some people came over and we made dinner, which was fun. Then the two French guys that live here, Nicolas and Vincent came home and we hung out with them as well. I really like meeting people from all over the world. You realize you have both a lot, and nothing in common with them. It is interesting. Strange at times. I accidentally burped and Vincent went on this five minute speech about French woman would never do that. Lindsey and I were both like well american girls do that, deal with it.

I finally figured out who from Minnesota is coming to our office. His name is Paul, he is a web developer and is coming March 1. However, his girlfriend, Katie, is already here. On Friday she came to our office after work and we went to a pub. She lived in St. Paul in Highland park, so it was fun to talk with someone from where I am from.

Yesterday I went White Water Rafting with a group. My boss, Paula, had organized it through the South American Explorers club. It was my first time out of Quito, which was refreshing. It was a three hour drive to the rafting location, along a narrow curvy road through the mountains. We stopped at some tiny restaurant in the middle of nowhere and I got an empenada and some soup with like half a chicken in it. Sort of gross looking, but good. Once we got to the rafting location, we put on our wet suites and got the safety speech. By this time both Paula and I were a little nervous. Paula more so than me. I had only been rafting once and it was on a really tame river in Colorado. This was a pretty rapidy river. On our raft was me, Paula, three guys from American, a guy from Canada and a guy from Germany (I am horrible with names!). Our guide was this really crazy Ecuadorian guy. It was really fun, even though we were in a couple of sort of scary situations. One time we were stuck on a rock and the raft was flooding and our guide was screaming. The other particularily scary part was when we went over a huge wave and it swept over our raft throwing me into the guy in front of me and off the raft. I was actually pretty calm, I remember thinking ok I am in the water, better swim to the raft. But everyone was screaming, since we were coming up to some more rapids. Me and the other boy got back on the raft without a problem, and everything was fine. Paula was like I am so glad that did not happen to me. The best part of the trip was the scenery. The river was beautiful, with huge rocks everywhere. We were surrounded by mountains covered in green trees. One guy said they looked like the sort of trees you would expect a monkey to be hanging from, I agreed. All in all it was a really great day. T

Today I am a little sore from rafting, and have been taking it easy. I went to the grocery store and got some food for the week. I think I may go to the Mitlad del Mundo with Andrew and some of his friends. It is where there is a a monument and museum on the Equator, should be good.

Well, as ussual I hope everyone is well. I miss you guys a lot, and hope you are doing well. Thanks to some of you for emailing me, I love hearing about your lives. It makes me feel less far away.