Oprah

I suddenly have a new obsession...Oprah. A girl here brought the best of Oprah for the past 25 years and believe me, those 8 disks have provided more entertainment than anyone could have asked for. Every spare moment we have, someone pops in Oprah and pretty soon the majority of the 17 house members are glued in front of it. Who knew? I surely did not. I dare say I have never seen an entire episode of Oprah in my life before this. The disks belong to a girl that is leaving in 3 weeks, so then I have no idea what we will do for entertainment.

Whats more is that Oprah is a great person. She may be my new hero.

Fears

So the plugs here in Ecuador are especially challenging to get things to plug into. The other day I went to plug in my alarm clock after I had unplugged it to use the blow dryer and the outlet kept sparking.

This reminded me of a huge fear I had as a child. I was deathly afraid of fire. So much so, that I thought that I was going to burn the house down by plugging things into the wall and creating sparks. Therefore, I never touched an outlet for probably two years. I remember making my brother plug in the vaccuum for me. It was like a little game we´d play, I´d stand there and wait until he came along and then I would make him do it for me. It was like our little secret too, nobody else ever knew that it was him all that time plugging in the vacuum cleaner.

Good thing I have moved on now and I fear more rational things, such as speaking Spanish to natives, getting killed in a van/bus collision, and finding my true love here and becoming a señora in Ecuador without my family here to see it.

Baños

Every Friday we have the day off, so as a group we take field trips to sites of interest around Ecuador. This morning we woke up at 5:30 am to board a bus that would take us to the tourist town of Baños. After a three and half hour bus ride, all of us were more than ready to get moving with the day´s activities.

All but two of us had decided that we wanted to go waterfall repelling while we were there. I for one love adventure. I love things that are thrilling and cause a rush. I have been repelling before, but in a waterfall...now that´s something different. After squeezing into the tightest wetsuits humanly imagineable and getting a quick lesson in Spanglish about what we were to do, we set off in a rickety blue 15 passenger van. The scenery in Ecuador is absolutely beautiful by the way, and driving up a mountain towards the waterfalls gave us a great view.

The first waterfall was 40 feet and the second was 120! The first seemed like cake when we saw the second, it was pretty much a blind drop! It was really breathtaking and quite the thrill. I like to just jump right in, so I was the first to go on both drops. It was so awesome, definitely one of the funnest things I have done. On the first one, we also took time to slide down the side and jump off. Good times, oh how I love water! The jumping was not my most successful art though, It looked as If I were about to hit the rocks and die, but luckily I did not!

Oh and by the way, I have found my new love. His name is Paulo and he was one of our guides. I´m not usually one for the latinos but, ohh wow this guy was good lookin! Hmm...too bad we are not supposed to even be looking at boys and too bad also that I will never see him again. I only wish his name was Jose.

The bus ride home was almost as fun as the day because for the entire 3 and a half hours, we sang kareoke. Talk about stepping out of the comfort zone...but by the time we were done, we were having a full on dance in the aisle of the bus and everyone was going crazy. You all know that I can´t carry a tune to save my life, but I was up there going at it more than anyone! Haha! Oh man, the things that I do when I am tired. Anyway, it was a great day and that gives you something to read about my Ecuadorian adventure since day to day activities probably aren´t too interesting to ya´ll. Anyway, have a fantastic life EVERYONE!!!

Wishes DO come true

I´d just like to take this moment to thank Rusty for wishing a South American virus upon me. After only 7 days in the country, I have the beginnings of a parasite. I have been useless for three days and finally saw a doctor today. She gave me some shots and I have a million pills to take as well as lots and lots of pedialyte to drink. However, I should make a full recovery in another 3 days or so. But, the saddest part for me is that I don´t get to go to Guayaquil tomorrow to the temple. Oh well, we win some and we lose some, right?