I know. I know. We haven't written for a long time, but we've been really busy having fun. Remember talking about going over to the main offices of our school while we were in Quito? Well Ligia the director, whose office is in Quito, is here in PL for the weekend with a student named Ensu (which probably isn't spelled right, as she's South Korean) and we've been having a ball.

Ligia is such a kick! Saturday morning all of us went to the fish market--Raquel, too: Bob and 4 women. He loves being king--they keep telling him in this country the man is king and he seems to be adapting pretty well.

Shawn, the fish market wasn't ANYTHING like the market in Chennai--you'll see in the pictures. 

Later Raquel made ceviche, as she said they don't make it right in the restaurants. It's easy, she claims. We were going to all make it together but the rest of us went to a beach down the road and got back too late. She'd already put it together.

Whoooohoooo was it good. I could eat it all day, it's so amazing. Fresh fish that had hardly stopped flapping, and the thinnest slices of onion, tomato, green pepper and cilantro. And lime juice. Wow. Raquel used to have a restaurant of her own --she is an amazing cook, but her speciality is vegetarian. Interesting, huh? 

The beach we went to was in Solongo, a $3 taxi ride away. It was gorgeous, but the waves were so strong they picked me up and tossed me up the beach like rolling a ball. It was a blast! I jumped up and ran out to do it again, but it was so exhausting, about 3 times was all I needed.By then I had sand EVERYWHERE. EVERYWHERE, I tell you. Bob too. It knocked him down and Ligia and Ensue ran over, each grabbed an arm and they were dragging him ashore when I rolled by. What a time we had. I didn't think we'd ever get all the sand out of our ears, etc., etc.

There were showers at the beach but they had no water, so a lady sold us a small bucket of water for 25 cents that we tried to wash off with, but the stuff's so sticky it's almost impossible without running water and soap.

Nevertheless, it was such a fun time we went to a different beach the next day to do it all again...more on that--what they claim is the most beautiful beach in all of Ecuador, later.