Fun Facts about Ecuador #3: 9. Greetings! Whenever anyone sees a friend, or walks up to a group of people, they say hello by exchanging a kiss - a friendly kiss to the side. It mostly happens when guys greet girls, but girls do greet girls in this way too. I really like this custom. In the US, no one is going to shake the hand of everyone in a group, or hug everyone hello. The Ecuadorian way causes guys to personally acknowledge everyone in the group. The ki...

September 27th: L-I-G-A! Campeón! Sunday we went to a fútbol game- soccer, as you Americans call it. Quito's club team, Liga, played against Guayaquil's club team (3rd largest city in Ecuador, I believe), Barcelona. Liga won 4-0, but the two teams are rivals so the fans were still intense. There were SO many policemen at the game, and throughout the whole thing they were stationed in between the different fan sections (I'm assuming so that people didn't hurt...

Fun Facts about Ecuador #2: 5. Cilantro. Everything here is cooked with cilantro, lots of cilantro. I don't remember eating much with cilantro at home, but fortunately I do like it. Apparently, though, people are genetically predisposed to either liking cilantro or to being almost physically unable to put it in their mouths. A few people in my group DETEST cilantro, which is difficult because, as I said, it's in everything. 6. The professors at USFQ (Univer...

From Sept 21st: Again, another amazing weekend! We went to Baños, a town known for its tourism and awesome adventure activities. This weekend was the last one that the Ecology group had free to travel because from now on they are "researching" around Ecuador (aka sitting on the beach and hiking through the mountains). So there were about 21 of us in Baños, I think- a party of our own J. We were up early on Saturday morning to go white-water ra...

From September 14th (I'm behind, I know): I had an INCREDIBLE weekend. Originally, the plan was to go to Esmeraldas for the weekend, a town on the coast. One of the guys in our group, Mike, had contacted someone through the website, couchsurfing.com. Apparently it's a pretty legit site- previous travelers can post reviews on profiles. However, some of our local friends told us that Atacames, another town about an hour away from Esmeraldas, was a bit more ex...