everybody loves ceviche

There is a high school two doors down from our house (which seems like it would be weird, but it’s really not here), and every weekday morning all of the cars driving by and kids talking loudly wake me up. Oh, and classes start at 7, so it starts getting loud at like 6:45. :/ Weekends are nice because I can actually sleep a little later. This morning Mika the dog woke me up. At least she waited until 8:30. :)
Apparently everyone here in Portoviejo eats ceviche at least once every weekend- my family always eats it on Sunday afternoons for lunch. Ceviche is not one of my favorite Ecuadorian foods so far, so I’m not too thrilled about it, but oh well. I actually feel kind of bad about not liking it because everyone here gets SO EXCITED when we have it. :/ Oh well. My host mom is WONDERFUL and she knows that ceviche’s not my favorite, so she gave me some ‘arroz con polllo’, which is totally the same thing as fried rice, except it’s Ecuadorian and not Chinese.
After lunch, my host parents told me that we were going to Manta, which is like 30 minutes away from our house. Manta is COOL. It’s a port town, so there are tons of boats, and there’s a really nice beach too. They also build boats there! Which is really cool because there’s a whole bunch of partly-built boats sitting on the sand and they just look really neat. After Manta, my host dad decided to keep on driving for a while. We ended up going to another beach, called Santa Marianita. It was really cool- it’s not very big, and there’s no town next to it, so it’s a lot more peaceful than the other beaches we’ve been to. There is also a kiteboarding school there! They had a whole bunch of kites laying on the beach and a couple of people went out kiteboarding. The first time I saw kiteboarders, I was with my family in the Dominican Republic, and I don’t know why, but this time, it seemed a lot less dangerous than it did then. Maybe it’s because I’m older, or maybe it’s because it actually IS less dangerous. It looks fun though. :D
Anyway, we stayed at the beach for a while, and I ate the best coconut-flavored ice cream I have ever had. I also managed to get coconut-flavored ice cream all over myself. Way to go Kirsty for being messier than the 4 year old! :)
I start school tomorrow. :( I actually have to wear a TIE with my ridiculous uniform, and since I don’t know how to tie a tie, and neither does anyone in my family, we went to our next door neighbors and asked them to tie it for me! :) It is now tied, but I do not know HOW to tie it, so I am just going to try really hard not to undo it. :) We’ll see how that goes…