what language is THAT?

Yesterday a very strange thing took place. I went out, with only two other exchange students (and ZERO Ecuadorians) and went walking in downtown Portoviejo! And it wasn’t as scary as I thought it was going to be. Leslie from Washington state, Amina from Switzerland and I went exploring. Leslie and I went to the post office first to pick up a package, and then we met Amina at her house. She lives pretty much in the middle of downtown, above a computer store that her parents own and work in. We walked through the streets close to where she lives, and ended up buying a TON of pirated DVDs. Hip Hip Hooray for $1 movies! Oh, and Hip Hip Hooray for terrible quality pirated DVDs too! At least two of the ones that I bought are not in English OR Spanish, and they actually have some really strange language (like, Arabic or something) subtitles and then Spanish subtitles on top of those. I just can’t wait to watch those. It will be hilarious. We’ll see if I actually understand or not. :) We also bought some real high quality ‘ray ban’ sunglasses that are actually ‘reg bay’s. Oh, and we have discovered something about the clothes here. There is a (pretty much) foolproof way to figure out the general price of anything- if it is cute enough to buy, it is expensive. And if it is something that you wouldn’t ever really want to wear, it is cheap.
We then walked back to Amina’s house, and then to the gym that we’ve been doing our dance-class things in. Afterwards, we all went back to my host family’s house, and met my host mom’s friends from Minnesota who visit Portoviejo ever year to do medical work here. It was really strange to meet Americans. It was also really strange to imagine them only being here for a week- I guess it just never occurred to me that you can actually book flights within less than 10 months of each other. After talking to them for a while, and eating barbeque that my host father made, we took a taxi to the mall to meet up with two other exchange students and see a movie. Amina and Leslie ended up staying the night at my house, and then we spent almost all day today at my house playing card games and talking!
I am leaving town tomorrow afternoon to go on a Rotary trip with ALL of the Rotary Exchange Students here in Ecuador- there are about 120 of us! This trip, we are staying quite close to where I live- actually, within 45 minutes of where I live, which kind of sucks because it’s so close by, but it will be fun anyway. I have only met about half of the exchange students so far, and it will be good to get to meet the others. I will post another update on Wednesday or Thursday after I get home!
Have a good weekend and I’ll post again this week!
LOVE, Kirsty