Hi everyone! I know I haven't updated my blog in like a month or something, but here I am now, two days after Lisa and Julia went home. Gabriel and I had a day together yesterday, the first time just the two of us had hung out in a while. So I feel like today is sort of my first day of this semester—my first day essentially by myself, figuring out what I want to do and when I want to do it. Tomorrow I start classes, but that's a pretty small part of my day, just about two hours a night, Monday through Thursday. So, figuring out a job for the morning is pretty much my priority for the next little while. I've had a couple of leads, and I have been offered more than one job, but nothing has really looked good yet: most of that has to do with scheduling, because I really want to work in the morning, and the two places I've been offered work have been at bars/restaurants that would probably most need my services at night. I might still go for it, at least for a little while, if I can't find anything better this week. But, I'm hoping I can find something.

Anyway, I'm not exactly sure where I should start, since so much has happened since I last wrote. But, basically a little over two weeks ago, on August 1, Lisa and Julia arrived! Lily had just moved over to stay at my apartment, because her host family left for the beach around the last day of July, so she, Gabriel and I went to the airport to pick up the girls. Very exciting!!! My room here at the apartment, which I had thought of as fairly big, definitely didn't seem so large with three mattresses stuffed in there. But definitely manageable!! Bright and early the next morning we headed out to catch the bus to Esmeraldas, for a few days at the beach to start of L and J's vacation and to end Lily's. Gabriel and his best friend, Esteban, came too. I LOVE the bus ride to Esmeraldas (except for the inevitable stress about potentially crashing and things like that). The scenery is amazing; for me the coolest part is right in the middle of the trip, once we're out of the mountains but are still a few hours from the coast, and there are these rolling hills with banana trees and jungly plants all over them, little houses nestled down here and there, an occasional town, and lots of wood smoke coming through the bus windows. I just sat there with my head out the window for the last few hours of the trip. Finally, after six and a half hours, or more, we arrived in Esmeraldas, and hung around outside Gabriel's house for a while while he and Esteban tried to open the complicatedly locked door. Finally we got in, put our bags away, and were able to rest.

That night Gabriel and Esteban and I went to a concert at a high school in the city, where the main band was los Enanitos Verdes, a pretty cool group from Argentina. After the concert, every taxi in the city seemed to already be taken, so we walked around a lot, waited a half an hour or forty-five minutes, and finally were able to take a taxi back to the house at 3 AM, to find Lisa awake due to bedbugs and Julia awake too, although right now I don't remember why—a mosquito in her room, that was it. But I think we all fell asleep pretty fast after that. The next two days were lovely, eating yummy seafood and spending the whole day on the beach. We were able to spend the second night sleeping on the floor in Gabriel's family's friend's apartment, which is right on the beach, so we didn't have to go back and forth between the city that night. Which was nice because we could go out dancing at one of those bar huts on the beach—merengue, reggaeton and salsa. Lisa and Julia drew the attention of a creepy man and his son, who seemed to be jointly seeking feminine company for the night—they got rejected.

After two days at the beach, we came back to Quito on a night bus, and stumbled back to the apartment to sleep for four more hours, until midday of that next day. That was Lily's last day in Quito, so we went to the mercado artesanal for the last time (Julia and Lisa's first time—they loved it and had fun talking to the venders). That's all I remember from that day, and I guess the next little while, after Lily left, is also sort of a blur. We did cool stuff every day though! We went to the historic center, looked at churches, and went to the BBB—Bueno, Bonito, & Barato, where you can get any kind of clothing for really cheap. Lisa and Julia made some purchases that I won't specify here. Another day, we went to Parque Itchimbia, which yields beautiful views of the entire center and part of the north and south of the city. We walked from there to the Basilica, where we climbed up the towers and discovered more amazing views. What else did we do…oh, one day we also hiked with Esteban to the Parque Metropolitano, which is really near to my apartment, and has miles of wooded trails. OH, and I almost forgot our weekend trip to the farm with my family!!! It was great—a huge family reunion, with all the uncles, even the ones from Loja, Guayaquil, and Esmeraldas had made the trip. So there were tons of cousins, lots that I remembered and others that I think I'd never even met. And tons of babies! I wasn't sure how much fun it would be, depending on how much Lisa and Julia could interact with my family, but actually a few of the guy cousins in their 20's made an effort to get to know them and were really sweet. We made friends with this guy Johnny, a friend of my cousin Andrei's, who's actually living in Quito very close to my apartment, and who took Lisa and me out to eat a few days ago.

We also undertook a HUGE, INTENSE hike up an enormous mountain the next day—after camping out there the night before. It was really difficult terrain and the uncle who led the hike, Lenin, was pretty intense about it, too—he set an alarm on his watch at the exact second we headed out, with the goal of reaching the top within an hour! This didn’t mesh so well with some of our ideas of what the hike was going to be like (a casual stroll focused on enjoying nature, not conquering it), and so we ended up splitting into two groups along the way, with one group waiting while the other group went to the top. Me and Andrés made it!!!

The last big adventure we had before L & J left was going to Mindo, a tiny town in a huge cloud forest, which should be about 2 and a half hours north of Quito, but with Gabriel's cousin Jonathan driving, turned out to be about an hour and a half. We hiked around, saw waterfalls, and Lisa and Julia did Canopying—crazy ziplining above jungly landscape. Julia had been on and off sick before that, and Thursday morning, when we woke up in Mindo, she was pretty sick for the whole day, which was too bad. But we made it back to Quito that night, and the next day they both left—Julia at 7 in the morning, and Lisa that night.

While so many friends were here visiting, there were moments when I thought that some time alone could be nice. But now, I do feel like I have to get used to that idea, of being alone and having enough things to do, enjoying myself. Luckily, I can get used to it in stages—tomorrow I'm already planning to meet Gabriel and his friends for lunch after their first day of classes, and then tomorrow night I have my first yoga class (with Gabriel's mom), and the next night my first creative writing class! So I'll definitely be meeting people and doing things too. Once I get this job idea firmed up, I think things will be *excellent*.

Write! Let me know how you are! I guess Macalester classes start soon too, although I'm not too clear on when exactly that is—maybe it's better not to know, so I don't spend that whole first day feeling strange and out of place not being there with everyone else. No, but really, I am pretty confident that this is going to be a great semester, and, I guess because I never really looked at Macalester classes for this semester, I don't feel like I'm missing on specific cool classes, or special opportunities—besides being there around so many friends, which I AM going to miss!!!!!!!!!

Okay, I love you all!