If only words could describe...

Why hello there!

The thing that I feel most strongly that I want to tell people about right now is the trip I went on this last weekend to Baños. It was absolutely incredible. Let me explain...

We arrived in Baños on Thursday night after a beautiful bus ride through the mountains. We met a traveler from Holand and went out and got some wonderful food. We then went out dancing and called it an early night so we could get up at the crack of dawn and start our adventures.

Friday we woke up and found a place to rent bikes, 5 dollars for the whole day, and began our 45 kilometer ride. We biked through green lush mountains with clouds floating just above us. It was so refreshing to have complete control over where we went and how. We could stop and look at waterfalls whenever we wanted as we biked through tiny little towns busteling with people selling fruit and grilling everything under the sun. As we continued our ride we came across 2 bridges where they had ´bridge jumping´, this is like a form of bungee jumping. As we rolled up on our bikes we all said ¨HELL NO ARE WE DOING THAT¨. Yet, for some reason we stayed there watching the men who worked there jumping off in different ways. For some reason, we could not leave...hhmm...lets just say within 20 minutes all but one of us had jumped off and LOVED IT! It was one of the most exciting experiences of my life!! Standing on the platform saying ´no no no no no´ and then jumping and plumiting towards the raging river to be saved by the cord which swings you back up towards the other bridge until you swing swing swing, slow down slow down slow down, and a guy throws a rope at you to get you down. It was awesome!

We then got back on our bikes and kept going as if nothing had happened. We came across a cable car that went over a huge canoyn, toward a waterfall. Of course, we took it and that was very beautiful as well. We then hiked down the mountian, across a bridge like in Indiana Jones, found a place to eat lunch and enjoyed bread, cheese and fresh fruit under the trees, laughing all the way. We then hiked back up to the road and continued our journey on our bikes. After about an hour or so more of biking we decided we should head back, so we waited for a bus. What ended up taking is back was a truck where we stood in the back of with our bikes. It was sooo beautiful to be riding in the back of a truck, through the mountains with the air cooling us down.

Later that night we enjoyed sitting in the thermal baths or hot springs and just relaxed. We crashed that night and went to bed. Woke up in the morning, ate some breakfast, and began a 4 hour hike. We hike straight up one of the mountains and when we were almost at the top we ran into a man named Manuel who works as a farmer in the mountains. He invited us over to his house to drink some natural tea (which he picked from a tree right outside his house) and eat some plantain chips. We talked for about an hour and a half about everything, including Obama. He even had 2 torn out pictures of him in his house. To be sitting in a two room cinderblock house in the middle of Ecuador with an extremly kind farmer and hear the hope Obama has given to the world was so touching. We then left his house and hiked back down to Baños. A few of us took the bus to go zip lining (jump off a cliff, connected to a cord, soar over a river and land on the otherside). Sadly, that zip line was a very short ride, but very fun and a friend got over her fear of heights so it was worth it! We then got some dinner and went out dancing to cap off the weekend.

Otherwise, things are still good. I started the education track this week and that is going well so far. No set internship yet. I will for sure post when I know about that.

If you are still reading after my long brain dump, thanks for reading...I hope that my story did not bore you. I have not recieved enough updates on other peoples lives snide040@umn.edu .... please use it!

<3,
Julia

ps-That picture below is of my host parents.