mmm, cookies!

This past week has been pretty busy, and I’ve been a tad sick which is why I haven’t written. It’s now officially summer as it hasn’t rained hardly at all in the last week and a half. I think the change in weather brought on my cold/cough, but I’m feeling better now. I finally got around to making cookies which turned out better than I expected. M&Ms had to be used instead of chocolate chips as it is impossible to find choco chips in Ecuador. But on the whole they turned out well and my host family was quite excited about them. Good baked goods aren’t real common around here and I have never seen cookies anywhere except in packages like oreos. Tommorrow is the big good bye fiesta for the guy here before me. It should be rather interesting with people rather chuchaki (a new word I picked up meaning hungover) the next day. Mother’s day was also interesting as a good chunk of the mothers (and quite a few of the fathers) celebrated by getting drunk and dancing in the main square. They really know how to party here!

Another random observation is how bus drivers try to sell their trips at the terminal. You’re walking down the line of buses and all the drivers are trying to get you to pick their bus. I feel like I’m in a department store. The thing is all the buses are going to different places, so why would I suddenly choose to go someplace different? How may people wander into the terminal saying “I wonder where I should go, maybe I’ll see which driver is the most convincing”? It just seems an odd place for a sales pitch but maybe there’s something about it I don’t know.