It's been too long

I thought I should elaborate about my trip to Ecuador, so here goes:

I went with a group of 20 people and we started the trip by spending 2 days in Quito, where we landed. Our first night there, we just sort of explored and ate some local cuisine. The food in Ecuador was delicious, and I tried a lot of things that I couldn't ever see myself eating (like guinea pig and wolf!) not to mention about 15 fruits that I had never heard of before my trip. I miss eating like I did while I was there; 3 different types of freshly-made juices each day, 3 fruits for breakfast, some sort of rice and meat for lunch (usually served with homemade banana chips- so good!), and then another form of meat and rice/potatoes for dinner. Not to mention all of the crazy snacks I ate while I was there. We're talking like... 3000 calories per day! Well, maybe not that many... but a lot :o)

Our first full day in Quito, we went out and visited an ancient volcano crater, the equator, and the cable cars that I mentioned in my last post. All of those experiences were pretty sweet, and definitely once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. The next day (Sunday) we drove from Quito to Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, which was about 4 hours through the gorgeous Andes mountains. Once we settled in to our hotel in Santo Domingo, we went on a tour of the Tsáchila community a learned a little bit about their culture. It was pretty neat to see the community and their way of life; I've read about Native American tribes in the US, but it was really neat to see a tribe that lives mostly the same as it has for hundreds of years.

Monday we started our work; it was pretty back-breaking honestly, but totally worth it. We made the foundation of the house, so it was a lot of concrete mixing, digging holes, moving rocks, cutting iron... basic foundational tasks. I was really surprised at how well our group worked together; it was really nice that we didn't have any people who didn't get along or were obnoxious to each other. It's rare in a group that size to not encounter problems, so it was a really good trip overall :o) We also worked briefly on another housesite, which was near completion when we got there. On Friday the group worked a half day, so we were able to present the keys to the house to the family; it was really emotional, but very nice to see the whole project come around. It was difficult to envision a house where we first started with 9 holes in the ground, so I'm glad we were about to see the whole cycle. Then we drove back to Quito later on Friday afternoon, went out for our last night on the town, and a lot of the team members just stayed up all night because we had to leave for the airport at like 4:30a.m.

So that's my trip... in a nutshell :o) Then I landed in Raleigh, spent 18 hours there, and boarded a plane to Atlanta for my interview, which went very well. I'm very excited about having offers from both Georgia Tech and Duke, and now I just have to think over my situation carefully and chose where to go. Also, I turned down NCSU/UNC and Johns Hopkins already, for anyone who really wanted to know...

Well, I should get back to work now... get a jumpstart on the week. Only 25 days of class left! 5 solid weeks... but then I'm no longer an undergraduate! As of 7p.m. on May 10 :-D