Get Busy Living Or Get Busy Dying

Breathing just passes the time

This weekend I traveled with my host dad to Cuenca. Cuenca is the second largest town in the Ecuadorian Andes (after Quito) and it is more contemporary than any other town in the country. For lack of a better word it is… cute. It is filled with old churches that have the most amazing architecture and wide cobble stone streets. But it also is very western is some ways; there are a lot of restaurants that you can eat real food at (read not rice and meat). There are also a lot more foreigners in Cuenca. I found my self-hearing English more than I had almost all year (minus possibly Otavalo). We left very early Saturday morning and go there about 1 in the afternoon on Saturday. We then checked into our hotel, ate lunch, and headed out to get my host dads chip and bib for the next day. For those of you who don’t know my dad is a crazy runner and about every other weekend travels to a different town to run a different race. Our living room is filled with over 300 medals and 50 trophies. He brings home new trophies almost every time he leaves to run. He is planning on going to run a marathon in Peru in May and has been avidly training for that, but that doesn’t stop him from running as many races as he can before that.  After we got him all checked in we headed on a self guided (read: us walking and looking at things) tour of Cuenca. We went to the central park, some markets, and other old buildings and just enjoyed getting to know a new city. The next day was the race, I am not able to run at this point because of my hip, but I love the race vibe and it was fun to get to wander a bit alone while my dad was running. It was a 15k race and my dad came in at about 55 mins, that is fast guys. He got 4^th in his age group and was quite sad about it because he missed out on the prize money and the trophy to add to the collection, but as he said “it was in gods will”. The race was huge, bigger than I have ever seen, but it was so cool to be part of it, even if I was only watching and going support for my dad. But it had to end and we had to get home, so we hopped on the bus and headed home, to Guaranda. It was wonderful weekend and I have wanted to go to Cuenca since I got here, so it was awesome to get to do that.

  I have been home for about 12 hours and in about two hours I will take off on the trip that I have been waiting for all year… the Galapagos! It was a crazy turn around, but totally worth it, I am so excited. I will be going to these amazing little islands with about 30 other AFSers from the mountain region of Ecuador. I am so PUMPED!!! I cant even put my enthusiasm into words. I will tell you guys more about what we did and saw when I get back on Saturday or sometime then when I get to writing a blog post. Either way I hope that you are all doing wonderfully and love as always.

Livin’ life on the loose.