On Wednesday it was my host dad's birthday! He had to leave early in the morning for work so I didn't see him until the big birthday celebration that night. I woke up in the morning to Donato, my host brother, yelling something about mariposas (butterflies). When I woke up I asked him if he saw a butterfly. It turns out that he was just playing Pokemon Go on my host mom's phone. Donato is 5 years old (6 in September). I couldn't get him to talk to me at first, but we bonded over playing with Rafael, the family cat. Rafael, or Rafi as Donato calls him, is about the friendliest cat ever. He prowls around the house and is constantly crying for attention. He is so playful! He crawled inside this tiny little shelf below the coffee table and Donato gave him a rock. I thought he would just ignore it, but he played with it and batted it around. He was in a really frisky mood after playing with his rock and tried to swipe at our fingers when we petted him. Donato tried to get Rafi to play with his angry bird stuffed animals, but he wasn't as interested in those as he was in the rock! Rafael in his favorite spot, the balcony outside the apartment. The view is so pretty, I love living in a city! You can't see them from here, but there are magnificent mountains to the west of Quito. I'm in awe every time I see them! After breakfast, Margarita (my host mom), Donato, and I went to Margarita's mom's house. She lives close by, it was about a ten minute drive with all of the traffic. Margarita's mom lives in the same building as Margarita's sister, and both of them are hosting students, too! Tyler is from Illinois like me and Macie is from North Carolina. Susy, Tyler's host mom and my "host abuela" taught the three of us how to get to la Universidad. The route is slightly closer from my house but from what I understand it's pretty similar. We had to walk a couple blocks to the first bus stop and then we had to change buses three times. I would estimate that it took us an hour to get there. We walked around campus a bit and met the infamous Verónica. (Her and I exchanged tens of thousands of emails this summer regarding my visa application. That is only a slight exaggeration.) We took the bus back to Susy's house, and she fed us some Ecuadorian chocolate on the way home.
After a giant three course lunch, we were off again, this time to do some shopping at the MegaMaxi. We finally made it back to the car, but Susy got a call from Margarita that we needed chocolate birthday cake, candles, and flour so we had to go back inside and do some more shopping. We finally made it to Susy's house, and I left pretty soon afterwards with Margarita. Before we knew it, it was time for the giant birthday celebration! We had 16 guests, which was a lot of people for such a little apartment! One of the other relatives was hosting another student. Her name is Caitlyn. The other students in my family were there too, so we all sat together and talked. I finally got to meet my host sister, Monse! She is only one and is absolutely adorable. Donato was there too, along with all the little cousins in the family. One of the girls performed a few songs for us. One of them was Rolling in the Deep by Adele. Her voice was beautiful. At the end of the evening I gave my host family all of the gifts that I'd brought for them from the United States. Monse especially liked her gift, a stuffed border collie (like Sneakers). She gave me a big hug and carried it around with her!
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Hola, soy olivia.After living in the Midwest my whole life, I packed my bags and moved south to Guadalajara, Mexico where I'm working as an English teacher and studying Spanish. Keep posted to hear about all my adventures!
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