¿Got crabs?

We're finally settled into our class schedule now, however, neither of us are very motivated to do the work for our classes as we discovered this weekend while we were at the beach and then had to do our homework at 6 am yesterday after a night on a bus. Luckily, we did finish our homework, and we even participated in class although we were half asleep. It´s silly of us to complain, given that we only have 4 classes, minimal homework, and Friday´s off.

We both are getting settled into our internships here. Amanda started today with an organization called SIMBIOE: It´s an organization focused on conservation and biodiversity. She spent 4 hours today researching fish of the Andes. And that's what she'll be doing every Tuesday and Wednesday for the next 4 months in an effort to find information for the director of the organization to write a book about the conservation of those species (and her name will be cited in the book too!). Jane is working with an organization called Arte Educarte. This organization goes to public schools in the poorer regions of Quito and teaches art classes. On Tuesdays she helps in the office to prepare for class on Wednesday. On Wednesdays she goes with other volunteers and art teachers to the schools and help with the classes. She has a lot of fun with the kids, and it´s interesting seeing how education and discipline differs here.

Last weekend we took a trip to the Ecuadorian coast to a small beach town called Canoa. We left Thursday evening and spent ALL night in a bus and arrived in Canoa at around 8 am Friday morning. This was definitely a prime location to just relax for a few days. All we did was lay on the beach, lay in hammocks, drink piña coladas, dance on the beach, swim in the water, sunset walking on the beach, and lots of napping. Oh and ate a lot too. It was quite relaxing. The only downside was that there were cockroaches in the hostel. They fumigated the room the first night, and we slept in there, but that could not have been good for us. The second night, Jane slept in a hammock because she was too scared of cockroaches. Baby. The first night we were there we saw a beautiful sunset! We walked all the way down the beach, and as it got dark, there were a TON of crabs just running (or crawling?) along the beach. Kind of gross, but really cool too. We made good friends with the bartender who made us piña coladas (who was also the husband of our hostel owner) and with his nieces. We spent both our nights there dancing in his bar hut on the beach with his nieces who were about 11, 7, and 3 to the same three songs over and over.