No pain no gain

Thursday was a successful day!  I had bio and after class Kim and I went shopping.  First we went into an Ecuadorian store.  It was very cool!  Good thing Kim was with me because I could have spent a lot of money in there.  First I bought three more scarfs and a little key chain.  Then we went to the market.  Our first stop was to this natural medicine area.  I bought some sort of cream and a bracelet to scare away bad energy, I don't think it's working lol.  They saw me coming.  We looked around for awhile and went to the Panana Hat Factory.  It was really cool, you can see how the hats are made and u can try on different styles and colors.  Of course I couldn't just buy one so I bought two!  Now I have one for formal wear or tea parties and another one for the beach.  I was ready to go.  Then Kim and I went to Supermaxi to get oreos, and marshmallows, my new addiction.  The rest of my day was spent taking a nap and doing homework.  Friday I got to sleep in and had class at 10:30.  I had a spanish test and I thought it was easy so we will see how I did, not that it really matters because I am auditing the class, but I love it!  After class I had lunch.  After lunch I worked on homework until dance class!  At dance we were kinda trying out to dance in the parade Thursday for Carnaval.  Of course I was pumped!  I was choosen and will be dancing Thursday in the parade.  We have to wear their typical samba dresses with lots of glitter and our hair and makeup done a certain way!  Im excited and a little nervous.  After dance class we went to Kim's house to make dinner, which was so good and then we were going to a salsa dance club.  Little did I know or expect us to be going with old guys.  One of the girls has a boss at the place she does her service project at that invited us all out with him and his family.  So he arrived to pick us up.  He was in his late 40s and I was getting nervous, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  Then his brother showed up and he was an old, tall version of Kenny Chesney, he looked very country and american.  So Laura and Kim went with the first guy and another group went in another car and a girl and I went with the old guy.  We arrived at a garage where he was going to pull into and there were multiple private garages.  There was no way in hell I was staying in the truck while it backed it up in there.  It was like a seen from criminal minds, I didn't want to be burried alive in cement or something.  So I told the girl I was with that we were getting out of the truck asap!  We got out and the guy backed up.  Then we walked to the club, which of course was filled with old people.  It's just akward.  The one guy asked me to dance but I told him I was waiting for Antonio to dance.  So Kim and I were watching the two 22 year olds dance with these guys in their 50s.  haha boy was that funny.  Picture two young girls dancing the way they do and then on the other side of them is guys that look like my dad dancing when he's drunk.  Omg these guys were doing the sprinkler, they were attempting to shake their asses, they had their hands going in every which direction.  Well my abs got a workout from laughing so hard.  Kim and I decided to go join them and to music just wasn't my syle.  I love Salsa but that was salsa from the 80s.  Antonio arrived with a friend and Kim and I had a dance partner then!  It was interesting!  All of us wanted to leave or go to Zo because it wasn't our thing and we needed to sleep or have fun!  I told Antonio that I was going to Zo, but he couln't because he had gotten into a fight blah blah blah basically long story short he's probably a drug dealer so I guess it was a good thing I always told him I was sick!  Something just didn't feel right with him.  Then I got in a Taxi and went home.  Saturday I cleaned my room and organized some of my things and went canyoning!  Canyoning is nothing like you'd imagine.  Its hard to describe unless you have gone.  Well we got to where we were going to canyon.  And got all out gear and had a thirty minute all up hill hike to our waterfall.  We got to the beggining location and had to first strip down to our swimming suits and put on our wetsuits.  Wetsuits are very challenging to put on.  They cling to every fat cell on your body and you literally feel like an astronaught.  Then we have to put our shoes on over top of the wetsuit.  And don't forget the helmet and harness.  We all got dressed and had our extra clothes in our small backpack, which was soon to get drenched.  I stepped into the water on a rock and of course immediately fell on my ass.  Good thing I had that helmet on.  After laughing and the other three girls laughing at me, I got up and about 3 minutes after standing up and not moving I managed to lose my balance and fall over again.  I was in for an adventure!  We started our journey down this river and you have to be careful to not step on the rock but in the cracks and you don't exactly know when the water will go from a foot to 8 foot deep.  We got to our first slide.  I didn't know we would be sliding, jumping and doing all these things.  I don;t even do rides at amusement parks like these or go off the diving board and those are suppose to be safe.  No here we are in the wild having our own pursuit.  So of course I get ready to go down this slide which is a giant rock by the way that bumpy, lumpy, and hard; not a ride slide at a park.  So I am screaming the whole way down and I was unaware I would soon be fully submerged in water.  I didn't want to lose my contacts or get hurt.  I landed in the water and was shocked I suddenly fogot how to swim.  The guide told me to breathe, then reality sunk in and I could swim over to more rocks with shallow water.  My adreline was running now.  Then our next thing was a jump.  Yes we had to jump of this rock and land in a certain spot or you would land on a rock, it was challenging.  After we had walked a little more everyone was freezing because we had caught up to the other group and had to wait.  The water we were in was freezing cold!  Then we got to do about 5 repells down waterfalls.  That was the coolest part of this adventure.  How many people can say they repelled down an actual waterfall by themselves!  So cool!  Then we had another jump and another slide.  On the last slide we could go down head first but there was no way in hell that was going to happen so I took the safe route, which was prlly good because one girl cut her nose and it started to bleed!  After our canyoning experience it was downpouring and we still had to hike up this muddy, no path, forest area to get to the path we started on!  Good thing I kept my helmet on!  I was crawling on my hands and knees up this muddy mess to try and reach safe ground.  I had to grad onto roots of trees to pull yourself up with theres was no hole to dig into.  I told the girls I felt like a Tapir because I was pretty much eating mud!  Yum!  No one back home would have ever imagined I would be able to do such a thing!  I might not actually scream everytime there is a bug in the house now!  God only knows what was on me!  So it was thundering and I just needed to get to safe land because if lightening happened to strike while I grabbed onto a root I would be gone down the Andes Mts.  We all made it to safe land and we had this mud slide of a path left to walk down to the trucks.  Of course this is where I slide down half of the path!  As we got to the trucks it was downpouring and we needed to get out of the wetsuits and into dry clothes.  The wetsuits are immpossible to get off to this guide is pulling off my wetsuit from my legs and all I had on was my bikini bottom so god only knows what he saw or was thinking.  Other girls were completely naked but were just americans changing in the wild.  We got back to civilization and we all thought we deserved drinks so ended up getting a margarita and a hamburger because my parents weren't going to be home for dinner I thought.  Then I got back to my house and everything I had with me was soaking wet and I just wanted a hot shower.  I took a shower and got ready for the night.  I skyped my mom and like 5 minutes before I was going to leave my mom here got home and called me in for dinner.  So I quickly ate chicken and rice!  And was out the door.  We met at a girls house and then we went to a bar to grab drinks before the discotecca.  We got to the discotecca and I was not drunk at all and managed to fall wlaking into the bar.  Ha what a night.  After we are dancing and a guy asked me to dance, this one spoke english and was in chicago for a year last year but I was kinda creeped out.  We couldn't find one of the girls so we I left the guy and my friends went to look for her she was just dancing, I didn't want to have to dance with him again so I danced with my friends, unfortunately some short, very femine dancing guy came up and asked me dance, well I didn;t really have an option, he spoke English as well, He reminded me of Ramon from the Preposal, if you need an mental image.  While dancing with him an american guy came over to me and asked me to dance, at this point I was worried because the first guy was still staring at me like a hawk and the current dancer was really pissed and I just was in the middle of them and they started arguing so I went over by Kim's host brother and my other friends.  Then the two girls went over to get drinks and dance and Andres saved me and we danced together but yet all three guys thought they still had a chance.  I was just really frustrated because there was plenty of other gorgeous girls in the club.  After we were getting ready to leave and one of the girls was completely wasted!  I guess she had an allergic reaction as well.  We took her to her house and we waited to make sure she would be okay.   I left the discotecca around one and because I was taking care of a friend I didn't get home till 4am, which is record for me staying awake.  I was up at 7am as well because I can't sleep in.  I worked on homework had breakfast and showered.  My sister and her husband came over and my mom prepared a special lunch today!  The first course was ceviche.  Which is lots of raw shrimp (lots) in a sauce with raw onions.  Once I got the thought of me eating their intestines and poop, it was actually really good!  The main course was steak, fried egg, papas fritas, and rice with peas.  Usually I would never eat that combination let alone steak but it was so good!  For dessert we had a postre with ice cream!  I was in heaven!  I was exhausted so it was time for a seista which turned into me sleeping from 5-8pm lol.  I finished a project for bio and I was called in for dinner.  Ecuador is the only place where we get dessert for dinner.  Postre for dinner with homemade hot chocolate, yum! After dinner I worked on some more homework and now its 1130pm and time for bed.  I can barely get in and out of bed because I am so sore from canyoning.  Chau!