¡GOOOOOOOOOL!

The last couple of weeks have revealed more of Dante´s inferno to me than I have ever desired to encounter. In other words, I hate homework. There´s has been something of a deluge of exams, papers, reading complicated Peruvian novels and a delightful assignment that kept me up until 4am. Now really, how is filling four notebooks with letters using my left hand going to make me a better teacher? But I digress...

The weekend of the 12th to the 14th, the whole group went to a beach called Perdernales to celebrate Summers´ 21st birthday. The water was warm, the weather was unbelievable and nothing like an American style 21st birthday party with a bonfire on the beach to make for an awesome weekend. There are a great number of pictures and some will appear here later. Others however might be better for selected audiences. Also, the food on the coast is to die for and you know nothing gets you closer to my heart than shrimp and plantains.

This week has been a blur of work with the one highlight being yesterday afternoon. The entire city of Quito shut down for the Ecuador vs. Brasil futbol game. The game is a World Cup qualifier against arguably the best and possibly most arrogant team in South America and we dominated them for the entire game, ending 1-0. All of us had tickets but we ended up scattered throughout the stadium. It didn´t matter though because the raucous, out of control crowd was pretty uniform throughout. It felt like BC vs. Notre Dame football or Villanova vs. St. Joe´s basketball times a thousand. And the city was crazy ALL night with everyone driving through the streets honking and screaming ¡Ecuadoooooor! or "Si se pudo" (The chant during the game is "Si se puede" - sort of "Yes, you can" - and "Si se pudo" is "Yes, you could"). It was an absolutely awesome afternoon.