The Weekend

Friday, following my morning classes we, as a group attended a merengue dance class-so much fun! We put our dance lessons to use later that evenng when we went to Fuzzion, a small live-music club...so much fun! We danced with Cuencanas and learned additional dance moves! I returned home and went to bed feeling great. I woke up suddenly an hour later feeling nauseous. To condense the remainder of this story, I spent the night sleeping or attempting to sleep on the bathroom floor until 7:00 AM. I took some Pepto and I was finally able to return to bed and slept until 10:00 AM. I felt fair for the remainder of the day. I assumed that my brief bout of illness was caused by drinking a beverage with ice in it. No Ecuadorian tap water is advised to be consumed.
Later that afternoon I went with my mama and papa to a birthday party hosted by a family friend. My mama's sister is also the host mother of a student in my group so it was even more enjoyable to spend that afternoon with a familiar face. Birthdays in Latin America are a big deal, regardless of age. I have never witnessed such a high concentration of drunken adults in my entire life, hahaha. All the men present at this gathering held an apparent appreciation for my eyes. As I left a line of 14 men was created to take photos of strictly my eyes...oh jeepers.
Katie and I (the girl whose host mother is my mama's sister) spent the remainder of that afternoon touring the city, window shopping, and cafe interneting. It was an early evening as we had to prepare for an early departure for Incapirca on Sunday. Incapirca is the site of an Incan ruin 2 hours north of Cuenca. Remaining from this ruin were structures to represent the sun, moon, the moon's cycle, seasons, and the summer and winter equinox (June 21 and December 21). It was so fascinating to stand on ground that was designated to honor universal elements such as the planets, sun, and moon and conceptions of time long before the influence of Galleleo and Colombus were introduced. Clearly these structures embodied much more advanced notions than that of European influence. Clearly these natives were much more precocious and mindful of the presence of something greater long before any other civilization. Incapirca spreads over about 3 acres of steep and rugged terrain so our day was spent hiking-a lot! Incapirca is really rural and 3,000 feet higher than that of Cuenca's altitude so sun exposure was especially strong. It was gorgeous, clear day and despite my application of sunscreen, my face and neck are quite red! The area of Incapirca is absolutely stunning, mountainous, green, rolling hills, and surrounded by a small river. We had a picnic lunch half way through our hike, finished the remainder and headed back to Cuenca. I had a little bit of homework last night and tried to go to bed early. I was so exhausted!
Today marked the beginning of a new week, with plenty to accomplish. My Spanish grammatics class is really challenging and really thought intensive, not that classes shouldn't be but this class especially leaves my brain hurting
This afternoon, we toured a museum in central Cuenca which holds ethographic artifacts of each indigenous tribe in Ecuador. It was really fascinating...among these artifacts included musical instruments, clothing, masks, and human heads found in aftermaths of warring tribes.
I am just about to head home for dinner at 7:30 and spend the remainder of my night doing homework.
I am still working hard to upload photos. I have made progress in that I have been able to download them onto my Kodak Easy Share program however, am having difficulty transferring them onto a file in "my pictures". If any of you have any advice regarding this matter-let me know! In the meantime, take care!