walking in cuenca

Today I spent a lot of time walking around the Cuenca downtown. It's a UNESCO world heritage site full of pretty old buildings, much like Quito's Historic Old town (also a world heritage site). There are a ton of big, old churches. I also visited my host-grandma, who lives here. She was one of the ten relatives who all came and stayed at my house a few weeks ago. Out of all of them, she was the easist to understand, so I'm glad I was visiting her. We chatted for a while about my travels, her travels, her family, the economic situation in Ecuador, the government, taxes, other South American countries, and the US (she and her husband have lived there for about 15 years on and off). It's so satisfying to be able to hold an entire conversation about all manner of things in Spanish. I feel like I've learned so much and gotten lots of good practice while living here.
I also went to the airport this morning to try to by one of the nice $50 plane tickets back to Quito, but they were out so I'll be taking a not-so-nice 10 hour bus ride overnight. The guidebook says there are luxury buses for $2 more so I really hope that is the case. (Here, a luxury bus pretty much means slightly cleaner and slightly more comfortable seats.)

Here in Cuenca, they seem to launch a lot of fireworks. We have no idea why, but they had them during the day and night. We also saw a breakdancing show in the main plaza and didn't really do much else because it's Sunday and all the museums are closed, and as the afternoon continued EVERYTHING closed except for all the ice cream shops, pizzerias, and fast food restaurants. I wanted real food but we eventually found a Shawarma restaurant which was SO good. Shawarma is sort of a mix between Indian food and Middle Eastern food and I love it.

This time in two days I'll be home :)

Love Alex