Otavala!

Yesterday was quite an exciting day! We all woke up early and headed over to the IES center to travel to Otavala, an indigenous market (although it's fake indigenous and more of a tourist attraction lol). The market was a lot of fun and I had a blast bargaining! Definitely got some amazing deals. It is going to be rough coming back to America and paying $15 for a scarf when I can get it $3 here. This is the perfect place to buy Christmas presents! Many of the goods are handmade, and some are very interesting (flask out of a bull horn, swords, crafted knifes, chairs). Pictures:

Oh heyy fake shrunken skulls, you sure are freaky deaky looking. 

After a few hours in the wonderful market, we headed over to an underwater volcano! The area was gorgeous. The hills/mountains around the crater/lake created a beautiful landscape. A few pictures later, we hopped on a boat and rode over the volcano!

Story about the last picture: Our tour guide was telling us to observe the gas in the water. I immediately started taking pictures of that greenish substance in the water, thinking it was the gas coming from the volcano. WRONG. It's algae. The gas he was talking about was tiny bubbles emerging from underneath. No offense to the volcano, but the cute ducks and baby ducks surrounding the boat were more exciting than the bubbles lol.

As we trekked back to Quito (Otavalo was a good 2 hour drive) we stopped by a beautiful waterfall! It was really pretty and I enjoyed walking around. My friend Erinn and I climbed up some rocks to get a view from up high which was neat. We all also crawled through a cave! I really enjoyed that part until I stood up too quickly, hit my head, and lost quite a few brain cells. It happens. Prettiness:

Super awesomeness. Well I have to go to bed extremely early tonight because although I don't have class until 4:00 p.m., I have to wake up around 6:00 a.m. to prepare for my meeting with the Department of Justice & Equality. This is my first REAL WEEK of classes, so nothing exciting will be going on until the weekend. Hopefully we plan a trip of some sort.

¡Chau!