Día de Los Parques

Dear Chris Kwon,

I met some friends at school at 10:30 and we walked over to the stadium to buy some soccer tickets. There was a rumor that there was a Barcelona (the Guayaquil team, not the Spain team) game tomorrow. The ticket booths were closed, so we decided to come back later. We were headed to Parque Metropoliano, which is the biggest park in Quito. According to the map, it is just up the hill from school.

We walked up the hill, which proved to be extremely difficult. We were all sweating and panting the whole way. We found the park, but could not find an entrance, so we walked parallel to the park. Unfortunately, parallel involved walking back down hill, then ba

ck up hill. We finally found what we thought was an entrance. We walked up the unmarked road and made it to a soccer field. We watched a soccer game for a few minutes, but felt disgusted by the a) lack of talent and b) whistling boys trying to get our attention. We walked up the street and found ourselves in a pueblo. We seriously doubted if we were in the park.

My friend had told me that the park had amazing juice stands

everywhere. We stumbled upon a convenience store in the pueblo (pretty much every border house had a store attached) that sold fresh juice. A woman juiced a carrot and blended it with a freshly cut orange. It was delicious and the vitamin C perked me up. We asked the woman what

the name of the pueblo is. She told us Miraflores. I asked if we were in the park and she said yes. A pueblo in a park? That would be like there being a whole town in Discovery Park. Oh Ecuador.

We had heard that there were good hiking trails, so we set off to find them. We stayed on the

road for a while, then veered off into the woods, making sure to remember where we came from. (I apologize for all of my sentences ending in prepositions; I have no choice). We kept going down narrower and narrower paths, until we reached a viewpoint. We could see the town that is on the other side of the park. I'm still not sure what it's called, but it's not Quito.

We met some U.S students at this viewpoint and they told us of more viewpoints and trails. We headed towards them and found many other viewpoints. We walked through a ton of mini parks with big toys and food shelters. The park reminded me a lot

of Point Defiance, except it wasn't as straight forward. You could easily stray from the beaten path. We finally found the road and walked along it for a while. There was a pasture with a bunch of llamas in it and I was obsessed. There was a shepherd tending the llamas. I asked him if I could take a picture with them. He said yes, but the llamas were not cooperative. Most of the pictures are of me chasing the llamas.

Further down the road, we ran into a lot of civilization. There was a shelter with art in it, a bunch of women watching/playing basketball (we decided it was women's day), and a Nestle-sponsored kid's zone. We rode on a zipline with some kids. We finally found an exit of the park. This exit spit us right out to the stadium. We bought tickets for some game tomorrow. It cost $8. After reading the ticket, we realized there were two games tomorrow- one at 10 and one at 12:15. Since our ticket counts for both games, we have decided to make a day of it.

We walked over to Mr. Bagel and ate lunch. I love bagels and I'm super stoked I get to eat them here. Afterwards, we went to an ice cream shop and ate some ice cream, which was more ice

than cream. Different, but good. We wanted to go to the Botanical Garden in Parque Carolina (a park very close to our school), so we headed over there. We didn't know where the Botanical Garden was, so we ended up walking around half the park. I LOVE this park. I run here. Every time I go to the park, I discover something new. We found a miniature riverwere you can rent paddle boats. The park is THE place to be on Saturdays.

There are a ton of playgrounds in Carolina too. One in particular is pictured at the right. It's an old plane that has been converted into a playground. There's a fence around it and I've never seen anyone in it. I thought I wanted to take the bus home, because I was sore, but I ended up walking all the way home. I got in around 4:30. 6.5 hours of straight walking! Some people were going to a movie and I had agreed to go, so at 5:45, I dragged myself to the theater, only taking the bus half of the way.

Before dinner, we ate at Shwarma, which is a local favorite of the UW students in Quito. It's a Persian restaurant. I had the falafel tonight and it PALED in comparison to any other falafel I've had, but it was only $2.50. We saw the movie Coco Before Chanel. It's a french film. We watched it in french with spanish subtitles. At first, I was pretty concerned, but it was a straight forward film and I understood most of it. The main character in the movie was the woman who played Amelie. We had talked about this earlier in the day and I ended up buying a bootlegged copy of Amelie for $2. We are planning on making a girl's night at school sometime this week and watching the move. I recommend it!

In conclusion, my day was filled with sweat, sunburn, and subtitles. I have one more episode of Seinfeld to watch. I'm pretty sure I will finish it in the next hour. I'll let you know how wonderful it is to have accomplished watching an entire series in 6 months. Later days!