Weather: Sunny, felt like 90

Today I didn't have class since my professor was in Santa Cruz for a conference. My friend Adrian and I met up but we went to get breakfast since she was starving. Her host family has just been giving her bread the past week. We ended up talking to the director here for advice, I think she is just gonna talk with her host family about it, and let them know she wants more than bread. After she ate breakfast, we went to campus to start working on a project that's due Friday. For breakfast Paco put together fruit, yogurt, and granola with a scrambled egg on the side. It was very fulfilling. Adrian ended up giving me her bread so in total it was the most fulfilling breakfast I've had since being here.

For lunch I had a veggie empanada but it will be my last one for awhile because I think the fried food doesn't agree with me much. My stomach is still a bit weird, today I mainly just had some pains (which I think are from my lunch). I think I'll start to feel a bit better in the next few days. It's just an adjustment period for my body, getting used to the heat has also been an adjustment. I've had a little bit of heat rash on my leg, nothing bad but it's there.

Tania asked me this morning if I wanted to go to the highlands with them at 1pm, I said yes so when 12:30pm rolled around I headed back home. Paco went to pick up Tania from the airport and when they returned we all headed out. We didn't take a taxi like I thought we would. Instead we took an ancient Hyndai Matrix, and when I say ancient I mean ancient. I didn't think we were going to even make it to the highlands. The car sits 5 people however, it was me, Paco, Tania, Anahi, Mateo, Helena, Chino (Tania's cousin), and his daughter Victoria all crammed into this car. Mateo sat in the trunk and Victoria and Helena sat on laps. I was alarmed for sure, but this is their culture and the normal thing to do. It truly is remarkable the parenting differences between the United States and here. In Quito, parents brought their newborns onto the public bus. Here, Tania gave Helena a spanking and she behaved afterwards. Spankings are no longer acceptable in the US however, they get a message across and Ecuadorians are very straight forward people so it didn't surprise me at all. Today's car ride was just another example of the differences, granted it is totally not safe. It's crazy to me there hasn't been a law put in place requiring seatbelts to be worn.

When we got to the highlands, we did the exact same thing I did on Saturday. Nothing different. However, when we went to El Junco again we actually walked around the lagoon in it's entirety, and I got to see a lot of cool views of San Cristobal coastline. It was absolutely beautiful. We walked around the tortoise refuge and then headed to Puerto Chino. There were birds (I think they were a type of boobie but they didn't have blue feet) diving for fish right in front of us and there were a couple of sea lions lounging around. It was a good time and I got to bond with my host family more. Around 6pm we all loaded up the car once again and headed back to Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. My dinner was fried bananas, a couple slices of cheese, and an omelet that contained broccoli...nada mas. Today was a great day and I am adjusting really well here. It's a magical place and I found out that for one of my classes we spend 3 days in Santa Cruz so I'm really looking forward to that. I'm antsy to see as much of the islands as possible. I don't know our island hopping itinerary yet for Spring break, but I hope we get it soon so I can island hop to an island that's not on the schedule at the end of February.