Excitement!!!

Hello one and all! It's been a very exciting, busy few weeks for me. In the interest of convincing myself to do another post, I decided it would be easier to do another picture entry, rather than try to walk you through every moment. Here we go:

On April 13th, my host sister Anita had a baby!  Above, Tio Holger,  Tia Maria Fernanda, Abuela Carla y Abuelo Holger are admiring the photo Byron,  baby Emilio's dad,  took on his phone 5 minutes after Emilio was born.

The classroom for Linguistics is usually locked when we get there,  so the class congregates on the bench outside the room. Today, we're all studying frantically for the quiz we're about to take. On the far left, Mauricio and Emily (from Ambato and Indiana, respectively) are comparing notes. 

I finished the quiz early, so I decided to distract the rest of the class by taking a photo of them so you guys could all see a classroom. When we're not taking quizes, the desks are usually in a horseshoe along the walls. 

For the two weeks leading up to Easter, there were a TON of free concerts in all the churches downtown. The main event took place in a plaza outside between three or four churches. Above are some of the audience for the concert on the steps of one of the major Quito churches. 

In addition to the normal orchestra, the music (written specifically for this performance) incorporated Andean flutes,  bells from the surrounding churches, and a full telling of the Easter story through dance. 

To finish off the performance, there was a firework show right above us (plenty of debris fell on my head). It was pretty fantastic. The video's not the best, but you can get a sense of all the different things going on. 

For those of you who didn't know, this past weekend I spent 5 days in the Galapagos Islands.  As you might expect, they were absolutely incredible. Basically every day we had a three hour boat ride between islands. I usually chose to sit up on the bow,  since it was a little less nauseating, I got a better view, and I got to feel like an explorer!  

Our very first boat ride, we passed a huge pod of dolphins! They were jumping everywhere and sitting on the bow, I saw them zooming just under the surface in front of the boat. After about 5 minutes of them following us, we all threw on our snorkeling gear and jumped in to swim with them! 

Iguanas and sea lions are pretty much everywhere.  Here on the island of Floreana, these two little guys were taking a nap together. Marine iguanas shoot salt out of their eyes every few minutes to desalinate, and I'm pretty sure this one hit the sea lion in the face a few times.   

The Galapagos are volcanic islands, so on Saturday morning we took a 5 hour hike up the main volcano on Isabela. It was pretty exhausting, but a lot of fun. Our guide reminded us several times that it was still active and could explode at any minute.   

 On the far left, we have Galapagos penguins (adorable, as penguins usually are). In the middle are some classic blue footed boobies (no comment). And on the right, a pelican (which is every bit as ridiculously looking as the penguins are cute). We saw all three species all over, and even swam with the penguins! 

On one of our many snorkeling trips, we went to an area that has these cool (if claustrophobic) channels that are about 15 feet deep. The visibility was pretty bad that day (which was especially scary, since we saw a few sharks before we got in)  but we had no trouble seeing the sea lions (picture above)  when they swam right underneath us and stared us down. 

And of course, the HUGE Galapagos Giant Tortoises.  Not the most graceful eaters, but neither are lots of people I like,  so I forgave them. There are 11 different species of tortoise on the islands, including Solitary George, who is the very last of his species. We saw various tortoises several times throughout the trip, some in the wild, and some (like the ones above) in a special tortoise nursery to help increase population sizes.

It's been an amazing few weeks. I'm definitely starting to transition back to USA mode, in some respects, but I have exactly a month left here, so I plan to make the most of it. Final exams, some Ecuadorian politics, and a few more trips are all part of the plan.  Hope you're all doing well!