First off, YEA!!! I am officially done with my Spanish intensive classes at ACLAS! I think they finished up pretty well. My oral presentation on the responsibility of news stations to the public to broadcast accurate and clear news went well and I felt fairly decent about the written final exam. Did you know there are about 5 different types of subjunctive structures in Spanish??? Do you even know what subjunctive structure is in English…? 
Anyway… that finished up well and although my brain still can’t function fast enough to use all these tenses correctly in speech, I do feel a lot more knowledgeable about the Spanish language and a lot more comfortable in general speaking it. My real only fear now is that because we don’t have the classes at ACLAS anymore I am going to just plateau here with my abilities, but for that reason I’ve decided that I’m going to try to spend more time with the people who are interested in speaking Spanish continually these next 4 months. My friend Hilary and I are pretty good about it and try to speak to each other in Spanish as much as possible, and Pete and I speak in Spanish when we go running which for some reason I am convinced is more of a workout than running and speaking in English.
I looked up the syllabus and course description on my classes at USFQ as well and I’m actually pretty excited. There was no description for my Spanish Conversation class but I hope that that will be very helpful in continuing my Spanish learning… and I’ll probably meet more foreigners from all over because I doubt too many Ecuadorian students take that class 
I am also actually really excited about my art class. We do get to do figure drawing at the end of the class. And we do have a text, but it’s online and in English. I’m not taking basketball anymore because I didn’t want one class on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays and it looked like I was going to be the only one in the class. Hopefully I can just go into the gym when it’s free and shoot around. I am taking volleyball though still and I’m excited. It’s real volleyball and it sounds like the purpose is actually to learn the skills and play and not just to be a joke. We have our orientation on Monday for the whole school and then start classes on Thursday, WEE!!!
Anyway, as for this weekend… after our classes on Friday we took our group trip to Otavalo which is known for it’s indigenous arts fair. We arrived in the evening and checked into our hotel, ate, and then walked around the town a little bit but not much of anything else. The next morning a few of us got up early (5:45) to go see the people setting up for the market, then came back for breakfast then went back out to start the buying. It was pretty incredible actually. It was quite a hopping farmers market. Bartering is a huge part of the culture and it’s not rude in the least, it’s actually expected and part of the “game”. I hate doing it, but it really wasn’t too bad because it mostly consisted of you making an offer, them either accepting it of lowering their price a little, you sticking to your price and them either agreeing or sticking to theirs. Then if you start to walk away many times they will call you back and say ok. It’s quite comical actually- for me. These people really aren’t too proud to do any of it and it’s all just part of their business. So I didn’t have to work too hard and I got a pretty good collection of Christmas presents (and a few things for myself) for about $60. I was impressed with myself; although I might have to make another trip back later (it’s only a couple hours by bus). It was really incredible to see all the different work that was done… There was of course lots of alpaca wool blankets and ponchos and such (I got a really pretty yellow little blanket), lots of very pretty embroidered table cloth like pieces, and an endless supply of beautiful scarves of all sorts of different colors. I found so many that I liked but I ran out of people and places to by them for. They were impressive though and found myself wanting to buy all of them. Basically, this market was set up for people like my Mom, aunts Joanne and Kathleen, and my Grandmother. Grandma Pat would have been in heaven. I tried to take some pictures although they don’t do it all justice in the least. I also quite enjoyed all the elaborate wooden pips. 
It was a pretty fun experience.
At noon we took of and ate at Cuicocha (the lake when I had visited with my old host brother and his girlfriend). And then went to a town nearby that is known for all its leather products. A couple girls bought some pretty nice leather jackets for about $60 so… we’ll see how the rest of this trip progresses and I might have to make a trip back there too We stopped by the place I went before to get more biscochos before coming back to Quito. We finally got back about 7:30 but we were all sufficiently exhausted so it was no problem calling it an early night. My host family went to the beach this weekend so it was only my host brother and I last night and today, but it was good to have a relaxing time to do nothing.
This morning I slept into to the ridiculously late hour of 9:45 because this was the first day since I have been in Ecuador (including weekends) that I have not had to wake up early for something. Pretty crazy when you think about it. I went on a nice run today, took a shower and now am just relaxing before I have to get up SUPER early tomorrow to go to orientation at 8 am tomorrow morning. Bleh.
But overall, many purchases and less than $100 later I feel like this was a pretty productive weekend.
