Surprises

So this week was chock full of unexpected occurrences.
On Monday, I received my student visa in the mail even though FedEx was supposedly going to send it back to the US, many thanks goes to Karen DeYoung for that.
On Wednesday, tons of packages arrived for people, and I was pleasantly surprised to be one of those people, receiving a box full of cookies! Many thanks goes to Laurie Foster for that (P.S. I particularly enjoyed the Laura bars; snack bars are more expensive here than in the US).

Got done with a lot of work this week, so this weekend is pretty chill. It actually turns out that there won't be much traveling this weekend, that should be next weekend. I actually did go to visit the site of my public health internship yesterday, the Alternative Andean Hospital in Riobamba, 3.75 hours south of Quito. I don't know exactly what I'll be doing just yet, but it sounds like I might be going to nearby schools and institutions to teach people about nutrition and physical activity (I imagine it will feel very familiar). In the meantime, I might also be living in a small town in the countryside, which would be a super new experience. I wish I could have taken pictures but I travelled alone for the first time, and I wanted to play it safe. Unfortunately, my hatred of waiting for buses got the best of me on the return trip, and I actually walked home in the dark from the bus station (took about 10 minutes). I basically tried to look as thug, angry, and crazy as possible, which was easy because I was basically cursing myself the whole way home for doing something so completely stupid. Nothing happened but I'm just chalking that up to luck-never doing that again.

Anyway, I'm gonna upload some overdue photos and videos.