Deep fried plantains are chévere

Ah Ecuador, land of mountains, jungles, beaches, and so much more.... not to mention amazingly chévere(awesome for you back in the home land) deep fried sweet bananas. i didnt realize how much i missed fried food until i took my first bite of said deliciousity. i miss a lot of things and a lot of people, but every morning on my way to school when i get to see cotopaxi, the amazing snow covered volcano, i remember why i am here and thank God so much for the opportunity. oh jim irwin, you are an interesting place for sure... with your air raid siren for a bell and random rooms fit into every place that a wall could be constructed. but besides your faults i must admit you are a pretty good place. especially considering your teachers great students with the national hand shake slash fist bump which the entire country of Ecuador seems to know. whereas i am learning chemistry entirely in spanish, i think i like it, and can actually understand what is going on. like kellie said, we do get stared at a lot... like all the time. i mean i do stand out considering i am the tall pasty white kid with blond hair, although i must say i am working on darkening up a bit... which is not hard to do here. but so far everything is going well and i have learned so much spanish already its amazing. school here is literaly 30 times harder than what i am used to, and i think  to myself constantly how in the world does anybody stand to work this hard every year for their entire school career. and then i realize that the reason math and science here are so important is because in order to make something of yourself you kinda need to be good in one of those areas, and let me tell you that even the lesser of people here are amazing in those areas. it makes me realize how priviledged i am to live in the US, and i wish everybody there understood how lucky they are to be able to learn so many different things in school and be able to do so much, rather than complain all the time. the people here dont complain very much and are extremely nice... a lesson i think we all need to learn. i mean even if you get cut off in traffic here, which happens every 30 seconds you are in a car, people dont get angry, they just keep on going. and i am still eating more than should ever be consumed by a person in one day... meal after meal after meal, and then fruit between meals, and bread between meals, and so many other things.... not that the food is bad, but man there sure is a lot of it... ah, i almost forgot... this past weekend we all went to mindo which is a  city in ecuador, where we did 12 ziplines through the jungle... im not going to lie when i say that it was amazing, because well it was pretty fantastic. althougbn i almost hit aa tree and the line that bounces does less than honorable things to men, i enjoyed the whole experience emensely... then afterword we went white water tubing in the rockiest coldest water i have ever been in, but it was pretty amazing too. i also seem to have fallen in love with this beverage that appears to be a mix between rice pudding and egg nog... idk but its pretty tasty. well, thats all for now, but please keep reading. until next time, goodbye and farewell.... oh, and if you are ever in ecuador, get on the bus quickly, because if you dont, you might be in trouble... the bus waits for no one