Sick

Sorry for the lapse in posting...I was doing so well there for a while. I actually have come down with a bit of a traveler´s bug and haven´t been feeling too hot since Monday. Thankfully when I first started feeling sick we were still in Loja, Ecuador at Ryan´s friend´s house. Rodrigo´s wife, Vanessa, took great care of me and made me homeade chicken soup (I definitely need to learn how to make some because it made all the difference) and some tea called horchata (no, not the rice water from Mexico) made of herbs and flowers. Almost all of Vanessa´s family lives on the same street and she happens to have an aunt that is a doctor. She was nice enough to come over and check me out and give me medicine. She called all day to check on me...gotta love the Ecuadorian hospitality. I´m still not feeling too great, but will hopefully be better in a day or so.
I´ll post more from our time in Ecuador later. It's definitely my favorite country thus far. . this is probsabbly due to the wonderful people there. Our last night in Loja we went to orchestra rehearsal. Music is huge in Loja and the biggest university there is dedicated solely to the arts. Vanessa´s dad is the founder and conductor of the town's orchestra. Vanessa and Rodrigo both play in the orchestra (it´s actually how they met) and Vanessa´s brother also plays with them. Vanessa´s dad introduced Ryan and me as economists from the United States (titles like this are big there) and bode us the warmest wishes that Loja had given us a warm welcome and that we felt at home there. It was really touching. The orchestra was wonderful. After that we had to rush back to Rodrigo and Vanessa´s to eat dinner before our bus left. They sent us off with a lot of small gifts and I was truly sad to leave there.

Alright, that's all for now. Pictures to follow later...be excited because Ecuador was even more beautiful than Costa Rica.