We began on Saturday the 6^th of May, flying from Pittsburgh to Quito. Once we arrived, we settled into Hotel San Francisco, which had a stunning lobby full of plants and nice furniture. The roof of the hotel provided a view of the city and the Virgin of the Panecillo. Everyone ended up going to dinner together, arriving at the perfect restaurant which had a massive table that fit all 16 of us. There, me and Danya branched out and ate guinea pigs (they tasted like chicken).

              Sunday, May 7^th: The next day we started with a great breakfast at the hotel.  You would start with fruit and coffee and then be brought bread and eggs. The fruit for this day was papaya, a first for me. I also tried juice from el tomota de arbol as well as pina juice. After breakfast we went for a tour of the church of San Francisco where the walls were covered in elaborate murals, paintings, and gold. The passion and dedication of the people during their morning mass was noticeably stronger than that of my experiences in American churches. We also got a tour of historical catholic art. Then we spent some time in the streets interacting with vendors. Everyone got a churro (shoutout Skip), I got incredibly fresh watermelon, and we bartered with a guy selling fake ray bans. After the vendors we got a lunch and then moved on to a chocolate tasting. There we tried all sorts of chocolate and I bought some with chili and one with cocoa bits to take home. Then we had free time in the city which we spent exploring. We taxied to the Panecillo, a huge statue overlooking the city with good views, ice cream, and a super chill llama. After, a taxi to La Basilica a big church with more views over the city and a very friendly hustler taking pictures for “donations.” After dinner we ended the night playing cards on the hotel roof overlooking the city.

Monday, May 8^th: A similar breakfast to the last day and then a bus ride to a rose farm. At the farm we got a great tour, seeing all the varieties of roses and getting to understand the process of selecting, nurturing, and packing the roses. On the farm our host had a Volkswagen Microbus, one of my favorite cars ever. Kindly, they offered to take us for a ride, and we got to ride around the farm in it. Afterwards, we borrowed a soccer ball and played for a few minutes before the rest of the group caught up. During the visit we got to see all the stray animals and pets that lived on the farm, dogs, cats, and llamas. At the end they had prepared a spread of food for us with fruits like achotillo, guava, canay asol, golden berry, and guava (some of those could be spelled wrong). There was also a great kind of cheese and a bread to go with it as well as some empanadas and an extremely refreshing lemonade. To top it of they gave us roses with the university logo and some great t-shirts. Then we took a ride to a farm that had old Incan walls, over 600 years old. There they ran a hotel sort of business where guests could live in the old-style homes. It was interesting to see the difference between Incan and Spanish architecture, the Spaniards often failing to replicate the exactness of the Incans. At the end they released the llamas and we got to feed them. Our third spot was a chocolate factory where we got to see their process which uniquely included wood roasted cacao. We also tried a variety of chocolates as well as freeze dried cacao fruit. The host explained his new experiment which was a chocolate that used this freeze-dried cacao instead of sugar to create a sweeter but completely sugar free chocolate. After a long and tiring but view filled bus ride home, we had dinner and sat down to write this blog.