Vamos al Parque!

Because there was no school on Wednesday, some of us decided to explore Parque La Carolina, a biiiig park in Quito. I brought the frisbee I had just bought before vacation and headed out with Zack and Pierce. On the Ecovia we ran into our friend Bryan who came along after grabbing a bite to eat. While we were walking to find a good place to throw the frisbee around this black dog came up behind Pierce and nuzzled his leg, and then he did the same to me (Not Pierce, the dog). While we were frisbeeing the dog was just chillin' out under a tree, he had obviously become our friend.

As we started to walk away he followed us, so Pierce came up with a name for him: CumbiLumbiQuito (combining the 3 places me, him, and Zack live). We got to a little playground area with a bunch of old construction equipment (bulldozers, steamrollers, etc.) turned into playground equipment. Dangerous? Not in Ecuador! There was also a large tree trunk that was about 8 feet tall, and the guys stood on top of it while we tried to play some elevated frisbee.

Then, we came upon an area where there was an entire airplane turned into a playground, but there was a fence around it, and apparently kids got in through this little hole in the fence, which we didn't really feel like attempting to fit through.

We walked past a ton of soccer fields and basketball courts, and came upon the botanic garden, which cost $3.50 to enter, so we decided to come back and do that another day. Right after the garden there were boats! We all agreed that a row boat would be cooler than a paddle boat, and then found out that it was cheaper, so we (mostly them) rowed around the figure 8 river/lake type thing for half an hour or so, debating whether to crash into the boats with ecuadorian couples making out in them. Ughhh, SO much PDA here.

After that we wandered a little more and found a skate park (Mom! I guess you should probably let Kev bring his board... plus the park is fairly close to your hotel) and a dirt bike track, which would probably be sweet to see some races on.

After leaving the park, we went to a HUGE mall that we didn't know about before, and explored the grocery store, toy store, book store, and candy store :) Good "Professional Development Day" for me! Don't know if I can say the same for our professors stuck in school... muhahahah.