There's Always a Window

When God closes a door, he opens a window, right? Well, my job lately has consisted of finding the windows, lots of them. Although that might sound discouraging, and has been at times, it's also been so eye-opening to see and do things that I wouldn't normally think of trying. You also may be wondering why I've had to find windows? Aren't all the doors open to try new things on exchange? Well, yes, normally, but I am still having a bit of problems with my knees being swollen, so I've been coming up with alternatives for dance lessons or randomly walking all around.

My proud creation!

One of the first things I've been doing, I already mentioned in my other blog post; cooking! Well, last week I decided to make one of my family's favorite dishes in the US; Thai chicken stir fry. At first, it looked like it was going to be completely different because I couldn't find anything for the sauce. But as it unfolded, my host brother and his wife helped me with the ingredients I needed. It was a bit of a process that took lots of time and help, but it turned out much better than I expected, and a healthy meal at that!

Riding on the mountain... before the rain

Our organization has activities at the end of every month, and this month we went up a mountain in a cable car. It was pretty amazing, and I found another window; I can ride horses! We rode for an hour, as the sky opened up and let us have it, rain, wind, hail. You name it, and we were riding in it on the top of a mountain. On top of all of that, I had the prettiest horse, and the spunkiest. He would take off running, bite the other horses, or just stop in his tracks and start eating. After the hour was done, we were all soaking wet, just about frozen to the bone, not to mention sore from using every muscle we didn't know existed, plus we had to hike to the cable car to go down. But there was a little grass hut with a fire and they had hot chocolate for sale, so of course we stopped to warm up, chat, and wait out the weather. That might not sound like a very good day to the average person, but I already know it will be one of my favorite memories, because it was one of my best days yet.

Sorry I haven't been able to keep the blog updated exactly every week, but I've been a bit busy. Hopefully I'll get back in the groove of writing every week, but until then, my random stories will have to do. Thank you for reading and don't forget to follow in the upper right hand corner! As they say here in Ecuador, Chow!