Only in Ecuador...

...would the power go out in the ENTIRE COUNTRY.

Yes my friends, from about 4:30pm-1am there was NO ELECTRICITY (minus places with generators---read: not my apartment complex). It actually got to be hilarious because of how absurd a situation it was. Apparently they're way smart and have all the electricity based on the same connections. My host mom thinks it might have been deliberate by the electrical company to get Correa to do something, but there are also tentative reports that there were some issues on the coast. Who knows.

I left work at about 4:45 as usual, and we were going really slowly for a while and although there's normally a lot of traffic it's usually not THAT bad. so we literally are in the middle of a major intersection, 3-4 lanes coming from every direction, and I realized that we'd maybe moved three feet in about 10 minutes.

Looking around, I saw the biggest jumble of cars I've ever seen in my life. I mean, when there are bad traffic backups in the States it's usually at least orderly, with lines of cars coming and going in every direction (or rather, stopped in every direction). In this case, however, literally NO ONE could move because EVERYONE was jammed in every which way. I literally started to laugh out loud because it was so ridiculous and I got some dirty looks. So literally in the middle of this intersection-turned-awfully-organized parking lot I got off the bus because my friend Katie lives right by there and we went and got coffee and finally realized what was going on.

I got home at about 7:30, after a ton of time chilling on buses that weren't moving...and we lit candles in the apartment and ate and hung out until about 9:30 when I went to bed because it was hurting my eyes trying to read with so little light and what else was I supposed to do?

I love Ecuador. And I love all of you!

Un abrazo,
Emily