girly time-Ecuador style!!

On Saturday; Amy fancied going "out". We had to be out and about!!!  We wandered into town and stopped off at a jewellery  stall. Now when I say stall what I mean is-a man with jewellery pinned on an umbrella! And yes this is normal-our umbrella jewellers are everywhere in Santo! Amy and I bought ourselves a silver ring each which the man kindly inscribed for us. The inscription is...unique. Looks like it was done by a weak and drunken ant but as I keep telling myself, it all adds rustic charm! After we paid the princely sum of $3 each (so maybe not actual silver then!) we moved on. Our planned activity for the day was to get a manicure done. Everyone gets them done here (including some men) so we decided to go native and get pretty!

   The first parlour we went to had a new door being built so we had to stop the workers from working to get in. They were very nice though and all stopped working and ushered us in-very grand entrance. This was made even more embarassing by the fact that EVERYONE in the shop all stopped talking and avidly stared at us. Of course the nail bit was at the back so we had to walk past everyone before we could slide into a chair and try to pretend we weren't there. 2 minutes later we realised there was quite a queue and we didn't want to wait but..we didn't want to do the WALK back through the shop either. Another minute while we decided whether to shame ourselves or be cowardly and wait. We finally made the brave decision and left (kindly ushered out by the builders.) We finally ended up in a tiny shop and were "done" by a very sweet girl. I could have done without the friendly Columbian who spent the entire time telling me tourist attractions but in such a strong accent  Amy and I didn't understand a word (polite smile and a well timed "ah yes" sufficed) but..it was very nice.

Amy getting her first ever manicure!

pedicure for me

  We decided to end our very girly day by doing some baking. Spent 10 minutes debating over which bag of raisins was the cheapest and then did some mental currency converting and realised we were fussing over 5p. 

Error 1-Our proposed kitchen was banned because of toxic fumigation fumes (you just can't make up this kind of stuff!) so we cooked in the school kitchen.

Error 2 was using an oven which apparently didn't reach the temp  the recipe demanded. 

Error 3-MAY have been the total lack of baking tray so us trying to improvise with a GIANT cast iron bowl instead!

  In our defence though, I have to say the cookies weren't bad at all and got all eaten up immediately by my family so yay for us.