This past long weekend I visited my friends in New York City, and we spent the weekend alternating between exploring (read: shopping) the city and hiding out in her apartment from the cold. As expected of being in NYC, I spent quite a bit of money. After all, is there anything else to do there?

Friday, February 12:

$22.50 Bus to New York City (purchased in January)
It was a long ride and the girl that sat next to me was Korean and had very long bleached hair. It was brassy. Brassy blonde is a pretty gross color, in my opinion. Also, it looked really unhealthy, as to be expected when you try to bleach black hair to blonde.

I took the BoltBus, which let me off on 1st Ave. "Basically on the moon", as Alyssa, my lovely friend who came to pick me up, said.

$20 MTA ticket refill
This money was spent much more quickly than I expected. The MTA is very expensive.

$30 Dinner at Schiller's Liquor Bar

Amazing burger with amazing fries and a very bizarre pickle

Schiller's was recommended by Caitlin's Spotify coworkers, who I'm guessing are quite young and hipster because Schiller's was quite a lively hipster place. They said we wouldn't have to wait for a table.

We waited for an hour, so, apparently the Spotify workers are liars. Thanks, Spotify.

I ended up ordering the cheeseburger (medium rare, cheddar) with fries. It was very good and juicy, and the mustard was not Heinz mustard even though it was deceptively held in one of those cheap mustard squeeze bottles. It was spicy and very tasty and probably homemade, gauging the hipsterness of the bar.

The pickle, however, was not a pickle. Do not eat the pickle. It was bizarre.

We also got a sticky toffee pudding to share, which was very amazing, and thank you Foursquare people for recommending it. If I hadn't been so full from the burger and fries I probably would've ordered a second one for myself because it was that good.

Saturday, February 13:

$15.13 Brunch at The Grey Dog in Union Square

French Toast at The Grey Dog

We're silly.

Caitlin and I had very early brunch at 9:30am on Saturday (Alyssa stayed in bed like every other normal person on a Saturday morning). The Grey Dog is also very hipster and adorable. I got French Toast (it was huge and amazing) and a warm cider.

Caitlin opened up her care package and she got very excited about the owl washi tape I brought her. It's very cute.

$3 (probably) for Hot Chocolate with Marshmallows at Vineapple Cafe

Hot chocolate with giant marshmallows!

Alyssa had squash with one of her friends so I chilled in a coffeeshop on Pineapple Street. Brooklyn is weird. There's a Pineapple Street and Orange Street and Cranberry Street.

The marshmallows were huge except they got stuck to the cup and I had a hard time getting them out. I eventually asked for a spoon.

I didn't spend any more money on Saturday because Alyssa made me dinner. She made risotto and homemade bread and I ate my face off and then couldn't move for the rest of the day. My tummy was still hurting when we went to bed at midnight.

Alyssa's homemade bread is the best thing.

Sunday, February 14:

$6.52 at Paper Presentation
Caitlin told me about this paper store which Alyssa then told me her friend is in love with. I was very adamant about going and then I had a hard time convincing myself to not buy out the store. It's very probably my new favorite place in New York.

I love paper.

I ended up buying a set of magnet bookmarks so that I would stop using paper clips, because warping the pages on my notebooks with paper clips is annoying to me. Plus, the magnets are very cute.

We went to Sephora where Alyssa used her gift cards and I vicariously lived through her makeup shopping.

We also went to MUJI where I convinced myself to not buy more pens because I need to use up the ones I already have, and then we went to Nordstrom Rack, Burlington Coat Factory, Forever 21 (where Alyssa scored two sweaters for less than 8 dollars - she's very proud) and DSW in search for a hat for my sad little cold ears. We didn't find anything and my ears continued to be sad and cold.

$5.80 at Whole Foods
Alyssa and I got hungry at some point so we decided to pop into the Whole Foods cafe to grab a snack - I got a chocolate croissant and a chai latte. When I asked how much switching to soy would be, the guy gave me a weird look and was like, it's free. The duh was implied.

Soy is never free anywhere else. I was very excited about my free soy upgrade. Usually I just get the milk because I'm too cheap to pay for the upgrade and deal with the tummy pains later.

We watched a couple get into a very loud argument, which was fairly entertaining and also probably very awkward for them because they were being very loud and it was Valentine's Day.

$14.95 at The Strand
The Strand is one of my favorite places in New York. There's nothing better than books on books on books - literally.

I finally found a hat at the Strand. It's grey and has a giant pom pom on the top and I feel like a total nerd when I wear it because it says Strand Books on it. I love it.

I also found a bunch of books which I photographed in order to find on Amazon Kindle later, because I didn't want to bring a bunch of books back to Boston with me. Also, because I already have too many books and moving out will be a pain. I've decided I want to try reading more instead of wasting all of my time on Youtube (not that there's anything wrong with that).

$11.25 at Bravo Pizza


A New York trip is never complete without pizza. I had a pepperoni and sausage slice, a tomato and broccoli slice, and a peach tea.

I love pizza. I love peach tea. What more could a girl want.

$15.60 at Regal Cinemas for SkullPoopL
Alyssa and I finished off our Valentine's day with Deadpool at Regal Cinemas. I thought the movie was very well done and hilarious - a lot of fourth-wall-breaking, a lot of crude humor, a lot of making fun of Marvel Studios and of MCU fans. It was great.

Although, we saw someone bring their 7-ish year old kid?? The movie is rated R. It is well deserving of its R rating. Someone is a very irresponsible parent. VERY irresponsible.

$10 MTA ticket refill
My MTA ticket ran out of money and it was sad. I consoled myself by making Alyssa take a selfie with me.

Subway selfie!

Monday, February 15:

I didn't spend any further money in the city itself on Monday. Alyssa bought me breakfast bagels and then I felt sick from too much cream cheese, and I visited The STUDIO which is a visual communications firm in Manhattan.

$30.50 Bus to Boston (purchased in January)
I took the 7pm Greyhound back to Boston and we got caught in the snow, so I didn't get in until 12:45. When the T had already shut down. Which means I had to take an uber home.

I was not pleased with having to take an uber home.

$29.80 Uber
The Uber was the same price as my bus ticket. I feel somewhat cheated out of my money. If the Greyhound had arrived on time I wouldn't have had to spend this money. Sadface.

All in all, despite the rather horrid trip back to Boston because the weather sucked, the New York trip was very fun and a good break from.. well, from not very much considering the semester has barely started.

What's your favorite place to visit in NYC?

I'm a tad behind on this drawing thing, but I'll catch up over the weekend. Hopefully. For now - this is part of the #DNDChallenge that I found on Instagram! I wanted to try doing something really detailed, but I feel like this is a bit busy. Next time I might try to break things up with thicker lines and more white space.

A photo posted by Cecile Lu (@cissyartcafe) on Feb 3, 2016 at 6:39pm PST

Hey guys. I have a confession to make - I'm secretly a hoarder.

Well, not to the extent that I've seen some people be, but I've always collected things. I collected pens and notebooks as a kid (who am I kidding, I still do) and for a while during my pre-teen years I collected empty Kleenex boxes and toilet paper rolls with the intent that I'd make something out of them. I did, with a few of them, but the rate of my collecting was far greater than the rate of my making, so we had a cupboard full of random junk that I was very stubborn about not throwing away.

My dad eventually threw them away.

Now that I'm in college and living in my own space, I'm astounded at how I manage to find nooks and crannies to hide all my things when I really don't have very much storage space. Things just collect over time; random junk that you keep convincing yourself is important or has too much sentimental value to throw away.

On the other end of my hoarding tendencies is my anxiety over messy spaces. I don't mind other people being messy, but I can't really handle messiness in my own living space (this comes from my dad. You know, the guy that threw out all of my Kleenex boxes because he's like this too?) and so once in a while I'll go through my stuff to clean up and reorganize.

I love reorganizing. Nothing brings me more joy - well, except food, and sleep, and Hera, and... - than to find designated spaces for each and every thing and to keep them there. I am the kind of person that gets annoyed when the can opener turns up in a drawer different from the one it's always lived in. I am the kind of person that likes to have all my pens categorized and my wires and cables sorted into little zip lock baggies. I am... well you get it. I like things to be neat.

This past weekend I took on the task of reorganizing all of the junk I have in my room. I haven't tackled my closet yet (I did a couple months ago, and will probably do so again sometime in the next few weeks) but I did get rid of a garbage bag full of stuff, and a bit more. I got rid of so many papers (because why will I ever need my tests from freshman year again?) and pens that no longer write that it felt so liberating. I reorganized my bookshelves so that everything is more compact and now my collection of wrapping stuff - like boxes, and tissue paper, and other random knick knack that people need for christmas wrapping - is no longer homeless and strewn on the floor but actually part of my bookcases, with its own little section.

The hardest part of all of it was convincing myself to throw away some models and some modeling materials. While throwing out pens and papers had been easy, I have formed an emotional attachment to all of my architecture studio models and their associated things. It's not hard to be attached like that - after all, I did spend many hours building all of these models and all of them have very specific memories attached to them - mostly of being really tired, but also of those professors and experiences. Many of these models I look at and see the hours I put into it, and it always seems like such a waste to just... throw it away.

I threw away three models. I threw away three models that were associated with my last studio, a studio that thinking about still gives me headaches and makes me feel like a panic attack is coming. I threw away the last portion of the model that I had spent over 48 hours nonstop sitting and gluing and folding and crying over, and taking it out of its place to throw it away hurt because I still remember all of the pain from that class but throwing it away also felt so good. It felt like I was liberating myself from the demons of that class and I know I'm being totally over-dramatic but that class, god, that class really, really was awful. The final project was a good one - one that I'm almost proud of, maybe - but the journey there had been so awful. I suppose part of me will eventually be grateful because I learned to be stronger from it, but I don't think I've had enough time pass to look back and not have feelings of resentment rise up within me.

And after it was all gone - the trash taken out, permanently outside of my home - my room felt so nice and clean and good to be in - not that it hadn't been nice and clean and good to be in before, but it's better now - and I can look at that section in my bookcase that once housed three models which reminded me of a horrible experience and smile because it now houses wrapping paper, and paints, and canvases, and happy things still waiting for me to work on.

Plus, it's nice to know that I won't have as much to throw out when I eventually move out of this apartment.

Are you guys also hoarders / collectors of random things? Do you ever go through times of just wanting to clean stuff and throw stuff out? Let me know!

I've started trying to doodle and draw more often (mostly because I've realized that I don't draw anymore and that's sad), and I figured I'd start posting one every week.

A photo posted by Cecile Lu (@cissyartcafe) on Feb 3, 2016 at 9:07am PST

I know that the Paris attacks have been over for a while now, but we talked about them and the refugee crisis in my French class on Tuesday. Talking about it reminded me of the video where a reporter asked a little boy if he was scared, and when he said yes his dad made him feel feel better by telling him that the flowers would protect them. That memory inspired this doodle.

Every January of a new year, I like to reflect on the past year. Especially now that I'm going into my last semester at MIT - yes guys, I'm graduating in June and I am all sorts of excited! - it seems like a very appropriate time to be reflecting on not just the last year but also my time here at MIT.

Is there anything I would've done differently?

1. Would I still have come to MIT?

Sometimes I feel really resentful of being at MIT, which I then follow up with feeling really ashamed for it - how many people dream about coming here? There have been multiple times where I have thought back to my senior year of high school and which colleges I could have gone to - I could've gone to McGill, probably still have had a good time without being as ridiculously stressed all the time and possibly had better job prospects just because the application pool in Canada is quite a bit smaller.

But would I have come out with as many stories and would I have been as strong and resilient as I am now? Probably not.

Was it worth it?

I don't know.

I tell myself the friends and the connections that I have now are certainly worth it, but frankly I don't quite know. I have endured the lowest moments of my life so far here, and it really sucked. On the other side of things, would I appreciate the sanity that my friends offered me as much had I not endured those moments?

2. Would I still have studied Architecture?

For the first three years at MIT, I never questioned my choice to study architecture. MIT has a wonderful architecture program. The majority of our professors really do care, our studios are interesting, we're required to take classes outside of architecture design in order to have a more well rounded education. I have learned so much about iterative design and about problem solving and I have exercised my spatial reasoning ability to the max. I have been praised for my work fairly consistently and been asked to be part of the archives every studio semester, without fail. I have a ridiculous work ethic - my professor for my last studio said that often I would make life harder for myself in order to create more beautiful work - and I am efficient and organized enough to do more complex work and be part of more clubs than many of my peers and still sleep.

And yet, this past semester, I began to question that choice.

Architecture at MIT doesn't seem very employable. Just go check out the career fair - every company is looking for course 2s (Mechanical Engineers) or course 6s (EECS). It's disheartening, although the types of companies that come to the career fair aren't necessarily the same as the ones I want to work for. At least, that's what I told myself, time and time again, until this year when I actually began to look for a job so that I could, well, be employed after graduation. Since I'm looking primarily in non-Architecture fields such as UI/UX design and product design, it feels like maybe I should've studied something different. When I first came to MIT, I truly believed that Architecture was the only major that fit my abilities and the only one I could've succeeded in, but now I have no doubt that I could've done well in other disciplines as well.

I suppose if anything, Architecture really helped hone my self-confidence.

I think if I could do it again, I might try to double major - I formed bonds with so many people and learned so much in Architecture that I can't imagine giving that up, but there's still so much that I'm curious about in other disciplines that I just didn't really have the time - or make the time - for.

I'm trying to do that now, since I'm done with studios, but I'm running out of time.

3. Would I have handled my social life differently?

To be completely honest, I don't really have much of a social life. I don't like to go out and I don't like to party because I prefer the comfort and the quietude of my room. Pretty much the extent of my socializing with my friends - who I love, by the way - includes eating things, making things to eat (and then eating those things), and watching something on Hulu or Netflix. Despite my reluctance to go out and party with them, I think they still love me and appreciate me - and certainly I would not have survived MIT without them. (Thanks guys. I love you and you mean the world to me.)

I do think that some extent of my reluctance to go out with my friends was financial - I just didn't want to spend the money - and I think if I went back I would be less hesitant to do things with them and more willing to spend the money for a nice meal or for drinks. I think I missed out on a lot of time because I was too much of a scrooge, and that's the main thing that I'm trying to improve on this year. I have to keep telling myself that it's okay to spend small change on small happinesses.

The other part of my social life comes from the groups I am part of on campus - my dance group, ADT, and Dramashop.

One thing for sure - I would've joined ADT much earlier instead of waiting until sophomore spring. I have always regretted not getting more time to spend with some of my choreographers - I have a massive girl crush on one of my choreographers my first semester, which was also the semester she graduated. It was very sad. I also have varying levels of girl crushes on most of my choreographers. I can't help it. They're all so cute and so talented.

Apart from that, ADT was also my solace away from the craziness of studios and Architecture. It was a place I could escape because literally no one else in ADT was Architecture Design and everyone was focused on learning the dances. There were some days at MIT where I got out of bed solely for ADT, and I couldn't be more grateful for having a group of people like that there for me, whether they know it or not.

4. Are there any resources I didn't take advantage of at MIT?

Yes. So many yes's. MIT has so many resources and cool things for students to do and I really didn't take advantage of any of it, and I regret it so much. The main resource that I should've taken advantage of - and didn't - is MIT's MISTI program.

MISTI is basically a program where you tell MIT where you want to go in the world and they find you an internship and pay for you to go there. It's a program where you travel abroad. For free.

I know. I know! Anyone who knows me knows that I love traveling - I've been to 18 countries and I want to go to more and also all of them again because there's so much more still to explore - and MISTI would've been perfect for me. The only problem is that, apart from Israel, I think, you have to know the language of the country, and at the time I didn't try hard enough to figure out how to take French with my schedule. I am taking French now, and I could theoretically still do MISTI for this coming summer... but I'm kind of planning a Europe backpacking trip anyway.

5. Are there any ways you would've chosen to spend your free time differently?

I've always been a crafter and a maker. When I was little I used to collect our empty toilet paper rolls and kleenex boxes because I wanted to make things out of them - to the point where I had filled an entire cupboard with these useless boxes. My dad finally threw them out after I went to high school, and I'm pretty sure I threw a fit.

When I was in high school I picked up crocheting, and that really blossomed at MIT. Crocheting was an easy, mindless, fast project that I could do when I was too stressed out to focus, and I could make all these cute toys with them! It was a lot of fun, and I could do it in my bed. But when I spent all my free time crocheting and knitting - things I could do in my bed - I stopped painting.

I'm trying to pick it back up. I still see so many more colors in everything, and I still have an eye for color and design and layout. Skills like that, things you're born with, you don't lose. But I'm rusty. I'm less comfortable that I used to be with a brush and a canvas, and I'm less accurate in my sketches than I used to be. It's depressing! I used to be fairly good and now I'm not satisfied with almost everything I paint or draw.

There isn't really a good traditional arts program at MIT and without classes forcing me to exercise those abilities, I let them slide. Now I have to spend more time working to regain those abilities - I wish I hadn't stopped painting in the first place, but I think it'll be like riding a bike. A little rusty at first, but it'll come back with some practice.

Is there anything you would've done differently last year or in the past few years? Let me know!

When I watched Big Hero 6 over Thanksgiving in 2014, I fell in love. It was a movie about design and engineering and robots and siblings, and there was great representation for Asians in Gogo Tamago - what was there not to love? The movie so clearly (to me) referenced MIT and the Media Lab, and all the total nerds that worked and studied there were so reminiscent to all of my nerd friends, except obviously we don't have crazy professors.

Well, that's actually pretty debatable.

We don't have any murderous professors set out to destroy fraudulent corporate businessmen, at least.

Plus, all the feels. I sobbed in the theater so many times when I watched it, and I sobbed again the second time I watched it at home. All the sobbing. All the feelings about Tadashi and Baymax and Hiro and my heart still can't handle it.

I've been pretty set on making a Big Hero 6 inspired something for a while now, but I never got around to it. I had it all imagined in my head - a Baymax onesie that was huge and cozy and warm.

The Baymax onesie never happened, and I kind of forgot about the project as I got caught up in the craziness of MIT and stress and work and life... until I came across Angela Clayton's videos on Youtube.

She's amazing and I'm constantly astounded at what she's able to make. I love watching her videos and her explanations of her creations, and she's got a really nice and soothing voice which makes her videos great for unwinding. A few months ago she made a How to Train Your Dragon inspired pyjama set - an elaborate hoodie complete with the spikes and patterns of Toothless, and a pair of shorts to go with it. It was one of her simpler projects - no boning and corsetry involved - and when I watched her vlogs about it, I remembered how I wanted to make a Baymax inspired project a while ago.

So, using her videos and blog posts as a sort of guide for how the pattern pieces should look like and a hoodie that I long-term borrowed (read: stole) from a friend, I drafted up a quick pattern for the base of the hoodie. I used a pair of Forever 21 shorts to draft the pattern for the pyjama shorts, leaving ample space around the sides so the shorts could be loose instead of form fitting.

This is a quick sketch of what the pattern pieces looked like. The hoodie itself is a raglan sleeve, so when the body and sleeve pieces were attached and the side seams hadn't been sewn up yet, it looked like a big cross with a hole in it for the neck!

I cut the pattern pieces out of white fleece that I had picked up at my nearby fabric store earlier this week. The seams were really simple to do up - the four seams to attach the arm pieces to the body pieces, the two seams to sew up the sides, the hems, and the hood attachment.

Unfortunately, since I eyeballed everything and didn't think to measure anything out - I know, I'm so smart - the hood doesn't actually match up to the neckline, so I improv-fixed it by taking in the seams around the neckline and, after attaching the hood, hemmed the rest of the open neckline. I thought it would bother me that it's not like a real hoodie where the ends of the hood meet at the center neckline, but I actually think I like it better - regular hoodies tend to be a bit constricting on my neck, and leaving the neckline open like this counteracts that problem.

So I guess my mishap ended up working in my favor?

The shorts were also really simple. I sewed up the pieces and inserted an elastic into the waistband, and that was that.

For Baymax's actual features, I cut the pieces out of black and gray felt that I had on hand. His face was two black circles and a rectangle for the mouth, and his crest (memory card inserting thing) was a gray circle that I cut apart. I was going to sew the appliques on with my machine, but I didn't have any corresponding bobbin colors and I didn't trust my minimal sewing machine abilities to be able to sew along all the pieces in perfect lines.

I hand stitched all of appliques on. It didn't take as long as I thought, or it didn't feel really long because I was also marathoning Pirates of the Caribbean at the same time. Jack Sparrow can get you through anything.

The shorts were going to stay white, but I decided last minute to cut out Baymax's helmet design out of some red felt and attach it to the corner of the shorts. The pop of red looks really cute, and I had some red thread to hand stitch it on.

Here's the final ensemble! The face is so cute and I'm really happy with the helmet applique on the shorts - they turned out a lot better than I expected they would!

Since the project is made out of fleece, the entire ensemble is ridiculously soft and warm. All in all, I think it was a pretty successful project!

Here's a selfie of me wearing it! I look so tired because it's past midnight, but I feel like I'm wearing a cloud. It's great.

Have you ever tried to make a character hoodie? I've had a love affair with hoodies for pretty much forever even though I barely wear them, and now I think I want to make more. If I do, which character should I try next?

This is the last installment of my Christmas blog posts, with a grand finale in New York City!

This is the view we had at the remote place we stopped at for lunch. This is also pretty much the constant view on the road - green, hilly, incredible.

We got these weird grape-like fruits that Hera couldn't stop eating! They were really good and sweet but the skin was rough and Hera said the skin hurt her tongue...

Me on the big swing suspended in mid air! You can see the fog in the back that hindered our view.

Aaaand Hera's turn! (Actually, she went first.) She looks so tiny!

For lunch, we ended up going to a nearby hotel's cafe. The food was ridiculously overpriced even for American standards (let alone Ecuadorian standards) but the view was incredible. By this time the fog had cleared up, so the sun was shining and we could see the entire city in the valley below.

Ugh how can a place be so pretty??

More prettiness.

For the rest of the afternoon we ended up walking around the town and bought some candy and some fruit, as well as two bags of coffee beans (one for us, one for my friends). We noticed something interesting during our roaming - when we were buying fruit, one of the women at the stall was taking out the trash. Not five minutes later, the garbage truck had come and picked it up, and the woman was hauling the trash can back into the stall. This doesn't sound really notable, but we had noticed prior that all of the areas we had gone to - even the really poor areas in the Amazon - were really clean. That type of timing and on schedule-ness is pretty much nonexistent in America (yes, I'm thinking of you and your piled up garbage bags, New York City). I remember just feeling really impressed by it.

The last picture I got of Quito - everything is so colorful!

Our first day in New York was the 30th, and we spent it napping and recovering from our red eyes. For New Year's Eve, however, we went out to Times Square in the early afternoon to catch the 1pm show of Aladdin, on Broadway!

The view from Empire State!

Before I begin, this is a disclaimer that this blog post will probably end up being more of a photo montage of all the things.

The next stop of the Lu family's Ecuador adventure was the Amazon - the whole reason we went on this trip in the first place! We stayed at Yarina Ecolodge for three days. It's a small lodge located in the Amazon rainforest that's only accessible by boat from the nearest town, Coca, and has no wifi and electricity during a few hours of the day. At first, I thought that having no internet and no phone connection and no electricity was going to be quite awful, but it turns out we were waking up so early and were all so tired from our activities during the day that when we weren't exploring the area, we were dead asleep.

Yarina Ecolodge - we stayed in those little cabins, 2 people per cabin!

Yarina Ecolodge - this is the welcoming center and also where we ate our catered meals every day

We had a nature guide, Wintel, who spoke no English and knew we understood nothing he was saying (we also had a translator) but was a sweetheart and was so excited about everything he showed us. His enthusiasm was infectious, and we definitely wouldn't have learned and seen as much in the rainforest and taken away so much if it hadn't been for him and his stories. If you ever get the chance to go to Yarina, definitely ask for him!

This is Wintel! He's making Hera a little crown out of leaves.

With Wintel, we went on a couple hikes into the rainforest to look for animals - we saw LOTS of bugs (which were rather gross), birds (one made a laughing sound, which was hilarious), and tiny monkeys (which were adorable!) - and to learn about the foliage. Cue the photos:

This is the "Tree of Rain", notable because the fruit grows on the trunk and not the branches. Apparently the indigenous people in the Amazon believe that if you run around one of these 3 times and, on the last rotation, pick one of the fruits and throw it behind you and run away quickly, it will ward away tumors. They rather do look like tumors.

This is a type of mushroom that you can write on! The indigenous people use it as markers in order to not get lost.

This is the tarantula flower, named because its hairy.

These trees had roots that grew out like ribbons, so we started calling it the ribbon tree. Here's one, with Hera for size (she's 6).

On our night hike, I managed to get some pretty clear photos of bugs!

More bugs. We also saw spiders, but I opted out of taking photos (I really, really, really dislike spiders.)

Aaaand a cute little frog! This was one of quite a few that we saw that night.

During one of our hikes, Wintel brought us to a vine that had been fashioned into a makeshift swing. Yes - you're thinking right: I, and my family (although we didn't get a video of my mom, just know that she basically screamed for her life because she was rather scared), literally swung from vines like Tarzan. I'm cool, I know.

I have no idea what this fruit is called, but the little "seeds" shown are crushed and used as war paint.

This is a tree with a hole in it (the tree is still alive, too) and it's used to crush sugarcane - the juices flow down into the metal plate and then collected with a cup!

In case you ever wondered what coffee flowers looked like - this is what they look like.

Wintel made my dad and Hera little crowns out of leaves! Apparently these leaves are generally used to make skirts and roofs, and can last more than a decade with proper treatment.

Cacao!

Sorry for disappearing for a month - it was finals season, and straight after I was whisked away to Ecuador and the Amazon, where the connection was either spotty or nonexistent. No matter, now I have photos upon photos upon photos (and videos!) of my vacation and stories to tell!

A little backstory on why my family decided to go to Ecuador: my dad has wanted to go to the Amazon ever since I can remember. After probably what's been years and years of begging my mom, we finally decided to book the trip to Ecuador, near the source of the great river itself! We had no idea of what to expect - we were so unprepared that no one bothered to look up the currency of Ecuador until we had landed and we were waiting for my mom to finish renting the car.

Ecuador uses the U.S. Dollar as their national currency, in case anyone was curious. To be honest, I don't quite understand how that works, but it was very convenient to not have to exchange currencies and to be able to withdraw money from the atms (which had no withdrawal fee!).

We spent our first day in Quito, the capital city of Ecuador, just exploring the city, trying out all of the exotic fruits, and eating chocolate. Since we didn't know where to go and how to get there, we asked our hotel for where to go and Google Maps for the way there. The drive there, while on rather bumpy and hilly roads, was breathtaking - the small, colorful Spanish-style houses, all huddled close together and climbing the hills, looked like layers and layers and layers of pixelated bright colors.

houses on houses on houses!

Our first stop was Mercado Artesanal La Mariscal, which was a large one-story complex of artisan stalls filled with woven fabrics and leather goods and weird foods and exotic fruits and beautiful white peasant blouses. We tried out a 65% mint chocolate that was mostly bitter - surprising to us, considering even a 75% in the US is fairly sweet - and a weird green candy that tasted a bit like sugary soap.

Mercado Artesanal La Mariscal

The weird green candy that none of us liked

We also tried a weird fruit that was about the size of a date but was reddish and tasted like a hybrid of a mango and a plum. It contained a large seed inside and it was really sweet and juicy and yummy, but we still don't know what it was.

The fruit we couldn't identify are under the mango slices

Our next stop was the Old Town near Santo Domingo, where there was another little market and we tried some fresh ice cream. We walked around the area and ended up happening upon a tiny, hole-in-the-wall chocolate and coffee shop called Chez Tiff Artisanal. The shop had two cases full of beautiful little truffles, and with the server's recommendation, we picked out four truffles: a passion fruit, a coffee, a blackberry, and a regular milk chocolate truffle. The truffles use fresh fruit, apparently, and the chocolate tasted richer and the truffles tasted better than anything I have had before - all for 80 cents each! Hera's favorite was the passion fruit truffle, which had fresh passion fruit juices inside.

Left to right: milk chocolate truffle, coffee truffle, passion fruit truffle, and blackberry truffle

We also got hot chocolates, which had no sugar in it and was just a combination of pure cacao with milk. It was tasty, but I added a bit of sugarcane sugar to make it sweeter - I think my sweet tooth has grown since living in the States for so long.

Incredible hot chocolates

The end the day resulted in us trying to get back to the hotel using Google Maps and us learning that Google Maps has trouble differentiating between pedestrian roads and car roads in Quito. It directed us down a ridiculously steep hill of a road (maybe even steeper than 30 degrees?) which was so narrow it barely fit the width of two cars and ended in stairs. Our pathetic little rental manual car had a lot of trouble backing back up - we all got out of the car, found rocks to block the wheels from rolling down more, and my mom had to carefully back the car up the hill and past the car that happened to be parked on the side. Pretty much all of us had multiple heart attacks during this time, and after my mom succeeded and we all got back into the car, the car smelled foul because we had been overworking the gears and the engine so much.

Thinking the worst was behind us, we got on the highway. Unfortunately, the highway also had a bit of an incline and the car wasn't a fan. We were on the right side of the highway, thankfully, when we heard a bang and pungent gas started to come out of the ventilation system. Long story short, we saw small pieces of the gears on the highway after we had gotten out and were sitting on the side and we had to get the car towed. It was quite an adventure, and I'm glad we were all safe - and that the car didn't blow up or waited to break down the next day when we would be on our way to the Amazon.

Say hi to mom carefully maneuvering the car onto the tow truck

Stay tuned for part 2 next week, where my family and I go explore the Amazon!

Read about part two of this trip here.
Read about part three of this trip here.