Friday Part One

Today we took a day trip.  Ben, who got out of the awful trip yesterday didn’t hear what time we were supposed to be at school, and, as a result, showed up an hour early.  Grand.  Catherine, of course, invited herself when we went out to breakfast, as the day just kept getting better.  She also told us that our mothers didn’t love us because they didn’t pack us lunch.  The funny thing about that being they aren’t supposed to pack us lunch.  Anyway, we all met up and waited for departure.  Once again we found ourselves in an electric blue upholstered coach bus and about two hours of driving ahead of us.  Our first stop: the equator.  First thing we did was visiting this really neat private bug collection that’s there for some reason and we got to hold Heracles Beetles and it was FANTASTIC!  THEY’RE SO COOL.  Also, there were a bunch of really big bugs in the Amazon, it turns out.  In the middle of the park, there’s a really huge monument and a gold line to show where each hemisphere of the world is.  We all took turns straddling the line and feeling pretty pro about ourselves.  Then, we all piled back into the bus.  Our second stop: the real equator.  Yay GPS!  At least they admitted their mistake.  Anyway, we all had to take more pictures, of course, to replace the ones we hastily deleted out of embarrassment.  This place was more like a museum with tons of science experiments and such.  One that I thought was really cool is how water spins opposite directions on other sides of the world, but on the equator, it doesn’t spin at all.  Another one is that if you close your eyes, it’s incredibly hard to balance on that sneaky little line.  There were a bunch of others too, but those were the neatest.  We then saw some authentic indigenous house examples and a bunch of bugs/animals native to Ecuador including that fish that everyone knows about that’s the reason you don’t pee in the Amazon River.   Then they let us off the tour into the gift shop, because Ecuador is really Disney World in disguise, and we hoped back onto the bus destined for the Cloud Forest.   Also, we stopped at a gas station where FINALLY I was able to locate Trolli gummy worms.  One craving down, three to go.