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After only about 2 hours sleep I dragged myself out of bed in the hope that myself and the other Couchsurfers I had met would make use of the day and go hiking around the base of one of the volcanos. Unfortunately they had only arrived home from the sun festival at 6:30am and would not be waking until well after lunch time. I decided to come up with a new art design for one of the other dorm rooms - A silhouette of an old man playing a trumpet under an old dingey street light. I had to come up with design from scratch which took me a few hours and then freehand it onto the wall which took most of the day. The Argentinian, French guy and Lui from Quito had to head home today so we said our goodbyes but another friend Adriana decided to stay and join me at tonight's festival of San Juan in the city which is supposed to be bigger then lastnights fiesta. I had a relaxing afternoon, went to the markets where a couple of strange things happened to me - the first when I was buying some eggs and oats I was talking to the lady in Spanish and she ended up forgetting to charge me for most of the things I purchased and as I walked away she was laughing and saying omg I didn't charge him and all the vendors were laughing and so was I as she had been struck by my charm haha I went back and paid. The next strange thing that happened was when I went for dinner I went to this street vendor who I had been to the previous night and ordered the same thing - once again they were smiling and laughing and this time gave me my food and said see you later - about two hours later I realized I hadn't paid them as my notes were still in my pocket - embarrassed I went back but they were all packed up and gone. Tonight's Festival is called Fiesta de San Juan a famous saint of the church and the whole city came out to celebrate. It started with food, alcohol and family - the women dress in their traditional dresses and the men dress up in a mixture of traditional dress and character costumes. Each family has 4 or 5 guitar players, a couple of flute players, accordion player, drummer and harmonica player - the group of musicians start playing their traditional music whilst dancing in a circle - family, friends and foreigners alike then join in the circle and stomp and twist there shoulders in a dancing way. The music is incredible harmonic and the actions are so natural to the music and as its freezing cold a great way to warm up. We met some friends of Andreas and walked around joining various dance circles, singing, dancing and having a great time. There were fireworks, performances and ceremonies and quiet a few foreign people. I met a group of 8 American girls who were in the same dance circle as me and we stood out like sore thumbs as Ecuadorian people are quite short and we towered over most of them. At 12am we were both tired and had to call it a night.
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