Reconnecting and Rafting

I must say it's nice to be back in Quito! The weather is quite nice, not too hot, but mostly sunny. The air condition isn't as bad as I remember and the mountains are beautiful! I'm staying with my first host family this week. When I got here on Wednesday, other than a few new houses in the area, the only big change was that my host brother, who we call "Peque" meaning "Little", has grown into a tall 14-year-old! That night, my classmate, Chavez came to visit me and catch up.
On Thursday, I hung out with my second host family and on Friday, I met up with a bunch of my classmates at my favourite restaurant, El Rincon Amazonico which has great food and batidos (fruit milkshakes) in a cool, natural wood, jungle-like setting with hammocks strung between trees. Although it has been 4 years, my friends haven't changed very much except that they're all in their 3rd or 4th year of university.
Some other things haven't changed either... on Saturday, I got a visit from some friends I wasn't looking forward to seeing... parasites! I've been eating very little since and I hope the medication I got from the pharmacy today it takes care of them.
On Sunday, I went rafting with my friend Diego's adventure company and Chavez and George came along too. We went for several hours on the Toachi River (about 3 hours from here). The water was pretty strong and we hit some great waves, including one that we hit a little to hard, causing one guy to fall out of the boat and me to smash my face against someone's helmet. I now have a nice bruise on my chin and a swollen lip. But it was well worth it and I got lots of pictures with my new waterproof camera :)