USFQ International Student Party

Over the summer, we got an email from the Student Government from Universidad San Francisco de Quito, the university I'm attending while in Ecuador, about attending a party for all 200 of the international students here at USFQ. Naturally, I was a bit skeptical about any sort of party planned by the school that included 200 international students. However, it was nothing like I expected.

To begin with, we had to take a taxi into Quito, and then ride a bus for 2 hours to some hacienda (farm) north of Quito. Not to mention we had to wake up and be at the bus stop in Quito at 8am. It turns out this was an all day party that was made up of several different games. Right when we got there, we broke up into teams of 10 and began competing in the strangest games imaginable.

So this is the farm where the party took place. Really beautiful view in the background!

This is my team, well most of us. We were cheering for 2 of our team mates who had to compete in the first challenge.

So this was the first challenge. They had to jump through some tires, then crawl under this rope mechanism, and then finally slide down this insane water slide just after being drenched in soapy water. Soo awesome. Sadly, I did not bring a change of clothes so did not choose to partake in this first game.

However, I did partake in the second challenge. We had to have two team members climb to the top of this freshly cut tree (with sap and all) and touch one of the balloons. The scariest part was we saw them dig the whole and put this tree maybe 2 feet into the ground. I was not 100% convinced it would remain standing, but hey, I survived so we're all good.

Me and David both climbed to the top with a combined time of 19 seconds, fastest team out of all of them! This was just one out of many of events our team won 1st. Each event had different prizes ranging from a full expense paid trip to Cotopaxi (the nearby Volcano and awesome tourist attraction in Ecuador) to half-off bar tabs.

After all of the events, we had a full lunch with all of the other international students. It was a very long but fun day. After the lunch, there was a lot of music, dancing, and fun with friends. This was definitely nothing like what I expected, and an awesome time! That is all for now. Miss all my friends and family!