Surprising Things About Life In Cuenca

1) You can get a good cheeseburger in Cuenca. Well, let me explain this because I like the burgers down here for different reasons. The meat itself isn't as good; it's not as juicy, big, or any of the qualities I look for in burger meat in the States. But all the ingredients are always fresh in a way you just can't find in the US. Even if you had your own garden with lettuce, onions and tomatoes, and you picked and cleaned it all yourself the day you served the burgers, they still wouldn't be as fresh as they are down here and I wish I had an explanation for why. Also, they do cool things to the cheese before they put it on the burger, and they always use good cheese. And finally, they uses lots of herbs, spices and sauces here with their burgers that are all new flavors to me and so far almost all of them have been phenomenal.
2) There are stray dogs everywhere, all over the city and outlying areas, and they are all gorgeous. When we take the bus to school, we have to walk a couple hundred yards on a dirt road and we can't do it without passing at least five stray dogs. And it almost seems like they're different dogs every time. Unless the gang is out. There are like eight dogs that always hang out together (and hump each other) and scare off all the other stray dogs. They don't growl or bark at Leslie and me though because the one time they did I yelled back and was louder (and bigger) than them so now they respect us.
3) You can get a pirated copy of anything here. Any movie you can imagine, you can find here for a buck fifty. Any music cd, including mp3 compilations of up to a hundred songs, one dollar. I bought a Rosetta Stone copy, which has Levels 1 & 2 of over 20 languages on it, three bucks. Halo 2 for PC was also three bucks. You can get them most updated version of PhotoShop here for thirty dollars. It's more expensive because it takes 5 cds to pirate PhotoShop. You can get a pirated copy of anything down here, and the Ecuadorian government strongly approves of the pirating practice. Something about how everybody has the right to a job.
4) There will be more as I think of them.