We woke up this morning to rain; I think it's the first time since we've been here that we have had rain in the morning, it usually doesn't start until late afternoon. We had intended to go to the Feria Libre today which is a giant mercado, but since it was raining fairly heavily we decided to visit the mall instead. We flagged a taxi down outside the apartments and had him take us to the mall which was about a 5 1/2 minute ride from where we live but too far to walk in the rain. The mall was kind of like thise in the US but on a much smaller scale; we visited one in Quito and this one was about 1/3 the size of that one. We weren't really after anything we just wanted to take a look around, and it's a good job since there wasn't a whole lot at the mall. It had loads of clothes stores and shoe stores and that was about it really. It had a food court and we ate lunch at, wait for it, Burger King. There were about 10 different places to eat, and besides pizza, Burger King was the only place we could eat at as everything else had meat. Even at Burger King we only had fries and onion rings, lovely healthy lunch, and they were just like those in the States. In fact if I had closed my eyes, and ears, I could have been in San Diego. The mall wasn't too busy, but there were lots of 'American looking' Ecuadorians there, people (mostly women) with American clothing on and their hair dyed blond; you don't see too many people looking like that in the old part of the city. We saw some people we had previously met at the book store and Mike inquired with them about visiting the dentist. They have a lady they recommend to everyone who apparently does excellent work but doesn't speak english. We are going to go see her about getting an appointment to have Mikes tooth fixed on Monday; it should be interesting trying to explain to her what he wants done, I imagine there'll be lots of pointing and miming.
The mall did have a huge grocery store that sold literally everything, from toilets, to car tyres, to household goods to food. We spent a lot of time wandering around and did some food shopping so we won't have to walk to the store tomorrow.
We got a taxi back home after we were done with our shopping and saw a horrible thing just outside our apartments, a poor dog all squashed on the road. It's actually the first we've seen which is really surprising considering that most dogs here wander around with a lead, and the folks drive like crazy people. It wasn't a nice way to finish our afternoon out I can tell you. I just hope someone gets it off the road soon.

Mike: Yeh, I found a Super Walmart (Supermercado Coral)!