weather, phones, and sushi

It has started to rain a lot more lately, as I think we're entering the rainy season here in Quito.

Because of the altitude and the proximity to the equator, we only have two seasons here: rainy and dry. It's funny, though, because people will still refer to the seasons as "summer" and "winter." Having lived in a location where it was nothing to get 6 inches of snow or have the temperature drop so low that the steering wheel in your vehicle would not move, I chuckle to myself whenever people talk about how cold it gets here during "winter."

The rain so far has not been too bad. We had a torrential downpour on Saturday, complete with thunder and lightning, but that so far has been the exception. It is funny to have thunder and lightning without really having severe or threatening storms. My friend, Yasmin, says that they do not have tornadoes here. Growing up in the midwest, it is hard to separate the idea of lightning and thunder from the idea of severe weather.

In other news (I'm sorry this post is so boring), I finally rejoined the 21st century and purchased a cell phone here in Ecuador! It is a very old Nokia model that went out of style ten years ago in the States, but it was cheap and keeps me connected! While Ecuadorians love their cell phones, I have not seen cell phones as fancy as we have in the US (exception: the iPhone, which you can get here) and my friends and I speculated that probably keeping up with the latest cell phone trends is not a high priority, either due to financial reasons or otherwise.

That's about it for now. I am going with some friends tonight to check out a sushi restaurant here in the city. I went to one sushi place on Saturday that was very good and had excellent atmosphere, so I'm curious to see how this one compares. Yay for sushi!