Viva Guayaquil (Independence Day)

Last Friday was the Independence Day of Guayaquil and all schools in Guayaquil had the day off from school, so 3 of my exchange student friends and I went to Parque Historico in Samborodon. Parque Historico is a park with old buildings and churches you can walk in, giant gardens with banana trees, and different types of beautiful flowers. The park also has a zoo with monkeys, alligators, parrots, fish, turtles, ect. The zoo is in the woods, and to walk through you have to walk on wooden bridge surrounded by trees, which makes you feel like you are in the rainforest. My favorite park of Parque Historico though was the festival they were having in the main area. They had banners everywhere reading: "Viva Guayaquil", vendors selling Ecuadorian sweets or popcorn, and women dressed in typical attire from Ecuador. A band was playing live latin style music, and of course, dancing. I'm an awful dancer, but I love dancing to the music here! My friends and I when right into the middle of crowd and started dancing. One of the women dressed in the typical attire came up and taught us some dance moves and grab our hands and brought us all over the dance floor. Everyone there thought it was hilarious to see Americans dancing, so we had a lot of pictures being taken of us, and even a camera man from a local tv station was filming us! After dancing we walked around some more and got some typical food, empanadas of course.