On last Friday, 2nd November, Ecuador celebrated Todos los Santos (All Saints' Day). We went with the Spanish School to the cementerio of Calderon. This is special, as here the people bring food to the graves, so that the dead can come out at night and eat. The visitors themelves also sit down by the graveyards and eat and say preyers. This is also the day to paint the headstones newly. When we were back at the school, we had Colada Morada (a hot drink made from various red berries, quite delicious) and Guaguas (some kind of bread). [View Full Entry]

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Slowly I am getting into some kind of normal life routine here. Yesterday I have started with Spanish lessons at the Vida Verde school and I am really enjoying it - 4 hours private lessons every day. We can even sit outside in the yard. The problem is that only two of their parasols are not broken, so it's not enough for all 15 students and when the sun shines here on the equator it really shines, i.e. it burns your skin very quickly. And the police story continues: yesterday I had an apointment at 3 pm with Slim and Short. [View Full Entry]

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Between the various visits to the police, there was actually also time for some other stuff: I checked out a few Spanish schools and finally will start a week´s course a Vida Verde school tomorrow. I´ll first have to do a test and then will be assigned a teacher for four hours a day private lessons. I went to a Salsa lesson at the SAEC which was great. I´ll sign up for more Salsa lessons shortly. I went up to the IGM again and purchased a couple of maps and had a chat with one of the guys there about how [View Full Entry]

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Too shocked by the events I just haven't been able to update the blog during the last week. However, now I am back on. I'll start backwards, starting with the visit to the women's prison in Quito yesterday. The women´s prison I had heard about the prison already a while ago through some forum and had already thought about possibly going there and visiting the foreigners (there are also some German women there). So when the SAEC (South American Explorers Club) suggested a visit to the prison for Saturday (yesterday) I thought it would be the perfect completion of my experience [View Full Entry]

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Today was a very black day for me: in the morning I discovered that somebody had stolen all my money, i.e. several 100 Dollars from my hotel room in Hostal La Galeria. In the afternoon my new SLR was stolen. The first basically must have been one of the hotel staff. The second case happened the following way: I was in a sandwich shop, bought a sandwich and wanted to pay when a guy who was sitting at one of the tables asked me whether the key on the floor was mine. Obviously I looked, with my bag open. In that [View Full Entry]

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I would have thought Guyaquil Independence Day is celebrated in Guyaquil and in Guyaquil only. Wrong idea! I was planning to run loads of errands today, i.e. go visit the SAEC, sign up with the Spanish school, buy some maps at Instituto Geografico Militar (IGM), and register myself in Ecuador (necessary with the six month visa I got). When the first two were closed it slowly dawned on me that there was something wrong. I still made the long hike up to the IGM in the smog filled heat. A friendly soldier asked me to come back on Monday...So not much [View Full Entry]

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Wow, I can´t believe it: I am back in Ecuador. I still don´t know whether I am completely mad with what I have done, or whether I would have been mad if I had not done it. A couple of months ago I decided to exchange my 100-200 emails a day, teleconference after teleconference and nagging clients for a free life in the mountains and jungles of Ecuador, at least for a limited period of time. I also exchanged a safe life with a regular, nice salary, a beautiful roof top flat in the outskirts of Munich and friends and family [View Full Entry]

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