Where's my washing?

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On my superior bed

Me eating Cheetos, really fast

Yo. Hahaha, haven't said that in ages! If some of my words stick together, it's because I've got a reeeally rubbish keyboard and the keys are like wobbly teeth.
OK, what have I done since last we spoke... Not very much, to be honest. Sunday, went to the Centro Historico in Quito, which was quite beautiful, but not very sunny. I suppose we can't blame the city for that though. We encountered our first streetchildren. Though I'm not sure they were bona fide streetchildren to be honest, they just wandered around asking everyone if they could shine their shoes, and complaining that they were hungry. Seeing as we were all wearing flip-flops, we couldn't really accept their services, so they swore at us and wandered off. I reeeally did want to go and buy them some food, but as everyone else pointed out, if we did that we'd never get rid of them. I need to learn not to be so soft 😞
The most interesting place we saw was the Fundacion Iglesia de la Compañiade Jesus, which is a very impressive church, as the interior is covered in a supposed 7 tonnes of gold. It took 162 years to build... Can´t help but think that time and money could have been better spent feeding and helping the indigenos who built most of it. Hmmm.
On Sunday night we had egg soup. It was ok, didn't make the top three though. My soup experience is as follows (in order of favouritism):

• White carrot soup (with popcorn). It's da bomb!
  
• Potato and spinachy type soup. Conflicting textures, but a hot favourite between Imo and Ezim.
  
• Broccoli soup. Can´t really go wrong.
  
• Egg soup. An interesting idea, just about pulled off by our madre, super-chef.
  
• Cheese and pasta soup. Just doesn't cut it for me. I give it a firm 1/10.
  

On Monday we swapped teachers en la escuela. My new teacher is Teresa "la Bruja" ("the Witch" - her words, not mine). She's hot on scrabble, but not too interested in grammar. She has a sense of humour at least, but I almost feel that I miss the deep policital conversations that I shared with my old teacher... (Almost).
By Tuesday we had a crisis on our hands en la casa de Miguel and B____. Not only had we run out of toilet paper and couldn't find any ANYWHERE in the house, but we had no clean clothes left. The maid had taken Monday off due to some family crisis (we THINK she found out that her husband and father of her child had gone crazy and got himself another wife. But that could be a mis-translation), but luckily she was over it by Tuesday and cheerfully gathered up our five bags of washing and took them into the kitchen... And that's the last we've seen of them. It's now Wednesday lunchtime and I have no pants left for tomorrow! I only have one T-shirt (my pip-deflecting football shirt), a dress, a pair of shorts, unlimited socks, a pair of jeans, several hoodies that are just too heavy to even think about wearing... and my pyjamas. We're going out on the town tonight and we are actually seriously contemplating making it a swimsuit party. As Ezim said, one's weird, two's a theme and three's a definite trend! To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised to find that our clothes are now on the way to Otavalo to be sold on some indigeno market stall (starting price $2 for a pair of Imogen's bed socks...). And to top it off, the maid changed our bedclothes yesterday, and my new psychedelic flower-pattern sheets gave me a headache so I couldn't sleep... Boo hoo.

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Photos

Old towny
Fun fun fun.

Ta-dah!
Funky dress, red boots, llama wool bag - seemed like such a good idea!... Until I got accosted on the way home by our resident policeman... I didn't know they did fashion police in Ecuador...

Shoe juice froth
Ok, it's not shoe juice, it's actually banana and orange, but my initial reaction was "ooh, tastes like shoe! In a good way..." Very peppy :-)

Breakfast disappointment
I think our madre has lost her va va voom where breakfast making is concerned. We used to get about three different piece of fruit for breakfast, as well as scrummy juice and fresh bread. Today we had smelly papaya, rock-hard toast, and shoe juice. Just look at the disappointment on Ezim's face, the poor mite.

The troublesome maid
We love her really. And her daughter is brilliant! All she does is toddle around making bird noises. All day.

Comments

[Lizzie]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!
Hey Splarah! Sounds like you're having an AMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZING time! I'm so jealous! And really feel your pain about the clothes - think of it as a practice for uni! Hehe. Well I hope all turns out well for you clothes wise and you don't have to resort to anything dire! xxx