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Published: September 26th 2006
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Sucre house
The charm of our courtyard, marble busts and all OK so the blog has been a little more than just neglected....we are lagging by so many months now that I have decided to bugger it and skip a few chapters. So here is the last few weeks of Greg and Carly's adventures in Ecuador!
We have been living in Cuenca for the last 5 weeks, and it has been a whole lot different to Gualaceo, mainly due to our interaction with other gringo teachers and an increased intake of liquor(see next blog 'Boys in towels')...we have made some great friends here, most of whom live with us in the 'Sucre House', named so for it's location on Mariscal Sucre entre Juan Montalvo y Estevez de Toral (I have to say that so much when getting a taxi home that it is imprinted in my skull). Brandon and Jerome showed us the house 5 weeks ago and we fell in love with the vibe, the people and the numerous hammocks, so we moved in two days later. Poor Kyle, left by himself in Gualaceo!
We were supposed to start English tutorials (one-on-one) the minute we got here, but unfortunately everyone in Cuenca had decided to go on holidays, so
Sucre house2
Frescoed walls and fake birds in a birdcage, we're in heaven I was without work for 2 weeks, very annoying! Greg had 1 tutorial, 2 hours per day, with this hot girl who is actually the model on a life-sized poster for learning english at CEDEI! Brandon tried to make me feel jealous about this, but he was more in love with the girl than Greg was. Anyway, I sat around for 2 weeks freaking out about money, until I finally realised that I should be using the time to really learn some Spanish...so I started 2hr tutorials, 5 days a week, with an amazing teacher Maria Elena. We talk about everything from environmental issues to zodiac signs, me stumbling along in my broken Spanish, exhausted by the end!
I also started a thing called Intercambio, where you have a conversation with a local, half an hour in English and the other half in Spanish, so both get to practice and there's no money involved. I got hooked up with a lovely woman of 40 or so, Mariana, who has 3 boys who speak varying levels of English so they can practice with me as well. It's a sweet deal, as the only time she has away from her busy
At the almuerzo table
Mariana, Martin and Brian - what characters! clothing factory is during lunch, so 3 times a week I sit down to a generous almuerzo with her entire family! We talk about Ecuadorian traditions, what we did on the weekend, favourite movies and all that...it's hard to get Mariana to speak much English, she doesn't have much confidence, especially with her 14yr old son Boris always correcting and helping her (his English is fantastic). But it's definitely good for my Spanish. The boys are so cute, Martin (8yrs) dresses up in a little Zorro outfit, and he's so outspoken, showing me everyone in his photo album, "This is me", "It is my father"...Brian (9yrs) is the middle child and more timid, but I ask him what his favourite movie is and it gets him thinking in English. I'm going to miss them when i go back to Gualaceo.
We have been indulging in the cultural highlights of the richest town in Ecuador, with its museums, movies and free concerts. At the enormous Museo de Banco Central we saw a free jazz concert, Trio Zira, a fabulous French threesome with hypnotic rhythms that just blow your mind. The talkative clarinet stole the show, but some bass sax layed
down the lines and a wild falt, wide drum kept the most intracite rhythms - occasionally running off to do its own solo business. All and all a very fine show for the price of nil.
The opening night of the new Ecuadorian film "Que tan lejos" was also a big deal here in Cuenca, as the story of two women backpacking through Ecuador was filled with colloquialisms and Cuencano sayings that had the audience chuckling(and us puzzled, as usual). If you can find this movie in Australia, WATCH IT, and you will really see the landscape and the culture that we have been living in for the last 3 months. It even won some awards at the Montreal Film Festival, go Ecuador!
We experienced the landscape ourselves when we went for a day trip to Parque Cajas, the closest natural reserve to Cuenca. It turned out to be an Aussie expedition, with our new friends Wendy and Lee, and Lee's Cuencan buddy Rosa. You could feel the change in altitude as we stepped off the bus into the biting cold...but 7 hours of hiking took care of the chill! And it was a surprisingly good day,
with sun and only a bit of rain in the afternoon, which apparently is strange for the area which is usually swathed in fog, threatening to make many extranjeros(foreigners) lose their way....I was still glad to have Wendy leading us, who had been there before, and is also a hiking guide back in Tassie. There aren't any helpful wooden signs on the bushtrack like back home - just you and a topographical map (which was reasonably inaccurate)!
The plant species were pointed out to us by ecologist Lee(I think Greg and I were the least useful people on the trip) and we were suprised to see many types of vegetation common to Australia...then there are the eucalyptus trees that are common in the whole southern highlands area, which is a nice reminder of home. So we did get lost a few times, and started to feel a bit gloomy in the gathering misty rain, but lo and behold there was the road, and we fought our way through a forest of pine trees to reach the highway and wait for a bus back.
Sitting at the tollway station, an officer told us a nice story, that just hours
earlier a car driven madly by 2 bank robbing drug dealers (whata combo) had crashed through the gates, with police in hot pursuit. We had heard an ambulance siren earlier, and apparently the guys had driven off a hard corner and plunged into the forest....we had visions of being held at gunpoint in Cajas by 2 crazy thieves, what a story that would have been!
So as our time in Cuenca comes to an end, we finish up our English and Spanish classes, and get ready for a big dinner at our house, followed by a little salsa at tiny sweaty club La Mesa - time to put those dance lessons to the test! We'll be showing you all how to do it when we return...
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Peter
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Yay thanks for the update guys!
Hi from Pete! Cuenca looks like a nice town and it's great to hear that you're doing well. Carly your Intercambio sounds like a really good idea, it must be fun to be learning Spanish that way. And the "boys in towels" party must have been crazy. The 90's party at the Sea Shanty was heaps of fun. There was a lot of dancing until pretty late at this one too but no choreography! Saturday just gone was a lot of hard work moving, but went well and Alissa and I are settling in to our lovely new house in Kiama. We'll send some pictures soon promise.