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Published: March 14th 2005
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Across two hemispheres!
Sorry, but it had to be done! :-) Hola!
First blog, and I seem to have tons to write, so much that I´m gonna purposely leave out stuff about the school and the town until next time, so watch this space.
In brief, for the next month or so I´m in Ecuador. I arrived last Friday in Quito and on Sunday traveled about two hours north to Otavalo, via the ´Mitad del Mundo¨ (Equator) from which I have a cheesy pic of my astride two hemispheres! I haven´t figured out how to upload pics here yet. (Internet cafes are such a faff, please someone send me my laptop!) Sorry, I didn´t do the swirly water down the plughole experiment, our guide said it wouldn´t work as the true equator was about 20min North of there. I´m sure if I could be bothered to Google that I´d be able to explain the difference, but I´ll leave that for all you spods out there (SP)!
I´ve joined a project educating indigenous kids in the mountains around Otavalo. Had a brief taste of the project last week, but like I say, I´ll save the full details until I´ve had a chance to begin working there properly later this week.
Until then I´m acclimatizing in Otavalo. We´re at 2,600m here, and the project is another 1,000m above sea level, no altitude probs so far, although 20mins football with the kids nearly killed me!
I´m living with a local family. Haven´t worked out exactly how many relatives live there, somewhere between 6 and 11 I think, with at least 4 or 5 kids, seems to vary everyday. They´re all lovely, if a little overwhelming and am definitely getting a lot of Spanish practice trying to keep up with conversation at dinner. Although last night they asked me if I´d followed what they were talking about and they nearly fell off their chairs laughing when I said I´d understood it was something about the girlfriend of the guy next door being the boss of all the prostitutes in Otovalo! Apparently it wasn´t, but I never did find out what that was all about!
It´s quite a posh house by Ecuatorian standards, kind of like a whitewashed Spanish styley villa, not that big, but with a lot of random outhouses, one of which is mine. Turns out my ´bedroom´ is more of a ´bedshed´, it´s basically their garage with a bed at one end. It´s cold, damp and smells of turps and I know for a fact that the dog used to live in there cos I left the door open one evening and found a very large wet alsatian snuggled in my bed. Not great, but it is en-suite and has the only hot water in the house. ´En-suite´ is a little grand - ´el baño´ is open to the yard, and with the weather we´ve had so far it´s way too cold to shower in the mornings, so just a quick swish with a wet flannel and a dribbly hot shower every other afternoon. (Yes, guys, I´m only washing my hair every other day and I haven´t brought a hairdryer – can you imagine what I´m going through?!)
I´ll get a little more familiar with Otavalo and see if I can get some pics before going into too much detail, but basically it´s a sleepy little town, very traditional, cobbled streets, pretty squares, etc. Nothing much happens until Saturdays when every street in the place is filled with market stalls (seriously good shopping opportunities – gonna be a big problem)! It doesn´t feel weird being here really, not like ´wow, I´m in South America!´ in fact it reminds me a little of a random village in France, albeit one with a 5,000m volcano looming over it!
Everyday but last Tuesday I´ve had 7 hours of 1-1 Spanish lessons. Got one more day to do before they let me out! It´s pretty intense, but I must be improving - I´ve gone from hot tears of frustration pricking my eyes on Monday (because I couldn´t tell him what I did at the weekend) to explaining Carl Jung´s theory of the collective unconscious on Friday! It´s fun though, one morning we went to the market to buy weird Ecuatorian fruit (some of it very weird indeed) again, pics to come sometime soon!
The countryside round here is staggering, just beautiful. Last week we visited Cuicoche, a volcanic crater with a lake inside. Unfortunately I didnt slather on sufficient suncream and my neck was burnt to a crisp, really painful, never had such bad sunburn, it´s finally peeling to leave a lovely red raw ring underneath, this after just one hour in sun at altitude! Also visited some nearby waterfalls ´las Cascadas de Peguche´which are thought to be sacred, and stayed in a rather swish hacienda just outside the town. There are a few more trips planned to various lakes, mountains and volcanos, travelling by foot, truck, horse and/or bike I believe, so that should be fun!
OK, enough for now, need to get back for a shower before it gets dark, ´there´s no light in the bathroom, luckily no mozzies, spiders or other dodgy creepy crawlies so far either, which is fine by me!
´K, take care everyone, do keep in touch, thanks for all your emails so far!
Cheers,
Ali
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