Spanish Lessons, Olon and 10 songs on repeat

---

I am about to wrote a blog detailing what was most likely the best three weeks of my life. Stars in this blog include awesome spanish teachers, a guy from our group with outta control undiagnosed bipolar, newly found friends from Ecuador and of course, Montanita and its ten songs on repeat.

Firstly, it is fitting to give a quick background to where I have been staying over the last three weeks.
An ex tutor from the University of Sydney decided a few years ago to set up Spanish courses spanning three weeks, situated in her house in the beautiful, secluded town of Olon, Ecuador. Having heard of this amazing opportunity from some dear friends of mine who had recently attended the classes, and keen to travel and improve my Spanish, I thought it would be somewhat stupid not to go.

It was awesome settling in to one place for three weeks and to really get to know it, as had been travelling in Colombia for 3 weeks going place to place every few days. Every day consisted of Spanish lessons in the morning and visiting the nearby Orphanage in the afternoon...I have never had this much structure in my post school life, I felt like I was at a nursing home.

As for Spanish classes, I went from 51% for Semester 2 to 81% in our final test...I am now so proficient at the Spanish language that I find it difficult writing and talking in English, it sucks being a Spanish genious. In addition to the classes contributing to my utmost fluency in Spanish, the kids at the orphanage taught me a lot too. The visits to the orphange were very well structured, everyday there were a couple of activities to choose from. Most days I taught English to 16-18 year old girls, who were interested in learning how to say, "you are handsome," "will you marry me," "I love you," as well as describing their perfect man. It wasn´t all a self esteem boost however, as one of the kids insisted on calling me ugly at least a couple of times a day. As a consequence my bloated belief of myself as somewhat of a newly found ladies man was brought back to Earth.

One of the things I miss most while travelling is food. However during those three weeks this was not the case. Maria del Carmen´s husband Lolo is a freakin genious in the kitchen, one of our Spanish lessons included him teaching us how to make Hummous. His amazing cooking skills probably unabled him to crack really inappropriate jokes, however I cannot mention any here, as this site has a political correctness policeman, you may have noticed they removed an extremely disturbing word from my username which, if left untouched, would corrupt milliones of innocent children.

I also have to thank my best Ecuadorian buddies Jonny, Maria Gracia y Maria Jose for not knowing enough English to converse and thereby forcing me to speak in Spanish. I now feel like I have an Ecuadorian family...I know, how cultured am I.

Any talk of my stay in Ecuador is not complete without a detailed description of the little town of Montañita, a place of unrivalled tranquility throughout the entire world. As it is hard to express sarcasm through text, I will reveal to everyone that I am being sarcastic. Any place that serves massive cocktails for under three bucks and has free entry to most clubs is bound to be a gringo paradise. Women who were bound to die of skin cancer in the coming years walked around wearing bikinis as ´hippies,´ who no doubt had gone to visit the town for some white gold and green happiness and ended up getting addicted, sold crappy products on the street. I think the club and cocktail bar owners have never heard more than about ten songs, as every night only about ten songs were played on loop. The song "Maldito Alcohol" will forever remind me of what Lolo calls "mierdanita."

I think my newly found friend Jonny is a dancing machine who was created in a government lab. He can actually do everything. Him dancing the Samba included so many turns and twists that it came as close to a human puzzle as possible. What´s more...he made it look so easy, which kinda sucked after I re-realised that dancing is not my forte to say the least. Bruno from our group made a point of taking a video of one of Jonny´s dance classes just to show how bad I am. To be fair, it was pretty funny.

Saying goodbye to Olon, Ecuador, Maria del Carmen and Lolo, the kids from the orphanage and my new Ecuadorian besties was one of the hardest things I have ever done.

Next stop was my compulsory visit to Lima. To explain why it was compulsory, a background story is required. When they booked my tickets, the travel agency made a point of putting me in a time machine and booking a flight that required paper tickets. As opposed to electronic tickets which you can just print online, these tickets can only be issued by a travel agency and must be presented at the check in desk prior to boarding a flight. Me being the reliable person I am, lost the tickets in Colombia. After informing the travel agency, they informed me that there were no offices in Ecuador or Bolivia where I was to travel next...the closest place was Lima. Great. To look on the bright side however, something that I am frequently doing, I got to see Lima.

---

Comments

[the father]

life changing experience
Well it is seems the son has had a semi-religious experience in Olon - not sure what caused the real epiphany...the food, the routine, the girls, the music or the cocktails?? No I am sure it was much more spiritual than all of that! On the other hand, if it hasn't knocked the sarcasm out of him then he remains essentially unchanged! In any case I hope I still recognise him on his return...