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Published: August 14th 2006
It certainly feels like I've been in Quito for longer than a week- and I mean that in a good way. My homestay family have been very welcoming and I feel quite at home there. I say 'family' but really it's just one older lady, Guadalupe, and her 21 year old son who comes and goes. He was quite hard work at first but once he realised that I'd heard of Delgado and I won him over with the contents of my i-pod he warmed a lot (one of his favourite songs is 500 miles by the proclaimers-nothing to do with me! How funny is that?) He is now trying to teach me about Latin American music (he DJs) because he thinks I must be the only person in the world who hasn't heard of reggaeton (Have any of you or am I the only old fogey?) Anyway the set up is great because I can have company when I want it, and can face trying to communicate in broken Spanish, but I have a lot of privacy too- perfecto!
Lessons are going well. Obviously after a week I'm practically fluent, just unfortunately not in a language that is generally
understood here. My family call it Spanglish and are usually very helpful in correcting me once they have stopped laughing! The daily 4 hour one-on-one lessons are pretty intense and my head is usually swimming with vocab and verbs by the time we finish but we have taken two trips out; once to the old town and once to the food market which made a nice change and was very informative. I especially enjoyed seeing the cows liver that was the size of a small table top! Yum.
The school is pretty small so all the students are friendly and I have met a nice bunch of people already. They all happen to be English at the moment but I think new people will arrive every week. Some of the girls are also working at the voluntary project that I'm going to. I'm hearing mixed reports about that but won't be starting there for 2 weeks so will think about that later....
There is loads to do in and around Quito and I'm getting very excited about all the walking and cycling trips that are possible from here. Last weekend I went to Banos with 4 other students
from the school. It's a small town nestled in the Avenue of the Volcanoes which is famous for its hot springs and proximity to an active volcano (current FCO advice is not to visit as there was a minor eruption in July...but no major eruptions while we were there-phew) However its still active enough to be spewing ash clouds which was quite a spectacular sight. We did a good walk to a viewpoint on Saturday and then a long bike ride along a valley full of waterfalls on Sunday which was beautiful. So all in all quite an active weekend which is good as I can see Cotopaxi from my window and its definitely calling me to climb it so I need to get in training. I also need to work off the huge meals which Guadelupe is preparing for me, the food is generally delicious but am not used to eating potatoes, rice, grains every meal time and in such quantities. I'm still in the polite phase of eating most of it but learning how to courtesously refuse was top of my list of phrases to learn this week.
Best comedy moment of the week was definitely the
evening visit to the hot springs. They were sold quite differently in the guide book (aren't most things?) as being in a charming setting but the reality was a very small pool of dirty-looking water (it's the minerals apparently) crammed full of locals including the saturday-night sharks. It was hilarious but had to be done I guess...
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Karen (Batesy)
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WOW Marielle.........
....those photo's look fantastic! I mean, not quite as good as the view from my desk..... of the photocopier but y'know, alright! It sounds great. Go girl.......... xx