It´s amazing how quickly time flies - I´ve already been in Quito for two weeks and have finished a whole week of spanish lessons. I am having a great time here – I can´t recommend the school that I am going to highly enough. The teachers are fantastic, the staff are great and there are so many things to do. Not to mention I am learning a fair bit of Spanish! My teacher´s name is Amparo and she is just great, so encouraging and patient and I´m amazed at how much you can learn in such a short period of time. Though I have to admit that at the same time it is pretty exhausting trying to think and speak in Spanish all the time, and trying to absorb what you are learning. At the moment it´s verbs verbs verbs and getting a hang of some of the tenses.

But aside from lessons (and associated homework!) there is so much to do. Tuesday nights is the soccer game – teachers versus students at the local park, Wednesday is cooking class at lunch time (the teachers do the cooking for the students – something typical of Ecuador each week), Thursday night is Salsa lessons and then Thursday or Friday is usually some sort of excursión. In addition to this there is a trip away each weekend and some other activity thrown in. Last Wednesday night we went to one of the World Cup Qualifer games for football – Ecuador versus Colombia. It was quite fun, altough it absolutely bucketed down with rain, and I have not been so cold in such a long time. I was actually struggling to think of a time when I have ever been so cold! At one stage before the game, they pulled a massive Ecuadorian banner over our section of the crowd to act as a rain protector, but even through the canvas we were still being saturated.  It´s funny to think that only a couple of weeks ago I was boiling hot, and now it is freezing! Well, not freezing, but we are up in the Andes so it is a lot lot cooler. Anyway, the game was fun though a bit of an anti-climax as the final score was nil all.

This week´s extra activity tomorrow night is to go to some termal springs, somewhere about 2 hours from Quito, though at this stage only Galdia (a friend and another student at the school) have signed up, so it may not be a go-er.

On the weekend just been a group of 10 of us when to a town called Banos (about 4 hours south). This was a trip organised through the school and it was great fun. We arrived and had a 2 course lunch for $2.50…how am I going to cope with prices in the UK?? And then climbed a volcáno in the afternoon. Following a night at some of the bars and clubs around the town, we went quad biking on Sunday morning to visit the surrounding waterfalls. It was great fun as we paired up and tore along the roads, although my life flashed before my eyes at one stage, when Tadaky (one of the other students from Japan) almost ran the two of us into an oncoming van. We honestly missed the van by no more than one metre! Along the way we also stopped to do bridge jumping/bungee jumping over a river. I wasn´t game enough to try bungee jumping, but I did jump and swing from the bridge and that involved a tiny bit of free’falling so I was screaming like a girl! We also rode a cable car over one of the waterfalls, called the Bride´s Veil waterfall. This was possibly more scary tan the bridge jumping – Occ Health and Safety is not a massive priority here in Ecuador!! It poured and poured all Sunday, so by the time we got back to Banos, we were all covered in mud and saturated and freezing, and couldn´t wait to hand the bikes back!

The family that I am staying with is lovely and it´s a good arrangement. It´s a 15 minute walk to school, so I can sleep in and easily pop home for lunch. The main meal of the day here is lunch and everyone comes home for lunch. Not necessarily all at exactly the same time, but lunch is usual ready from 2 o´clock, so when you get home near that time, lunch is served. The food here is great. Lunch is usually a soup followed by a main course of rice or pasta, a meat and vegetables and sometimes something sweet. Dinner is most often left overs from lunch and breakfast is bread or rolls with cheese or jam and/or fruit. The other brilliant thing is that Syvlia, the maid, makes fresh juice ever days and it is always something different, like orange or pineapple or tree tomato (which is like a sweeter versión of a tomato and just delicious). So I am definately not complaining about anything in the food department. Because I eat most meals at home, there are still lots of foods that I want to try, but I´m sure that will come in time.

Anyway, that´s it for now. I would upload more potos but this computer doesn´t seem to want to do that. So next time….