More from Quito!

the view up the street that our hostel is on


frutas en el mercado


jugos!


Medicinal plants that are sold at el mercado


Jackie (my Spanish teacher) and I on the terrace


Robert, Dave and Nicolai in La Mariscal


mmm...star fruit in my mojito!


Dave rock climbing at el roco droma


Public graffiti in Quito

This past week has been full of Spanish, spanish and more spanish. Dave and I have been taking classes at the school run through the Secret Garden hostel, the classes were taught on the upstairs terrace overlooking the city and we each took about 4 hours of class a day. I was originally going to take 40 hours of classes, but decided to only take 20…the city is a little claustrophobic for us, not to mention Spanish lessons are muy caro (very expensive). We decided to end our time in a Quito a week before schedule to allow us some time to explore the countryside before heading to our first farm on March 15th.
I have been studying Spanish with two friends we have met here from Europe; Nicolai from Germany and Robert from Holland. We have a lot of fun in our classes, we are constantly mispronouncing things; causing Jackie to erupt in laughing fits. The other day we were learning how to talk about temperature. Caliente = hot and frio= cold. Apparently you can only use the word “caliente” when talking about the temperature outside, not when referring to your body temperature. I learned this the hard way by saying “Yo estoy caliente” when Jackie asked how I was doing that particular day. This, in Spanish, literally means “I am horny”. And thus, the laughing fit began.
Other funny things about our Spanish classes; Dave and I take our Spanish classes at the same time, on the same terrace, but with different teachers. Our teachers enjoy asking us funny questions about our significant other and then shouting across the room in Spanish to tell the other one what we said about them. Good stuff. On Saturday, Jackie and Diana took me, Dave, Nicolai and Robert to the local market to teach us the names of fruits, vegetables, and popular Ecuadorian dishes. We stopped at a jugo stand (juice stand) and tried all different kinds of juices and milkshakes made from tropical fruits. The juices here are amazing! You pick any kind of fruit you want, in any combination, and they throw it all in a blender with ice and sugar and give you a huge cup of it; usually jugos cost only .50 cents! Our Spanish teachers introduced us to the women at the jugo stand and they kept giving us more and more combinations to try. I love love love the jugo de coco (coconut milk juice) and Dave likes alpalfa and morra (a green mixture similar to wheatgrass, and blackberry).
Also while exploring the market, Dave decided to buy me a lily flower to try and get a rise out of our Spanish teachers (the Ecaudorian people are very romantic, and Diana and Jackie swoon at us whenever we do anything remotely romantic). One of the women at the flower carts saw Dave give me the flower and was so enamored than she came over and gave me a rose as well. I came home from the market with a tummy full of jugo and an armful of flowers.
Sunday was our day off from class, so Dave, me, Nicolai and Robert walked down to an outdoor climbing gym in Quito and went climbing for a few hours. The routes were really difficult; definatly a challenge for Dave and pretty much an impossibility for me. Dave and Nicolai climbed while Robert and I ate mangos and lounged in the sun. Afterwards we went out for drinks in the tourist area of Quito, called La Mariscal.

Before I end this entry; just a few more observations of note:
-Buying school supplies is very very funny. In all the bookstores and school supply shops, they keep the spiral notebooks behind the counter and you need to ask for what you want (lined, not lined, big, small, etc.) They then pick one out for you, and there are always really funny pictures on the covers; which you just get stuck with. I wanted to get a super suave plain black notebook but I ended up with a huge picture of tweety bird winking at me. Yesterday Dave and I went to get another notebook because we ran out of paper, and ended up with a picture of a tiger and the caption “happy animals” on the cover. I find this small detail of life in Ecuador absolutely hysterical.
- Speaking in Spanish is like playing charades. My grip on the Spanish language is quite minimal, so asking for directions or ordering things often involves excessive gesturing and animation. Last night we met a man from Argentina whose English was just about as bad as our Spanish and we talked for a half an hour with him, acting out words in Spanish and English, pointing and making funny faces in order to get our points across. We laughed at each other more than we actually ended up talking, but it was a good language lesson for all parties involved.

Tomorrow Dave and I leave Quito for Mindo, a cloud rainforest that is home to more than 450 species of tropical birds! We will try and update soon; but no promises, we might be very busy chasing butterflies and spying on hummingbirds!

We love and miss you all….
Hasta la vista!