it´s been a whole week here. i can´t believe it. it´s been good so far. no complaints. and as i said on facebook i feel a little detached from the world. or at least from the states. i checked on news very briefly last night since internet connection is absolutely horrible in the apartment. we have no wifi so we end up trying to log onto someone´s unsecured network in order to check anything. and then we have it for about a minute, then it´s gone again. SO frustrating. anyway... so basically, it snowed in boston, there´s some talk about banning assault weapons and then something about lance armstrong being a fraud. yeah.... i´m kinda glad i´m removed from all that.
i´ll have to give a snapshot of my prior couple days since i don´t have much time before class starts. saturday i went to quilotoa. my roommate tom also went and we met up with other people for a tour. it was good, but i had to get up at 6 am. yikes!! quilotoa is about 2 hours away and is an old volcano which is now a crater which surrounds a lake. it was very pretty. you could definitely tell the altitude change while we were there. quito is about two times the altitude of denver... so we are really high up and def close to the sun (which i happened to learn the hard way as i´m peeling now). so we walked down to the bottom of crater to the water. the walk down was slippery but okay. the people coming up were all out of breath. luckily we all decided to get some caballos (horses) for the way up. el caballo was the best 8 dollars i´ve ever spent. seriously. not only did it only take about a half hour but we also still had our breath. we did have to walk just a little ways from where we got off the horse to where went for lunch... and in just that time i was out of breath pretty easily. there will be a pic of me on facebook somewhere on a horse because there were several people coming down as we were going up who decided to take their cameras out. wonderful!! haha. it was a good day, but i was SO tired at the end and went to bed at about 9 that night.
sunday i decided to walk to go to a local cafe and get a coffee. i somehow ordered a cafe au lait instead of the original coffee with milk that i like back home. oh well. it was good. and a delicious bakery as well. after this i walked to mariscal square to watch the game. now, mariscal square, people dub as ¨gringoland¨because you mainly hear english being spoken instead of spanish. which... is okay to feel at home but it´s almost way too touristy. i went to sports planet ... and to my surprise, or maybe not, all the fans were patriots fans! yay! i got there a little early so i was able to see a bit of the falcons seahawks game. a fun, or rather not so fun fact, is that on sundays they stop serving alcohol after 4. dislike. major dislike. so i´m glad i got there a little earlier because i was able to have a couple beers during the falcons game. i ended up making some friends with some people... one guy who lives in nevada, damon, who was older and a broncos fan. and then another guy who i can´t remember his name who lives in dc and was down here for researching birds. he will be in the amazon this week therefore i have no chance of seeing him this weekend. i ended up getting an upset stomach during the game so i missed the last two minutes of the first half. and halftime and the beginning of the third quarter. during this time, the bar also stopped serving completely. so when i got out of the bathroom i went to the bar next door and saw damon. so i watched the game with him. the other guy left. bummer. yay, the patriots won. we parted ways and he gave me $10 for the cabride back. meanwhile, it is only $2 or $3. i´ll take it though. haha.
also on sunday, i got two new roommates, petra from austria. and nadine from germany. both nice and super fun. i like both of them. we get along pretty well. we are hoping to go to otavalo and el mitad del mundo (the equator) this weekend.
monday i still felt a little ill so i stayed in bed in the morning. such a bummer. but i managed to get ready and go to the school. to my surprise they put me in a one on one class. i didn´t sign up for that. i signed up for the group classes. the teacher was nice, gustavo. and there were pros and cons to being on my own. i can go at my own pace... which is a plus. but... then all the pressure is on me... that´s the con. during the break i found out that i will actually be put in a group class with nadine and that petra will be solo with gustavo. i guess because i´m more advanced. which... i don´t think so. i finished the day with gustavo and then went about my way.
tuesday, again, felt ill so i didn´t do anything in the morning. didn´t even get out of bed. i didn´t think i was going to go to school. but i got up and showered and took a bunch of pepto bismol and headed off. i finally felt okay, which is nice. so mi profesora ahora es evelyn. evelyn es muy chevere y divertida. i like gustavo too, but they´re a bit different. evelyn is someone you want to go to the bar with. ha. after class they had a soccer match teacher versus students which petra and i went to. i can´t say it was exciting but it was good to get out.
and here it is wednesday. the girls and i went to the bakery today and then i went to the supermarket to pick up a couple things. and now i´m here. almost ready for class. i had a couple pages of homework and i hope i got them right. when to use estar and when to use ser and then tener and tener que. i hope i´m right. i think that i am. if not, then well, that´s why i´m here. to learn. and let me just say i SO wish i found the importance of learning another language when i was younger. i feel so ignorant here only knowing english. if only i realized when i was in high school and college that keeping up with spanish would be a smart thing to do.
ANYWAY.... class is about to start. hasta luego!
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