2 weeks in Quito (briefly!!)

Arrived on the saturday after a pretty long journey and was very happy to be reunited with my bags after 24 hours! So Quito was cool (well sort of!). Took a little while to settle to things. Soon learnt that when someone says 5 minutes, they mean anything from 5 to one hour! My host family were really great and there were 2 other girls in the same house, one from Belgium (who didn´t speak english!!) and an aussie girl who had slipped on the floor and broken her arm! (mental note, wear shoes at all times Katherine!). I do think my spanish improved quite a bit though! spoke loads in spanish and we banned english and french in the house! A lot of miming went on and dictionary was always to hand!

The school

So the point of Quito was the spanish school.....one on one lessons....women called Katherine also! She was weird and we didn´t get on too well! She spent most of her time laughing at me! RUDE! It wasn´t my fault I wanted to take my clothes to the bakery store and not the laundry! My spanish isn´t that good! But yeah the lessons were pretty tough! Involved a lot of concentraion and my concentration span lasts for 10 minutes! The second week, we had 5 hours a day because there was a holiday on the monday so we had the day off! So we started at 8am! Yes 8am! Ahh nightmare! And our break wasn´t until 11am! So i manageed to work it that i arrived at school for 8am and then spoke to Luis, the boss guy for 5 minutes, spanish conversations are pretty quick with me involved! So we started at 8.05, then i would have 2 green tea breaks because there coffee was rubbish and that took got me through to 11am! Then we had another 1.5 hours after break!! But yeah learnt a fair bit, not sure from my teacher though! The family i stayed with taught me a lot and spoke to yocals a fair bit too! So i felt really bad when my teacher then gave me a present when i left! I literally spent the whole of the 2 weeks moaning about her! Ops! So school was cool, people were nice, we had organised trips on wednesdays, went to a freaky museum with crazy weird pictures and did a tour of the old historical town which was really pretty at night. All good....although i was happy when the two weeks were up!

Home stay

Family i stayed with were really nice, kids got a bit annoying at times, they screamed a lot! I soon worked out that lending them my DSlite kept them quiet for a long time! They were sweet though, not at 5.30am when they woke everyone up to go to school. How many times can they lose their shoes!! The mother was such a good cook, we had soup everynight followed by my fav rice!! Nah to be fair, food was great. So the 2nd weekend i was there was the holiday weekend, was a festival. The mother decided to take the students to the casino on the friday night! was hilarious! There was a parade for the holiday and free drinks all night! And bread! Random! I had to get up really early the next day though so wasn´t drinking, it was really hard for us to get Martha (spanish mum) to actually leave!!

Quito

So quito is er quite an interesting place, its not really that safe for tourists, you basically are advised to get a taxi after dark! The city is pretty big though and fair few things to do and see. Its also really high up, so you can get pretty sick with the attitude. A few of us took the cable car to the top of the mountain, you get to like 4000m, the views were amazing. The scenary of the place is really cool. Strangest weather though, i managed to get burnt walking to school and then in the afternoon it thunderd! Had to get into bed it was so cold! they have no heating, it was like england with no heating! Was hard work ha ha! So went out couple of times, first time to an irish pub for quiz night for Maria´s voluntree program, we won! I had nothing to do with it though! he he. Then went to a local bar for some salsa and then last night went to a nice restaurant and to a couple of bars.

Trips

So i visted cotepaxi (hight mountain) and quiatoa (crator lake) at the weekend. Group from the school stayed in a really cool hostel. Cotepaxi hike was great, you drive so far up and then walk the rest. The walk is so hard because you are so high up! It took so long because you really get out of breath! We stopped in a refugee place for possibly the nicest hot chocolate ever! And then climb a bit further up, it was snowing and everything! We saw the top of the mountain for like 10 seconds because it was quite a cloudy day, but it was very cool! Then the best bit, we walked back down to the cars and biked down to the bottom! It was a bit scary, ok it was a lot scary you go so fast and my hands were pretty cold it was hard to work the breaks! But after the steep bit, it was really fun just cruising down to the bottom! Was quite proud to be the only girl to do it in my group, the others were wimps! ha ha. Then back to hostel for a no rice dinner and watched a film. Next day, up early again, in fact i haven´t slept in once yet! and had a bit of a bus ride to the crator lake, the scenary was very pretty so many mountains, the drive was pretty scary! Stopped on the way at a market, which was interesting! hopefully i will get some photos on this thing and also a house of indegenous people. then trekked down to the bottom of crator like, was really cool, geat views and the lake was wicked. So you get a donkey to take you back to the top....i walked with an american couple and we let our donkeys drink water and rest at the bottom! Thought if i walk down i should really walk back up, we left about 20 minutes before the donkeys and we got to the top before them! Was quite happy with my achievement!

The following weekend, caught the bus to Otavalo, which is a market about 2 hours away! Harsh getting up at 6am to get bus! and the bus journey was a bit scary! But market was really good, loads of hand made things, we missed the animal trading in the morning, but didn´t have anything to trade anyway! Bus journey on the way back was even scarier! You couldn´t actually see out because there were like door things that partitioned the bus. Was scary! But hey i am not the best passenger....was very happy to get off!

Had an orientaion meeting for the islands in the 2nd week and was told to go and get mosqutio net and face mask by the women! Was a bit of a mission to find in quito! They have 2 really nice malls with expensive shops, so random!

I feel a whole paragraph should be dedicated to the taxis of quito and the roads, they are mental. I do not know how the hell they work their roads, i think it must be an ecuadorian secret that is passed on! But the taxis were crazy, if someone overtook them they literally would have to get them back and overtake! No wonder they have so many holes in their cars!

So that´s it about Quito really, seems like quite a while ago (writing this on sat 15th, left last sunday!) It was a mad city to be honest, not really that welcoming to the old tourist but had quite a lot of things to offer.....will miss my host family they were really sweet, hopefully i will get to see them for a coffee before i come home!