holathe weather is so hot here at the moment, definitely hotter than last month! i got back after teaching today to be told that the new monkey had escaped and somehow managed to squeeze through the bars of my window and eaten my fruit! i´m not sure how much mess was made as it was all cleaned up when i got back but my skirt had been washed and the floor cleaned!there were no classes on monday so a few of us went to the beach and had a picnic. strangely the...

hiyait was my birthday yesterday so i went out on saturday night with friends. they bought me a huge birthday cake that was enough to feed the rest of the bar as well as us! around about midnight (not really sure when that was as everyones watches were different with a range of about 30mins!) i was whipped with a belt 19 times which is apparently an ecuadorean tradition!yesterday i went to the beach with everyone. diego wanted to take me class IV rafting but...

i´ve spent two nights in baños which is such a nice town. it´s really small and unfortunately quite touristy and there´s lots of tour agencies for rafting, canyoning etc. i stayed in a really nice hostel with HOT WATER!! something i haven´t had for over a month! on thursday morning i decided to act on everyone´s recommendation and do the bike ride from baños to see the waterfalls. it was 18km from baños to el pai...

had a few days off from the school so thought i´d do a bit of travelling! did the riobamba train to la nariz del diablo this morning which is a tourist train where everyone sits on the roof. la nariz del diablo is a steep solid bit of rock so when they were building the track they designed a series of switchbacks to get around it. therefore at that section of the track the train goes forwards, then backwards in order to ascend the 1000m to alusi. a cou...

hiya i was supposed to go on to my next placement yesterday but have decided to stay here in tena for another month instead. saw my first tarantula the other night on the outside of my bedroom wall! the last few days have been really hot so have spent a lot of time in the river. went to a new beach yesterday and was absolutely eaten alive by mosquitos! i`ve only had a couple of bites since i arrived and i havent been using repellent, until i put on the 100%deet...