Many many many apologies for taking so long to write the second (and probably what will be third) part(s) of this blog. THat's not to say I haven't been near the internet, just been so busy with other things that I haven't really had the time!
Anyways, that first Friday night we went for al ittle tour around the main touristy area - the Mariscal, and stopped off at a bar/restaurant, where towards the end of the evening they had some live salsa music! It was amazing to hear live salsa music and even have a go at dancing to it!
On Saturday we went to Otavalo which is a famous market in Ecuador. It's also absolutely huge and there's so much choice! I got to try out my haggling skills - got an alpaca blanket down to $15 from $18 which I was pretty proud of! It was actually quite overwhelming being there, fortunately I had only brought so much money so couldn't spend it all in the first weekend! We got back late afternoon and just relaxed a bit s it had been quite an early start to get there that morning. In the evening I went with Caroline, my housemate, to her friend Steffy's house to hang out with all of Steffy's friends. It was quite hard work having to concentrate the whole time to understand all the Spanish but good fun nonetheless.
Sunday was much more of a lazy day - slept in quite a lot, topped up my phone and then in the afternoon Caroline showed me where she works, so we did quite a bit of walking along some of the main streets in Quito. After dinner we went around to Steffy's to just hang out, taught some of her siblings English tongue twisters and they taught us some Spanish ones! It was overall a great first weekend, we did so much while still relaxing and acclimatising to being in Quito.
Monday was quite a quiet day at work, but in the afternoon I had slight adventure by going shopping with some work friends, and then realising I didn't have a map on me to work out how to get home! After a bit of asking and wandering around I just got a taxi, which in itself was a bit daunting as the driver didn't recognise the address at first...I got home ok though in the end. On Wednesday I had my afternoon off so had resolved to go and change my travellers cheques - unfortunately I had been slightly misinformed by my i-to-i co-ordinator and went to a bank where it wasn´t possible to change them, but by the time I got to the right bank it would have been too late to change them! That was ever so slightly annoying as I technically didn't have quite enough cash to last me a week - but I managed somehow! We went to the cinema on Wednesday night - what I thought was going to be a film in Spanish but actually turned out to be in English with Spanish subtitles. I obviously found this a bit easier... but I was reading the subtitles as well to get a feel for the Spanish! On Thursday I was back on the market I was meant to be working on, and in the evening I went to a crepe party at one of the girl's house, as a sort of farewell to her and two others who were leaving the next day. It was a lot of fun, and we had both sweet and savoury!
I know all this happened a long time ago, but I will do the following two weeks very soon, possibly in one post, but at least you have some idea as to what I've been up to!
Hasta luego!
xxx
