Feb. 18 - 22 - Puedo Hablar Español

My final week of Spanish lessons started off great. I had a fabulous teacher in the morning, and the afternoon teacher, Pablo, was a guy I had met my first week at the language school and really wanted as a teacher.

I managed to click with my morning teacher very quickly, so much so that she is insisting I return to the language school when I'm finished my project to say hi and let her know how it went. We had some great discussions (in Spanish) about the political situation in Ecuador and how it is being affected by the US and other countries. We also were able to learn the other three past tenses (yes, Spanish has four past tenses...one of which I can't determine when to use). As the week went on I started to realize how much confidence I had gained in Spanish (I'm cracking jokes left, right and centre in Spanish now) so the classes moved away from learning grammar and vocabulary, and more towards just sitting back and chatting. By the end of it I felt I had learned enough Spanish to survive quite well, and all I needed now was to increase my vocabulary. That will come over time as I head off to my projects and travelling.

My afternoons with Pablo were just as entertaining. He was a very relaxed teacher and tons of fun. We even spent two afternoons at the school playing Cuarenta. (popular card game in Ecuador) and chatting about soccer and his life (A quick side note ... Ecuador used to have mandatory military service and Pablo's service was on the front line with Peru in the jungle while tensions were high between the two countries. His service ended two months before the war broke out and his posting was one of the first places hit. Now the military service is governed by a lottery.) It felt like hanging out with one of the guys at home, except that we spoke Spanish. The best thing about Pablo was his desire to remove any evidence of my knowledge of French when I speak Spanish. We spent many hours just working on my accent to make sure that I used the Spanish rules when speaking, not the French rules (but some words are just so close that I default to my French classes .... especially with the number 10).

When Pablo and I weren't playing cards (which included a match between Lee and his teacher on Thursday .... Pablo and I won .... or rather Pablo won and I was on his team) we headed downtown. On Monday we tried to get into the Quito Cultural Museum, only to find it was closed along with the President's house. Instead Pablo took me on a tour of the churches in downtown Quito, although about half of them were closed as well. I was able to experience a bit of Ecuadorian business as Pablo works part time selling perfume and makeup. We met some of his clients/friends where I was able to help with my first (of hopefully many) Spanish business transaction.

Friday's trip was to the house of the President. This was a fascinating visit and a relatively new attraction in downtown Quito as it has only been since the last President that you are allowed to visit the house. It was an incredibly beautiful colonial home full of gifts from other countries which the current President has determined are gifts to the people not to him, as previous presidents have determined (a main goal of his administration is to bring the government to the people .... a good strategy since Ecuador has had 10 presidents over the past 12 years). The President's house is situated on east side of Plaza Grande. The other three sides include Ecuador's main church, the provincial government building and the Hotel Quito. From this plaza the Spanish were able to control Ecuador since all three branches of power were situated here (Spain, Ecuador and Church). The square carries so much importance that one journalist went so far to say that the Hotel Quito is the craziest hotel in the world because every day at 2 you were able to look out your hotel room window and see a revolution in the plaza (not far off when you remember this country has had 10 presidents in 12 years).

During my time at the school I have become very interested in the projects other students are doing here and I really want to know more about them. As such on Monday morning, Mer took me to see where Anna is currently working as a teaching assistant at a school for street children. These children come from various backgrounds (orphans and street kids ... some are even child prostitutes) and attend this free school (you have to pay for most schools in Ecuador). The school consists of about 200 students in a remarkably well equipped school. Sadly when Mer and I arrived the students were actually in class, so we didn't get much time to interact with them. However, I will have the ability to return after I'm finished my project to spend time with the kids at their break and find out more about them.

The nights were pretty unadventurous, except for Friday night. While I was tying my shoes at Susy's doorway, to head out to catch the bus downtown to visit my friends for a drink at the Coffee Tree, there were two loud cracks and then alarms started going off all over the street and Susy started screaming. All I could gather from her screams was that the guard had been shot (his post is directly below Susy's window). For the next five to ten minutes Susy kept yelling at the top of her lungs out the window to "kill him" (the criminal). She was so frantic that I didn't know whether or not the assassin was still out on the street, whether the guard was alive or dead, nor could I comprehend what was happening. We crouched low in fear until we were sure the assailant was no longer in the street. It wasn't until we went down to the street and joined a group of men who were examining the shell casings that was I able to determine what had happened. (Susy was still in shock as she was the one who saw the whole thing and sounded the alarm). It turns out that a man had come to this neighbourhod and assaulted the guard (it appears he was only after the guard, no one else on the street). The guard got into a struggle with the assailant when the gun went off twice. The guard chased the man down the street where there was a taxi waiting. He jumped in and sped off. The man I spoke with wasn't sure where the guard was hit (possibly the leg), all he knew was that the guard was still alive. Needless to say I was quite shaken and my only thought was to get out of there. I hailed a cab and headed downtown (it was about 30 minutes after the shooting and neither the police nor ambulance had arrived .... yet another eye opener).

Once I got to the Coffee Tree (my forth night in a row. I think I have been there too much because Lee and I were able to correctly guess the next song 3 out of 4 times that night) I had a strong drink to calm my nerves. Surprisingly I wasn't as shaken about the whole thing when I returned that night so I slept quite well. Susy on the other hand, has been more overprotective now insisting that I stand at the corner instead of the bus stop so that I have more escape routes if someone comes up (she yelled at her nephew when he didn't stand at the corner). In the days following we managed to learn that the guard will be alright and only received a flesh wound to his hand. For me it was a lesson that has made me even more aware of the dangers around the city, most of which I can do nothing about, but that I have to be conscious of and take any precaution I can.

Feb. 16-17 - A gallant attempt at a weekend

Well it was quite the valiant attempt at a great weekend, even if it did fail. The goal this weekend was to go to Mindo, but when we found out the bus schedule we knew that our plans would have to change. With that decision made we decided to split up an I, along with Mer and Anna, headed off to Calderón, home of bread dough sculptures of the most intricate detail.

After an hour and a half of walking around the city and calling people to find out which bus to take, we finally were on our way to Calderón only to find we were driving into the strongest rain shower the world has ever seen. By the time we got off the bus the roads had turned into rivers. So needless to say we decided to have lunch and wait for the rain to subside.

Well the rain didn't subside at all, instead we think it just got stronger. So armed with our rain coats (or nothing in Mer's case) we headed into the town to find the market and were very disappointed to find there were none of these bread figures we had heard so much about. So we decided to walk a little further into the town but finally gave up on hoping to find those sculptures. It wasn't until we were waiting for the bus that Mer was talking to someone who actually knew what we were talking about and directed us to the correct area of town that had these sculptors.

When we finally found a store with these sculptures we were blown away by the detail these artists were able to make with bread. They were small models of people, busses (with enough detail to count the individual bananas that were on the top of the bus) and a lot of Christmas themed items and ornaments. The owner of the shop was also more than willing to open up her workshop for us where we were able to see how she made everything. We were very happy to have found this before heading back to Quito.