Monday and Tuesday were full
days of Spanish classes. They weren’t
kidding when they named the program “intensive beginner Spanish.” We were in class from 8 am to noon, with one
15 minute break. Lunch was from 12 to 1
and then we were back in class from 1 to 4 pm, with another 15 minute
break. On the first day, we learned how
to ask and answer five basic questions: 1. Cómo te
llamas? (What is your name?). 2. Tienes
hermandos? (Do you have siblings) 3. De dónde eras? (Where are you from?) 4. Donde estás? (Where are you?) 5. Cuántos
años tienes? (How old are you). We also
learned people in the family, professions, countries and nationalities,
directions, numbers, a long list of regular verbs and basic anatomy. It was definitely a lot for one day but I can
speak a lot of what we learned. I also
feel much more competent than I did when we got here. The hard part is understanding when somebody
else speaks!
Rosita has a
daughter who lives in Bolivia. She is
visiting this week with her son, Oliver, who is probably about 2 years
old. We have been hanging out after
dinner the past few nights and playing with balloons. It’s perfect because neither one of us speaks
much Spanish.
Quito is a big
city, and it is the capital of Ecuador.
We live in the Northern part of the city, which seems to be pretty
wealthy. The school where we learn
Spanish is a little less than a mile walk from our house and the people here
are very aggressive drivers so anytime we cross the street we have to run. Quito has similar architecture to Peru: lots
of colors, and the buildings are mostly made up of squares and rectangles, with
flat roofs. We can easily see the Andes
in the distance. There are three buses
that run throughout the city. The one
that we will be taking to/ from our clinical sites is called the trole
bus. It costs a quarter for each ride,
regardless of how far you go. Also, the
money here is kind of strange, because they accept US dollars, but often you
will receive gold dollars as your change instead of bills. There are also coins that are worth the same
amount and roughly the same size as dimes and quarters, but they are not dimes
and quarters. It all seems very random
to me.
I love my
homestay. The food is absolutely
fantastic. Sunday night we had tomatoes
stuffed with chicken and cheese, along with soup, rice and cucumbers. Monday night we had a mushroom soup, fish, and
broccoli in some sort of citrus juice. It
is getting hard to keep track of all of it because we keep having different
stuff. All of the flavors are so rich.
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