Galapagos cruise confirmed for 8 days/7 nights on the cheapest boat “New Flamingo.” Ran into United’s $75 fee for booking an award flight within 3 weeks. The GPS flights have disappeared from British Airways’ site. Got my certificate for finishing Spanish school: level B1 in Spanish, assuming more practice. Costs Flight booking fees included. Cost today: $144.18 Cumulative cost: $2,518.84
Last day of class! Formal Spanish learning is done and I hope I am prepared. I do wish we had gotten to the conditional and future tenses. Also the subjunctive would be nice. I’ll have to study more on my own. Later on, out in the Mariscal, N. found the perfect drunk food: the pizza cone. The perfect dessert for… Read more »
After school today I wandered around a bit in search of a store where I might buy a replacement Sony camera. It took me a while to even find the mall that I seemed to keep running into on my first day walking around, and still no luck finding a real electronics store that sells cameras. No, I haven’t Googled… Read more »
On to the fourth teacher. This Friday is a holiday, Guayaquil Independence Day. The Quiteños aren’t too concerned about it, but appreciate the vacation day with the long weekend, so the teachers suggested we take Friday off and make up the classes during the week. Because of this and a misunderstanding the previous week, I have 6 hours of class… Read more »
This was a weekend of rest and getting these posts up. The bus ride back was my first real long trip here at 11 hours on the bus plus 3 at the terminal. The bus made several stops, including a police ID checkpoint. I got back to la casa just in time for dawn. The rest of the day was… Read more »
I feel like my rate of absorption of Spanish is slowing down a bit. The classes feel harder as I have not digested and sufficiently practiced everything I’ve learned. Last day in the jungle. Today I went for the morning hike with the group instead of class. At one point while walking through the jungle the guide yelled run! Not… Read more »
Why am I intentionally going out at night to look at spiders? Today’s excursion went to the house of an indigenous Quichua family. There are 11 children in the house. It’s in a mostly razed area of jungle by the river, surrounded by plantains a and yucca plants which they use for food as well as some coffee and cacao… Read more »
By noon on the second day I haven’t yet done a walk in the jungle because I’ve had 7 hours of classes. The lodge is a surprisingly nice place to study, especially in the morning. However, I am starting to think that combining studies with the jungle trip was not the best use of my time and money here.
I almost didn’t make it to the jungle today. The logistics guy bought a bus ticket for the wrong day. The teacher and I did eventually get on a bus last night and, after little sleep and much waiting, got on a boat to the jungle lodge. It is a pretty place, well hidden away on a branch of the… Read more »
Finally got some good hiking in. The plan for today was to go up the gondola called the TeleferiQo up the mountain overlooking the west side of Quito and to hike further up from there to the top of the 4700m volcano named Rucu Pichincha. This would put me almost 2km above where I have been within a few hours,… Read more »