shopping, the subjunctive and other mundane details

Hola!

Today I thought I´d give you a glimpse into a few more of the details of my life in Quito. Every morning I sit at a desk with my teacher Sandra and fly through various grammatical lessons. We have a half hour break where I chat in English with students from around the world, and make plans for various activities outside of class. Right now, I´m working on the subjunctive tense (I hope you have a great trip to Thailand...'have' being the subjunctive) and learning basic words like 'mismo' that have many different uses. I struggle with maintaining focus and energy for 4 hours but we´re certainly covering a lot of material. My classmates also have various degrees of success, often feeling frustrated with the slow nature of learning a language.

My family continues to be interesting. Last week, my host father´s brother was in the hospital for surgery so he wasn´t around at all after my first night here. He is around more now which is nice and I´m slowly getting to know other people who appear now and again like a cousin from Iberra (city to the northish) and the housekeeper who I just found out recently actually lives here! Last night, my little sister Maria Jose helped me with my homework - aka did my homework :) There´s nothing like an 11 year old telling you what´s right and wrong for a little humility.

I´m starting to explore more of Quito this week. Yesterday, 5 of us from the school (all English speakers...oh yeah!) went to an art museum in a neighbourhood of the city that had incredible views. The museum held 3 different areas - the pre-colonial, colonial, and the modern. All of the modern art was work by an artist by the name of Guayasamin. He was born in Quito and is of Indian descent. His work is quite phenomenal and I bought a little copy of a print to bring home. This outing was followed by a class on the medicinal properties of plants at the school and I´m looking forward to testing one of the plants, Marco, for its insect repellant properties next week in the jungle.

Today, I did a little shopping and I successfully bought myself a yellow Ecuador soccer shirt for the match tomorrow. I also got some excellent bootlegs of all 4 seasons of the Office and the movie Australia for $8 all together - now, granted, I´ve already found that the disc labeled season 1 for the office contains episodes that are definitely not season 1 - but pretty fun regardless. Later in the week, in addition to the football match, I´ll be heading to the old town again with my teacher to explore some churches. I´ll probably stay for the afternoon as well to explore more of the sites.

I continue to enjoy the food here, overall, and have been healthy the whole time so far! other than being exhausted by most afternoons or evenings. The weather is lovely - cool in the mornings and evenings and hot in the afternoon. I have yet to wear shorts and always carry a sweater and umbrella with me. The altitude change hasn´t been too bad although I still take quite a while climbing the hills back to my casa. I´m about to head off to my first salsa class at the school but before I sign off - one more interesting observation. I´ve been noticing that a lot of the youth here are wearing Palestinian scarves (I should know the name, but I don´t). I noticed Juan Pablo, the boyfriend of Karla Sofia one of the daugthers in my house, wearing one and I asked if this was because people here were really concerned about the liberation of Palestine or what the deal was. He replied that it´s simply 'moda' or in fashion. Interesting. Quite strange to think that something with such a serious cause behind it can become teen fashion a world away from its source.

Ciao!