Quito days and nights

My first full week in Quito was a bit more of a struggle than I had envisaged, as my memories of living abroad had somehow blotted out the difficulties of mastering a language and settling in to another culture. So for a few days, I was feeling quite fragile and come my birthday I resembled a leaky tap as I was ready to burst into tears at the slightest drawback or, indeed, nicety (not much hope there either way!). However, all in all the week was good and I had already met a great group of people with whom to spend the evening of my 25th – at Quito´s cheesy, gringoid, sticky-floored answer to the Raz in Liverpool or Brest´s Red Lion! - so I was alright really and I would put my fragile state down to the overhang of jet lag and general fatigue.

The Spanish school that I have been attending, Apu-Inti (which apparently means senor-sol or Mister Sun in an indigenous language), is absolutely wonderful and the profesors and profesoras there seemingly would do anything for anyone. Alongside the superb intensive one-to-one language classes we are invited to take part in Ecuadorian cookery classes and visits to various museums, which breaks the week up well. On my birthday they made me a cake and sang happy birthday to me in Spanish; admittedly this was slightly embarrassing but I was touched by it. Last Friday night I headed to a salsa club called Seseribo in the Mariscal with one of the teachers and some other students and I was pretty enchanted by the atmosphere and the music, although my own salsa dancing leaves a lot to be desired and I intend to take classes before I attempt to go again! Some guy tried to sweep me away and teach me to salsa but alas he himself was fairly ridiculous with two left feet and reminded me of a Latino uncle at a wedding, so I won´t be practising any of his steps in a hurry. Just to watch other people dancing was amazing and although Ecuador isn´t renowned for its dancing like Cuba is, there are clearly plenty of enthusiasts here to learn from.

Saturday night saw me join the Ozzies (Hannah is Australian) and other westerners at the Secret Garden hostel in the Old Town for an all-you-can-drink slap-up meal complete with burgers and familiar feel-good humour. Much as I would love to integrate, it is quite difficult to do so in this city and I was well in need of some light relief. Feeling much more myself, I then went to meet up with Erin and some others for Martijn´s birthday drinks in the Mariscal and we ended up at a raucous house party full of beautiful Latino boys (I don´t think it was just beer goggles) and muchos language-swapping. Using my frog-radar I managed accidentally to suss out the only French boy in Quito and there we embarked on a conversation that began in Spanish, lapsed into French and ended in English – all very confusing, especially when mixed with tequila.

Although I seem to be managing a social life quite well, I do find my homestay a little bit restricting and exhausting but I appreciate that it is really the best thing for my Spanish. It has been fascinating finding out what Ecuadorians eat for their various meals, and in these parts dinner is invariably sopa (a lovely, thick creamy soup with lots of veggies) followed by rice, meat and fried banana (delicious) and for breakfast scrambled eggs on toast with a hot drink, fresh fruits of all kinds and fresh fruit juice. It is a very ´wholesome´ diet and I could probably never tire of the gorgeous selection of fruits they have here, although perhaps after a month I will be sick of the meat and rice combo (but never the fried platano!). Seriously, Martha and Alejandro are the perfect host family but I value my independence far too much and can´t bear to have everything done for me, so I have found a room to rent in an apartment for my second month here.

Quito is a beautiful city full of charismatic people but I haven´t fallen in love with it as I have with many other cities – perhaps I just like my cities industrial and faceless! Quito is a massive city which is very narrow but stretches for an eternity alongside its mountainous backdrop. On Saturday morning, having been woken up early by my surrogate family, I paid a visit to the Museo del Banco Central, with its varied and interesting array of perfectly crafted Inca domestic tools and ceramics, colonial art and modern paintings, before wandering to the Parque Carolina to catch up on some reading and then lunching in the old town near the Plaza Grande. On the downside it is hard for me to adjust to being somewhere where it is completely unsafe to walk around at night – honestly, all the guide books are like “you WILL get a taxi even if it just two blocks away”and the locals echo the same thing – but I will get used to it. Plus on Saturday afternoon three girls tried to mug me in the old town using the charming method of spitting on my hand to distract me and then opening my front pocket, but luckily I had my arm around it so they were unable to get away with their dirty trick. Definitely not carrying all my stuff around again though! I haven´t seen as much poverty as I expected to (save that awakening for Peru) but there is supposedly a lot of petty crime and random attacks here, sadly, on both tourists and natives.

The Quito City Paper itself is quite shambolic and disorganised, which got me down last week as I felt as though I had no purpose and not enough work (no really, after Adfero that is particularly hard to deal with!!) but I have just sent Martijn an extensive list of my story ideas and I am excited that my next few weeks of work consists of exploring various bars, restaurants and music venues and writing about them; jammy, huh?! I am also considering going with Hannah to Cotopaxi next week to do some horseback riding and to climb the volcano itself, if I can rearrange my lessons and convince Martijn to let us both be out of the office. Either way, I am anticipating much more fun to be had in the weeks to come, and I am quite amazed by how much Spanish I am coming to understand and speak, so I think that will enrich my experiences along the way too.

I hope Manchester and your various other towns are treating you all well; you will all no doubt be amused to hear that once again I have chosen a location with high rainfall - every time! Although the mornings are hot and sunny and I know that approximately what time it will rain each day and when I need to take my trendy cagoule along with my other highly trendy travelling clothes (wearing the same three outfits day in day out is also quite hard to fathom at first!).