¡En Cuenca!

Today marks my first week I have been living with my host family in Cuenca, Ecuador. I have a nice big bed in a nice big room in a nice big house with a nice big family!

It's a 30-40 minute walk to school, but I like walking... minus the pollution here from all of the cars and buses. But I'm pretty sure they use diesel because huge clouds of thick black smoke comes out from all of the buses and cars and gets on you, your sunglasses, face, hair, clothes, everything. You can smell the diesel and see it when you clean your face and/or hands after walking the streets. It (literally) stinks but walking is nice around here. Just gotta watch out for bombas de agua (literally, water bombs, but it's water balloons) being thrown at you/people on the street for Carnaval (it's like Mardi Gras for Ecuador)! Trust me. During my first week here, I got hit (only my right heel, mwahahaha) by 3 huge buckets of water and pegged by a yellow water balloon Friday afternoon on my right shoulder. Carnaval isn't until March I believe, but they start to celebrate it in early early January. I suppose it's like pregaming. I'll get you back, whoever you were. Just you wait...

Luckily I have a few good friends who live near me and we sometimes walk back and forth to school and my host family's home in the morning and afternoon. This week has been crazy. I feel like I have already been here for a month, yet it's only a week today. It's feels like I've been in classes for such a long time! Crazy.

My intense Spanish classes have been going well so far; my first class, which runs from 8:30-10 is a Spanish conversation class where it's me and two of my friends and a profesora. It's awesome. We talk about anything and everything- society, family, the US and Ecuador, and most importantly, food. Later this week my two friends and I were speaking with our profesora about food and somehow banana bread, pumpkin bread, and zucchini bread came into the conversation. The next day, our profesora brought us delicious banana bread. ¡Que rica!! My second Spanish class, 10:30-12, is all grammar and writing Spanish. A very necessary class and obviously it's better to take Spanish classes in a Spanish-speaking country because the language sticks in your head easier as opposed to walking out the door of Spanish class in the US and hearing English so you forget what you've learned.

So here's my week backwards: today I visited Ingapirca/Incan ruins, yesterday I was lazy and hung around all day doing homework, hanging with my host family, Skyping with my Estados Unidos family and friends and introduced my host brother to "We Own the Night," which he liked. Friday I had a dance class then went out with my friends to a Mexican bar/restaurant called Chipotle. Soooo gooooood. Thursday my friends and I had a free afternoon so we went to a spa- paid 10 bucks for a steam room and use of hot spring pools (water from volcanoes!) and the boss threw in a free mud bath. That was wonderful!!! Tuesday I had cooking class and ate food glorious food and Monday was the first day of classes...trying to navigate to/from class/host home was at first difficult, but now I got it down pat and I know two different ways to get to school!

My host brother is asking me to watch another movie I brought. I think I'll introduce him to "Dodgeball." Who doesn't love that movie?!

Chau!