Nina es feo....... no!! Nina es frio!

Week 2

14th - 20th September

 We are getting into the swing of our spanish lessons with many hilarious mistakes occuring along the way! Robin has managed to call his tutor fat twice by accident, Lizzi has managed to call her tutor old and I have managed to call Nina (Lizzi's tutor) ugly when attempting to say cold. Im sure they love us! We have been on a class excursion to the old town of Quito to Plaza Independencia which is surrounded by La Cathedral and the presidents palace. We even got to go on a tour inside the palace and see the Ecuadorian version of the house of commons.

We have also visited Ottavalo market which is the biggest Latin American market and sells loads of local produce at a reasonable haggling price. The produce is mainly alpaca scalves, blankets, jumpers and ponchos along with lots of beautifully weaved tapestrys full of vibrant colours. There are also some pretty awesome hammocks and hammock chairs! It was our first proper journey out of Quito since we got here and we managed it quite well only getting lost once. On the bus to Ottavalo was the usual human beings plus a ginger kitten and a bull dog puppy in a pink t-shirt. Whilst the market was full of beautiful goods there was also lots of very poor old beggars with barely any teeth asking for money. It seemed so unjust that 'gringos' (foreigners) come to this market with more money in their pockets than these people earn in numerous years whilst these poor old people had to beg for food and clothing. They were so small in stature that the women often reminded me of my momonashraf (my iranian gran).

Whilst at the market we did try are hand at a bit of haggling........... often failing badly at trying to be convincing in our pleas that we only had $10 whilst Robin got his wallet out infront of the vendor clearly showing we had a $20 note. But it did help me practice my spanish asking ¿Caunto cuesta esto? Es ist moi caro! (how much is that? and that is very expensive). We did in the end purchase a few alpaca items and a brightly woven throw for our hideous sofa back home knocking between 25%- 50% off the original vendor price. A succesful day............... although we had to get Lizzi to pay for our bus fair home!

We have also attended our first Latin Link prayer meeting at a fellow latin link missioanries home. There were 11 of us and it was great to meet some of the extended members of latin link in Ecuador. Especially making new friends with three people who are living in Santo domingo de los Colorados where we will be for the next 5 months doing teaching and church work.

On sunday we went to a baptist church which is just down the road from where we are staying. The service was an epic 3 hours with 2 and a half hours of it spent on a sermon! It started well with lots of kissing and greeting and then moved into the worship leader crooning a love song to his wife in front of the whole congregation to celebrate their 12th wedding anniversary!

Other random highlights are:
-Seeing a green humming bird right in front of our faces.
- Seeing a massive (almost trantula-esc) dead spider on the pavement. (which means they are out there somewhere, lurking!)
-watching a man juggle machetes whilst balancing a ball on his head.
- seeing a man  breath/ eat fire at a traffic light.
- After 2 failed attemtps last week to find the Quito ultimate frisbee team we have sucesfully tracked them down and Lizzi and Robin played a game with them on tuesday night in la Carolina park. (As i cant catch and care more about my nails breaking, i stayed on the side lines silently cheering)! Lizzi then proceeded to get cramp in the taxi home which made the taxi driver crack up in hysterics. 

We are all feeling much better now so thank you for any prayers said! Please can you pray that we manage to pick up spanish quickly so that we can communicate better with the Ecuadorian people.

With love from Ecuador xxxx