Day 4: These are the Laws of the Jungle
Tried getting up at 6:45 instead of 7 today, and that seems to work pretty well for getting me to La Lengua by 8:30. In fact, my body´s switched into that schedule remarkably fast - I found myself waking up five minutes or so before the alarm went off.
I think lessons with Pilar are going to go well. She´s a very cheerful and laid-back person, and I learned that before she became a teacher, she too was a psychology student. We´re still reviewing basic grammar, especially the uses of ´ser´vs. ´estar´ and different conversational phrases, but that´s really what I need right now. I can understand written Spanish just fine most of the time, but my ear for any language has never been great, and I don´t speak nearly as well as I understand.
After lunch at Isabel´s, I went back into the city looking for another phone service store, only to realize that I´d left my phone back in my room. Not wanting to walk all the way back, I decided to take a chance to explore the Supermaxi mall (I´ll have to get some photos of it - it´s a giant gray block of a building with no windows, like something out of 1984.)
Before I left for Ecuador, one of the ways I´d planned to practice Spanish was by getting some of my favorite books in the language, especially the works of Terry Pratchet and Stephen King. There turned out to be a fairly good bookstore in the mall, but unfortunately, they didn´t carry either of those authors, so I settled for El Libro de la Selva (i.e. The Jungle Book), and also picked up a Spanish dictionary small enough to fit in my purse.
I only have four pairs of shoes with me, and since hiking boots aren´t really city footwear, my current walking shoes are a pair of comfy black sandals, worn with thick kneesocks (not very trendy, I know, but I´m not trying for that). However, I only brought a few pairs of such socks, so after visiting the bookstore, I spent the rest of the afternoon roaming the mall, searching for a store that carried plain, neutral-colored kneesocks. I guess there isn´t much of a market for those in Quito, because out of several dozen stores that sold business clothing and/or footwear, I only found one that carried the socks I wanted.
With two books and three pairs of socks in tow, I returned to Isabel´s to read. Over dinner, Isabel informed me that the route I´ve been taking to La Lengua (the one down Rio Amazonas, which Roc showed me) is not only the long way around, but it´s a favorite haunt for ´ladrones´ (thieves). It´s a big main street and I´ve never seen anything suspicious during my walks, but I´ll still try the alternate route she recommended.
Day 5: She´s Got a Bitchin´ Cellphone
Since I didn´t want to risk being late if I got lost, I took the usual route to La Lengua this morning. While we were talking, Pilar agreed that the section of Rio Amazonas Isabel described isn´t safe, so I guess that settles it. Today turned out to be a good day for practicing conversation: there was some kind of special occasion at the school, and mid-morning all the teachers and students gathered in the common room for strawberry cake (which included Jell-o as an ingredient, something I´ve never seen before). I chatted with an Australian guy who´s also come to be an English teacher, and learned some phrases to describe my volunteer project in more detail.
Back in class we were supposed to be reviewing uses of ´ser´and ´estar´, but a few of the test sentences I´d written were about pets, and that got us into a big animated discussion about our own pets, past and present. It was fun trying to describe the names ´Sunshine´ (luz del sol), ´Nightwind´ (viento de la noche), and especially ´Fortitoad´ (a rough description of fortitude´s meaning, con la palabra inglés para ´sapa´) in Spanish. We tried to get back on track, only to come to a sentence about birds hatching, which led to a series of very funny stories about the habits of Pilar´s parrot and parrots in general, continuing until class time ran out. Oh well, it´s all language practice.
Since I wasn´t in any hurry, I tried the recommended alternate route back to Isabel´s house. It really isn´t much shorter, and since it´s a lot of smaller winding streets, I really didn´t feel any safer. But, if it will set Isabel´s and Pilar´s minds at ease, I´ll keep using it.
Since it was raining, I stayed inside for the first part of the afternoon, which turned out to be a good thing because Roc came to visit, along with his aggresively cute son, Tommy. We chatted a bit, and he managed to figure out what was wrong with my phone, while I tried to keep Tommy entertained with some of the English children´s books I´d brought and stop him from putting his lollipop in his hair.
It turns out I don´t know very much about cellphones (I´ve never claimed I did), and it was only mad at me because I´d used up all its initial minutes and then given it the wrong kind of chip. Very embarrassed, I went back to the mall and bought more minutes, as well as several more pairs of socks. Back at home I experimented with calling my mom again, but it didn´t go very well - the phone still couldn´t receive her calls, and the card expired after ten minutes, so we´re back to square one. This time, I really do need to get technical service.
