Trying to catch up

Where to start? First of all, I can´t believe this is my fifth week away!

Second, before the memory is lost forever (I hadn´t brought my camera), I´m usually pretty hard-to-impress when it comes to traveling and visiting churches. Almost every country I´ve been to has had a plethora...actually, that isn´t true, but they´ve all had plenty of some religious structure, whether it was wats, mosques, churchs or synagogues. And at this point I feel like a church is a church...and last week, I went to one of the most beautiful churches I´ve seen. It is the old cathedral in Cuenca, which has been restored with the help of the Spanish government and is no longer a house of worship (the "new" cathedral across the street was built in the late 1800s). Whether it was the pink painted columns inside or the lack of pews, giving it a more airy feeling, I was really, really impressed. The other people in the group thought it was really nice as well, and even the fact that I could hardly inderstand the tour guide didn´t matter.

I went to the cathedrals on a city tour with the school, on an afternoon with pouring rain (of course, on the day with the city tour!). We also went to a convent where the nuns never leave and no one can see them once they enter. They sell some creams they make, as well as supposedly good-for-you-health water that can be bought for $2. Our guide, one of the really good teachers at ths school, asked if we wanted to try it. I was the only one to decline, but the look on other people´s faces when they tried it confirmed that I had made the right decision. Only one person drank more than 2 sips, and he said it tasted "musty." I´d rather eat guinea pig again than drink musty tasting water, and I don´t really want to eat guinea pig again. We also went to a Panama hat factory/shop, where the guide was much easier to understand than the one at the old cathedral, restoring my faith in the fact that I have actually learned some Spanish (I think the cathedral guide had a lisp, and the others who spoke Spanish found her difficult to understand too). I sort of want to buy a Panama Hat (they are really from Ecuador, but were transported to the Panama Canal to be distributed for sale, hence the misnomer). I thought they´d all be really expensive, and some are $150, but you can also get them for $12.

I moved rooms on Saturday from one on the top floor to the middle floor. I´m not sure if it was a good move or not. The room and bathroom are bigger and connected, and the bed is certainly better, a main reason for the switch. But it also has a window and sliding glass door facing the street, which means light in the morning and sounds from the street. There was a dog barking at 2 am last night, and this afternoon the cow across the street (yes, even though I´m in a residential area of the third largest city in Ecuador) was mooing.

As for Cuenca, I feel like I am in Italy. The buildings are very European looking, the cars modern, the river cutting between the new (where I live) and old parts of the city flows quickly (April is the rainiest month). I really like it yet still think about going elsewhere. I think that life here is much easier than I expected it would be and I was hoping for a more different experience. I also really do want to volunteer, because otherwise I´ll spend all my afternoons either on the internet or watching TV (which either has subtitles in Spanish or is in Spanish, so it does help). But Cuenca is pretty well-off and I´m not sure there´s going to be an experience here that I´m interested in, although I am visiting a rehab center for women in jail tomorrow that might be the most promising place given my future career....

I like the family a lot (more on the weekend´s events soon) but one problem is, unlike the families in Guatemala, there´s no "dinner is at 7" - its variable, and sometimes really late. Last night I wasn´t hungry, luckily, but they knocked on my door at about 10:20, when I had already gotten in to bed. On Friday they had visitors from out of town and we had pizza. At 10:45. PM. Most nights it finishes around 10, but that doesnt work well with my going to sleep by 9:30 plan. I can get up a little later here since classes start later, but still.

Got to go...more soon.