Last Thursday was a pretty typical day at Quintilano Sanchez, as was lunch at Alejandro’s restaurant and our two hour Spanish lesson. I also had my third private salsa lesson with Silvano. I’m really getting a lot out of these lessons . After my lesson, I decided to get some coffee because we were planning to go out that night. I went to Juan Valdez Café which is right in the Plaza Foch (one of the main plaza’s for going out in Quito). I tried to order just a coffee… but I guess I said yes to a caramelo as well, and ended up with a huge piece of chocolate cake. O well… The cashier at the café talks so fast…

Thursday night after dinner, we went out to the street La Calama and Juan Leon Mera, a really fun place to go out. We started off at a bar called No Bar which had terrible music from the 80’s. We quickly left No bar and headed to Yes Bar, which was actually a lot of fun (and appropriately named). We quickly meshed in with the birthday party that was there, and ended up dancing in a conga line for about 20 minutes. The next bar we went to was a salsa place, which I liked of course. Sam, however, doesn’t like to salsa, so we headed out of there quickly. Finally, we went to a bar across the street. The people downstairs were kind of creepy, so we went upstairs and outside. A couple of people came out to try and talk to us, but most were also creepy and we sent them away. Eventually a group of really nice guys came out and started talking to us (and thank goodness, they weren’t creepy). Their names were Pablo (the third Pablo we know here), David, Sebastion… and a few more that I can’t remember. They all study either Civil Engineering or Architecture.

After a while they asked us if we wanted to move to another club called Bungaloo. We went with them. I really liked the club and I ended up dancing salsa pretty much for the rest of the night. We also ended up running into our country coordinator at the club. He was surprised to see us, but it was a lot of fun.

On Friday, we didn’t go to Quintilano Sanchez. Instead, we went to another school (Franklin Roosevelt) in the afternoon with Mariana (the English teacher). We had to take a bus to get to the school, which was in a poorer area of Quito.

Once at the school, we taught English to 2nd, 3rd, and 5th graders. In the first class we went to, about 70% of the class wasn’t there. According to Mariana, that is normal for the school, especially on Fridays. The kids were definitely at a much lower level at English than the students at Q. Sanchez, and obviously came from families with scarcer resources. The 3rd graders took a quiz… but it was pretty obvious that they were mostly just guessing.
Friday night we went out to dinner at an Irish Pub called Mulligans. We met up with our Ecuadorian friends again, and headed over to La Ronda. There was also an American with the group (who’s parents are from Peru. He studies at Stanford, and is here for the next two months volunteering at a hospital. He is Mormon). La Ronda is a beautiful street in the old part of town. It reminded me a lot of Sevilla. The streets were made of cobble stones, and the buildings were very quaint. We went to a restaurant and had the well-known drink of the area (canelazo) as well as empanadas.

On Saturday, we woke up really early to go to Cotopaxi (the largest active volcano in the world). Once there we hiked up the volcano (which was extremely difficult because of the altitude). After lunch at the refugio, we headed down the volcano on bikes. We stopped off at a lake at the bottom.

That night we went to a 70’s party at Pablo’s apartment. After that we headed out to Bungaloo again.

Yesterday we went to a soccer game (La Liga vs. Riobomba). It was father’s day, so the stadium wasn’t that crowded, but it was still pretty wild.

Last night, we went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. My meal was pretty weird. I was trying to be adventurous, and ordered something that I didn’t know what it was. Mistake. It was basically lettuce and chicken. O well.