Started smoking

Dear friends,

I actually started my trip in Malmö by having a really nice last night out with my sister, funded by my lovely parents. We were able to stay in a really nice hotel and eat good food and best of all just lie in the hotel room, eating chips and candy and just do nothing. No trip could have started better, especially after the really stressy and tiring (you really write it like that!?) last week.

I met up with Märta at Copenhagen airport and strangely enough we also met up with our office room mate, Magnus. For you who I have mentioned this too, he is the guy writing to our supervisor Sune to tell him about that “people (i.e. us) should turn down the blinds in the office when they are having laptops in the room”. I believe the customary thing to do in these situations is to leave a note or just tell us. Anyway, he is kind of…interesting.

We were a bit surprised too see this guy on the airport and even more surprised to see that he was going on the same plane as us to Amsterdam! He said he was going to Holland to visit a friend there… When we went off the plane he said he had something very important to tell us. Both I and Märta got really scared then. He is not the type of guy you want “important news” from. I thought he was coming with us to Quito of some unknown terrifying reason. Märta thought he would give us a hard time for something yet not known. However, it turned out that he had lied to us about where he was going. He was transferring to another place in Amsterdam but did not tell where. I and Märta used probably one hour of our stay at the airport conspiring on where and why he would have gone.

Quito welcomed us after about 24 hours of traveling with nice spring like weather. Our supervisor here, Cesar, welcomed us equally well. What didn’t welcome us as well was the proximity to the sun. We had one (1) cup of coffee outside before my forehead started frying as bacon and I have gone through a transformation from the Canadian flag to a 100 year old woman in my skin in just three days!

After that devastating cup of coffee we have had two days of just preparing, finding Spanish schools and homestays and such. The best thing though was to just lie in the hammocks in our supervisor’s garden one morning, listening to birds and looking at mountains!

Now, we are pretty much up and running. I habla lots of Espanjoule in a Spanish school and live with a nice lady who plays cards for money on Wednesdays with her lady friends (my type of lady!). I have also started smoking more or less involuntarely (everyone here does). It’s like a 24 hour habit here. My favorite brand so far is Local Bus unfiltered. Old Car with Broken Exhaust is another favorite. That is, the pollution is REALLY bad here!