Almost done in Quito!

I'm having my last weekend in Quito now, leaving to the coast in 2 days! It's weird and a bit sad since this has become more or less my home. The hostel is great, but it changes a lot. For my first and last week there's been really good groups of people to chat and have a beer with, but there aren't many long term stayers and in between it's been pretty dead. But it's also a good thing, because I've been forced outside the hostel on my own to get a network, which mostly have been through salsa and in spanish.

But: I can't wait to get to the beach!! Quito's got about 2500 altitude meters and it's only warm when it's sunny. One cloud and it gets freeezing. I got a lama jacket my first week here, and I fell in love with it immediately - I even got married to it - (we had a "ceremony" one very late night, an australian chick was the priest - "do you take this jacket to be your lawfully wedded..jacket? I do!You may put on your jacket!") But now we've developed this kind of love/hate relationship - it keeps me warm but I'm sick of needing it.

My days have pretty much gone by like before - spanishsalsaspanishsalsa. Great fun but lots of work. Last week was crazy - I started cheating on my salsa school and took 2 lessons every day - one at each school. And the spanish grammar is getting a bit out of hand. At some point you feel like they keep throwing tenses at you that doubt you'll ever use. They got something like 27 of them in total, my last three have been: 1 for the future when you're not sure something's going to happen or not, 1 if it's a possibility that something happens, 1 if you just want to suggest that something might happen. Yep. I'll probably take some more spanish lessons on the coast but only chatting. No more tenses, please.

I did a horseback riding trip all of last weekend, it was amazing! Just riding around in the jungle/farmland in Pululahua, a volcanic crater about an hour away from Quito. My horse was absolutely perfect - just wanted to gogogo but easy to stop if I wanted to, which didn't happen much. Otherwise I haven't really explored much - haven't had the time and energy for it.

Yesterday I ran into a "familiar" face. My friend Astrid's boyfriend's sister (!) lives in Ecuador and I've gotten lots of good tips from her through facebook even if we've never met - she's a sweetheart. She lives quite far from Quito, but suddenly I heard "Tine Sommerfelt, right?" in swedish and there she was - in my hostel! Cool to see her in person and thank you Svante for hooking me up with her!