I was in Puerto Lopez!

Thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes!

Things here are going well. I´m learning a lot of Spanish, although I´m still not great at putting it to use. Carmita is very patient and encouraging, as is my family. This is a little embarrassing, but when I wrote before I said that there were two sons, but there is actually only one. His name is Carlos Eduardo and I swear that I was introduced to him twice that first day, once as Eduardo and once as Carlos, but the second time it was as I was walking in the door and he was walking out, so I didn´t see him that well. Anyway, they are very nice and very understanding of both my timidity and my poor speaking abilities.

Last week I did a little sight seeing and a lot of walking around, trying to get a feel for the city. I went to the two main iglesias and to the Museo de Arte Moderno. Thursday was the last night of Corpus Christi, so I went and watched the fireworks and ate a lot of dulces. Cuenca is a great city for just wandering and looking, but I was also a little lonely and overwhelmed. There is only one other student, Kim from Amsterdam, taking classes at the same time as me and we hadn´t really spoken much, but on Friday she invited me to go to the beach with her for the weekend. We went to Puerto Lopez and had a really nice time. This is her fifth week taking classes, so her Spanish is much better than mine, and she speaks fluent English. We ate ceviche, which is my new favorite food, and went to Parque Nacional Machalilla. Later in the summer, it is a major humpback whale breeding spot, but right now it´s just Ecuador´s nicest beach. There were only about thirty minutes of sun all weekend, but we hiked around and swam and managed to get a little tan because the sun here is much stronger than at home. It´s really nice to know that I have a good travelling companion for the rest of my time in this area.

I had a nice birthday yesterday. Carmita brought me a rose and a piece of banana cake that she had made. Then, during our 11 am break, we had a little party with Kim and her teacher Sophie and Helenita, another woman who works in the office. They brought this amazing tres leches (three milk) cake, which is apparently very popular here. In the afternoon, I went for coffe with Kim and in the evening my family had a little celebration with more cake and cookies and singing.