Its rubbish here, I’m coming home

Its cold, wet, miserable, everyone is unfriendly, there’s nothing to do, the food tastes like dogsmuck and there just isn’t any time to do anything remotely resembling fun

🙂

On Sunday a few of us went to some well known thermal springs, about 2.5hrs outside of Quito, where we spent a few hours hopping in and out of the boiling hot springs and freezing cold streams that ran alongside. It was great fun, although I thought the Scandinavians in the group took it a little too seriously. And now that I write about it, it does seem a little odd to do a 5hr round bus trip to share a hot bath with about 50 strangers when there was a perfectly good private bath back at the hostel. Oh well. Speaking of the hostel, I realised pretty quickly that my budget wouldn’t last long if I stayed in my one bunk hilton so have moved into a more basic room and having to share a bathroom. Thankfully the guests at the hostel are cleaner than my old london housemates so its no bad thing…

A funny thing happened on monday morning. I was excited and enthusiastic about going to spanish class! Very strange. If only school back home could have been as interesting and fun rather than just being taught how to pass exams (which reminds me of a talk i once heard http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html). Afterwards I went out for lunch with Ninka, a dutch med student, and who probably isn’t unrelated to my newfound enthusiasm for class..

I’m enjoying Quito and it seems like a very safe place but the number of robberies I’ve heard about is alarming. A quick straw poll around the table at dinner and 4 out of the 10 had had their bags, wallets or cameras pinched in the last two weeks. Although 3 of them are German and couldn’t look more like tourists if they tried.

Off to a match tomorrow – Liga vs Newells are playing in the Copa SudAmerica. Can’t wait for that!