With some trepidation, I presented myself this morning to a Spanish school for 3 hours of Spanish conversation with Rebecca, or Reby, for short. Every twenty minutes or so, my brain totally turned to mush and I couldn't say anything at all in either Spanish or English, but we managed pretty well.
At the end of the session, I knew that she and I had a lot in common and that I had found my first amiga cuencana (Cuencan friend). For the last fifteen minutes or so, we sat in the sun on the roof terrace - a beautiful day with almost no clouds in the sky. Reby said this meant it would be cold tonight, which means about 40 degrees.
On Friday, we will resume and she is going to start showing me the city, with an eye to finding an apartment. This is muy bueno, because there are two kinds of rents here - one for gringos (higher) and one for locals (lower). I'm going for the lower rate, with Reby's help.
Most shops close from 1-3 pm here, which is a good excuse for a long lunch and a nap. I had an appointment at 3 pm to look at a couple of apartments, and the realtor emailed me to meet her at Banco Pinchinca y Solano. I wasn't sure what this meant, so I walked to Banco Pinchincha, which is a high rise building on Solano. I figured she would see me, the conspicious gringa, but after moving from corner to corner and waiting on the steps of the bank for about 45 minutes, I gave up.
Next I wanted to find a cutting board for my little kitchen. I walked to the supermercado and found one, and also checked out some puppies in a local pet store window. There was a white miniature schnauzer! I had to sternly steer myself away from her, but not until asking whether she was a he or a she and how much she cost!
Just as an aside, the length of day here is twelve hours, all year long. It gets dark about 6:30 pm. Both the nights and the days feel long to me. After all, how many days in the year are like that in Vermont?
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