Cuenca (part 2)

I'm now nearly at the end of my time in Cuenca, so I thought I'd post an update. I've finished my week of Spanish lessons, and to be honest I'm pretty glad they're over. My teacher, Miriam, was very pleasant, but not brilliant at her job - for example, she made so many mistakes when explaining the imperative mood to me that it started to get quite embarrassing. However, to be fair to her the last two lessons were a lot better, and we had some interesting discussions about subjects like politics, war, and the differences between the genders, so I did revise my opinion of her towards the end of the week.

To give you an idea of how much my Spanish has improved, I went back to Wunderbar this afternoon to watch England's latest dismal performance on the football pitch, and I started talking to the friendly Ecuadorian man sitting next to me, whose name was Oswaldo. We ended up having an hour-long conversation almost entirely in Spanish, which would have been completely unthinkable a couple of months ago.

I also joined in with the activities at the language school in the afternoon. On Tuesday the salsa lesson that I mentioned in my previous post started off as I expected, with four guys and no girls at all. However, about an hour into the lesson a female teacher and two female students did turn up, so the second half of the lesson was a lot more fun. On Wednesday afternoon we went to the Museum of the Central Bank, which is Cuenca's most important museum. I'd already been to it last week, so it was slightly pointless, but this time we had a guided tour, so I suppose I did get something out of it. Finally, yesterday afternoon we had a lesson in Ecuadorian cookery. We cooked plantain tortillas, which considering I don't like bananas wasn't really the best recipe for me to learn.

Tomorrow morning I'm planning to head north to Baños. Oswaldo told me that a volcano near to Baños is erupting at the moment, so we'll have to wait and see if I make it there...