Day 32: Seriously - where is the sun?

I realized that my "diary" on this blog kind of sounds like a prison countdown... Day 32... Out of how many? I'll be traveling this summer for a total of 57 days, I get home in the wee hours of the morning on the 58th day. A week from today I take a flight to Baltra on the Island of Santa Cruz in the Galapagos! All I have to say is that there better be sun and a lot of it. Oh and warm temperature too! The past two days in Quito have been horrible! On the way home the bank sign said 12 C. Room temperature, 75 F, is 25 C, and that is my minimum acceptable temperature. Not only was it 12 C, but it was drizzling. Yesterday it was a downpour, today just drizzle. So what do you do in a foreign country when the weather is bad? Go to a museum? Ok, I've covered most of that. What else? Well, remember those big malls I told you about? Yup, I went to one. And what do people do when the get to the mall? Yup, shop and eat.

One of the things that made me real real sad last year in Bolivia was that you can't find candles anywhere! I miss my smelly stuff! Today I found some awesome votive candles, so I bought a few. I also bought some good quality shampoo to take back to Bolivia. We'll see how all this stuff is going to fit in my bags. I did buy an extra duffle that I thought I would need for my Galapagos trip, but I think I'm going to try and fit everything into my backpack. All I need is shorts and flip flops, right?

You ready for my Spanish update? Well, I officially hate learning a new language. In my head I was thinking about how I would graph my progress and although I know a ridiculously huge amount more than before I came, I can't really use any of it. I haven't gotten to the point where I stop translating in my head. I don't think in spanish and that really slows me down and the conversation stalls. I also learned that I remember close to nothing about the rules and grammar (damn is it -er or -ar?) for English. What's the next step? Who knows? International schools start recruiting in December, so we'll see how I feel then...