Well... the last couple of days have flown by! I can't believe I've almost been here 2 weeks. A little recap: Tuesday I had Spanish until 1 again, after which I passed out. I slept for several hours and then went to a pub quiz at the Irish pub with some hostal friends. I came home fairly early and went to bed again. Wednesday I had spanish until 1 once again. A group of us had planned on going on the TeleferiQo, a cable car that takes you up to the 4100 meter mark of Volcan Pichincha. The weather had turned a little sour so we decided to have a walk around Old Town. We went to one of the most ornate churches in Quito, La Compania de Jesus. The walls, ceilings and altars are supposedly guilded with 7 tons of gold. Construction began in 1605 and took 163 years to complete. We were not allowed to take pictures... but I took some (w/o flash) from my hip. Couldn't help it. After La Compania, we went and had a bite to eat in the Old Town. I am now officially obsessed with a soup called Locro de Papa, a potato soup with cheese and avocado. By far the best Ecuadorian food I've had. From there we went to the Monastery of San Francisco. I didn't see any monks and had a 45 minute tour in complete spanish where I understood about 10% of the words. Quite disappointing considering I'm at the end of 40 hours of spanish. My profesora did tell me that amongst all of the technical terms she wouldn't have expected me to understand much. Today when I finished my spanish lesson, despite the ever present clouds, I went with a friend up the TeleferiQo. It had magnificent views of the city and the mountains and volcanoes around the city. It was extremely cold and windy. I could definitely feel the altitude. Neither of us were up for the 2 hour trek to the top of Volcan Pichincha. We took a few pictures and came back down. Tomorrow is my last 4 hour spanish lesson. I am hoping to visit a convent where nuns make wine, soap, lotions, etc and sell them from behind a rotating door. The convent has been operating since 1592 and has only been open to the public since 2005. The nuns' faces remain unseen by everyone exept others in the convent for the rest of their lives. They spend 5 years in solitude before joining the rest of the convent and never leave the confines of the complex.
I am going to post some pictures inside the Quito album of Old Town and of La Compania and inside the other album of the TeleferiQo.

Quito