We made it!

Hola!

We have made it to Montañita! And it is wonderful! It is so different from anywhere I have ever been before it is hard to know where to start in describing the place, the people, the food, ... everything! I think the best way will be to write posts on different topics to give you a flavour for what we are up to here. In this first (well second I guess) post, I will just give an overview of what our day looks like, and go into more details and stories in later ones. Mitch or I will try to update this once every couple days, so keep checking back! (I am sure Mitch´s posts will be a lot funnier than mine, so read his for sure!)

Each day we wake up around 4am. Seriously. This is because of the roosters (los gallos). The live in the backyards of the houses and start their cockadoodledooing at this time. Way before the sunrise. We then wake up every half hour until about 7am, at the leisure of los gallos. We are hoping that we will get used to them soon. I then go out of my room, which opens onto the kitchen and get a big buenos dios (that may be spelled wrong we are mostly working on speaking in class right now) from Jolanda, my Ecuadorian mom. About 10 minutes later she has a great breakfast out on the table for me. (More about the food later...it is really good though.) I then walk about 2 minutes down the sandy street to the Spanish and Surf school for my 8am class. We learn grammar in the mornings for 2 hours, then have 3 hours off where we go to the internet, get a coffee with the other students (who are so much fun, more on them later too), have a nap, or grab lunch. Or any combination of the above.

It is then time for our afternoon class from 1 to 3. Here we practice talking. We are not allowed to speak any English in this class. Needless to say it ends in a lot of laughter. From 3 to 5 is the time of day Mitch waits for. I think it is the only thing that gets him through all the Spanish. We get to go for our surf lesson! There is lots to tell about this too. We both really like it, so much so that Mitch is going to rent a board next week so he can go more. I am not sure yet. After surfing we amuse ourselves until dinner back with our families around 7. More good food.

After dinner it is party time! Although I haven´t stayed out late enough to taste the true Montañita party scene yet, I hear it is great. Last night I had a massive piña colada for only 2 dollars. Mitch had a super strong mojita. You just can´t go wrong!

As you can imagine we then collapse into bed until los gallos start their nonsense all over again.

It´s almost time for me to head back to my familla for dinner (we are one hour behind Toronto time) so I will say adios for now, but promise to be back with more soon!

Here is a picture of our surf class, and the two girls we are good friends with. They are also in our Spanish class:


Here is a picture of one of the main streets in the town: