Last Wednesday I discovered that there's another person living with me. I was really quite surprised. This person is Fausto - the son of my Grandma - who for the first evening meal seemed to come and go with his girlfriend Veronica, and then I didn't see much of him before we went to the coast, so just assumed that they lived together somewhere else. But no. And I was really quite excited to discover otherwise, because Fausto and Veronica are really easy to talk to, even in Spanish, and good fun too - Fausto in particular has exactly my sort of humour. So hurrah!

We had a fantastic evening last week with the two of them, David (the grandson, at Uni, lives with Becky downstairs), and Leo (our project supervisor, thinks all girls are weedy, and so far we haven't really proved him wrong). We went up to this park on the West side of the city and had fantastic views of Quito to watch the sunset. There was also a stone which had special powers and would transfer natural energy to us if we touched it - Fausto told us we should hug it and tell it all our problems. Once it had got dark we went back into the old city for hot chocolate and cheese (a truly bizarre comibination, but not as bad as it sounds), and managed to catch a bit of traditional dancing too in one of the squares - hurrah! It was much fun.

This weekend we had a day trip to Papallacta. Papallacta is a dead little village in the mountains with nothing going for it apart from a little complex of natural hot springs. A couple of pools of clear gorgeous not-quite-uncomfortably-hot water, surrouned by views of the mountains...Mmm...And then we went out for Kat's birthday and got quite drunk. Which is an incredibly easy thing to do here - drinks in South America are ridiculously cheap and strong. Strangely, they are often also served with complimentary bowls of popcorn.

Other than that, our greenhouse has been progressing well (we've almost finished the structure, and now just have to do a bit of irrigation and planting, before we start the mural). We've been continuing our exploration of Ecuadorian food - most recently including such things as potato and cheese soup, more random fruit juices (including one which was dark brown and truly disgusting), cheese and yuca bread, and banana chips - salty and thin, almost like crisps but not quite, and completely addictive. Five out of the six of us have also sucummbed to illness - my own personal problem seens to be a lack of fibre (work it out), and so I'm now off to the supermarket to buy some bran flakes in the hope that it'll help.

A few of Becky's photos can be found here: http://aol.photobox.co.uk/album/2680211