We've had rather a cultural past week, which has been quite exciting. Last Tuesday I finally suceeded in my quest to find some decent Andean music, and managed to drag everyone else along to a concert given by the 'Orchestra of Andean Instruments´. It took me a while to get used to the soundworld of a formally laid-out orchestra made up of panpipes, charangos, guitars, quenas and percussion - typical Andean instruments - but once I had I began to enjoy it very much indeed, and they were good fun. So hurrah! The following day Fausto, Veronica and David took Becky and I to see some random contemporary dance in this huge cavern of a theatre, which was really quite spooky, especially as they had a fire a few years ago and it's still only partly restored, with smoke damage blackening the top halves of all the walls. Wednesday was also International Women's Day - Leo brought us all a white rose each, and we got to use the trolley bus for free (saving a grand total of about 35p - what our two hours on the bus costs us each day). Bargain.

We had a change of secenery for work on Friday and went to build an irrigation system for a nursery right up on the Eastern outskirts of the city. Once we had finished - working in a tiny little terraced veg patch with fantastic views of the whole of Quito below us - we played games with the children, chubby little three and four year olds who were so incredibly cute. We kicked a football about with them on the paved street - a 30 or 40 degree hill - just outside their nursery, and had to move over to one side every time a car wanted to go past. It was such a good morning.

Saturday also contained some good views, albeit from the slightly higher altitude of 4100m, which we got to by taking the cable car up the side of the mountain in the morning. Rising 1300m in about 10 minutes definitely does strange things to your head ('it's the altitude'), but we had the most wicked views of Quito and the mountains beyond. Which were only slightly spoilt by the touristy panpipe buskers of the kind you find in the London underground blaring their music out of loudspeakers from the top of the mountain - one thing I definitely won't miss about Ecuador is the invasion of personal space when it comes to music - absolutely anywhere, buses, taxis, shops, and in the streets. I've already heard enough thumping reggaeton and Latin American pop to last me a lifetime. (If anyone wants to know what else I won't miss about Ecuador, I've got it down to two more - the dogs, and the food poisoning.)

The most amusing moment of the whole trip so far occured the other day, when Becky tried to phone our family to tell them we were having dinner at Sarah's and so wouldn't need any food. For the first couple of minutes all that could be heard was Becky going 'Es Becky...er, no...estoy Becky...yo soy Becky...Becky! Yo soy Becky!...No, yo soy Becky!' Apparently all that was going on at the other end of the line was Becky's mum telling her that 'Becky's working', and 'No, Becky's not here'. But they managed to get past the question of who was calling in the end. I was sitting next to Becky on the end of the bed pissing myself.

I'm really quite getting into this whole learning a new language business. A lot of the time, granted, it's still simply frustrating, when I want to say something and don't know how to say it, and I still find myself saying 'I'm sorry, I don't know' quite a lot in response to people's questions, but when I can say what I want to say and be understood it's just so satisfying. Yesterday evening I really quite impressed myself by chatting to Fausto for a good two hours solely in Spanish (and if I could find a man like Fausto then I'd be more than happy). We started off nice and easily on the topic of my family, and I told him about how my Dad's building a floating house on the broads so he can go sailing with my Grandpa. He then told me about his job at the planitarium, and how he's trying to make it into a more fun, interactive place for children, but his boss isn't really up for things changing. And so I then decided it would be a good idea to tell him all about the Dr Pike/Tim Rose clash in Chapel during my last year at RHUL, and that led into a whole discussion about the pros and cons of modernising worship (which I got quite into, having written an essay on it in Music and Religion), with me preceeding to explain all the different types of worship present in England at the moment. Blimey. It was seriously hardcore stuff. I had to eat half a packet of biscuits afterwards just to recover.

For the past week we've had thunderstorms every afternoon, starting with wearisome predictability at about the same time every day. Like everything else here in Ecuador, Ecuadorian thunderstorms are extreme, and make English ones seem piddly by comparison - a deluge of fat, hard drops of rain will soak you in a couple of minutes, the thunder crashes round the whole sky and lighting usually forks down to the ground lighting up the whole horizon. They're amazing. We've also however got very wet, and have taken to carrying round our waterproof trousers with us where ever we go.

Today - for a bit more culture - Aussie Sarah's mum took us to a collection of art by the Ecuadorian 20thC painter Guayasamin, which was absolutely amazing. His work reminded me slightly of Picasso, but a bit more haunting. In the same grounds were two collections of artefacts made by Guayasamin - one of Colonial art, and one of Pre-Colombian pots, jewllery, statues, instruments etc from indigenous Ecuadorian cultures. It was great stuff. We got soaked in the thunderstorm on the way back home though.

More photos added to Andes No. 2 here: http://aol.photobox.co.uk/album/2526621