October 15-25

We've now finished two weeks at the Spanish school. Originally we were going to stop after two weeks, except that it's really helping us and we're not sure what else we would do during the day all of next week. Also mom wants to come back, and she got really lucky because her teacher from last time is still available. (Mom didn't go the second week). I've become really close friends with my teacher, and it's really nice to be able to talk to other people and be forced to practice since she doesn't speak any English. I've also gotten to know a couple other people at the school better, and I really like it. Everybody here is so nice. If I could transport friends and family down here I would never want to leave. So I suppose it might be a good thing I don't have everybody down here with me.

We go outside and just walk around or something almost everyday during classes. We've been to see some of the churches around town, which remind me a little bit of all the church I saw in France and Italy and Greece this summer. They're really pretty and amazingly well built. There's many ruins around the city, mostly from the time of the Spanish conquistadors, and these are also fun to visit. My favorite outing so far, was going to Maria's daughter Rosillo's school. It was a kindergarten graduation for her, and it was really fun to watch the ceremony (even though I only caught what some of the people were saying) and get to meet Maria's kids and husband. Going on a horse-drawn carriage ride was also really fun, because it's something you would never be able to do in any city in the U.S.A.

Over the weekend Larissa, Mom and I walked up to Cerro de la Cruz (Hill of the Cross). There's a lot of stories about it being really dangerous for tourists, partly because it's near the houses of the people who live literally under sticks and are really poor, so tourists are particularly susceptible to attacks. But this is mostly late at night when there's not many people around. We were perfectly fine, and we even ran into some of the tourist police that roam the city. If you don't feel comfortable walking somewhere for any reason you can ask them to accompany you, and they will so you're a lot safer. The views of the city from the Hill were gorgeous, and it was finally a good day. (We've been having rainy day after rainy day even though the rainy season's supposed to be over.)

Over the weekend we went to a museum in the main government building in the city. I really enjoyed this, because they had many things from the Spanish colonial period, and it was really fun to look at all this. Many of the artifacts were originals simply strapped against the wall. One of the swords was Pedro De Alvardo's (famous conquistador) from the 1500's!!! They also had many rifles and cannons etc, many of which were as tall as me and very heavy. I cannot imagine being able to pick it up, aim it and fire successfully. Those men must have been crazily strong. The only setback was that I couldn't read and understand many of the plaques because they were in Spanish, and I'm not that good yet.