Quito

So having arrived Saturday night, I basically just went straight to bed and didn´t wake up till 12 hours later! So in the morning went for a walk with Edwin, Emy and Erin (House dad, lil 2 year old and housemate) (lol all start with E! ;)
Anyways, so he showed us around a bit, where important things were, then went down to the massive mall. And i really mean massive, it´s insanely huge and has like every shop you could think of! So we wandered around there for a while, then went to the internet cafe across the road from the house, which is amazinng as is really clean, great computers/equipment and roughly seems to work out about 1cence a minute!
Then we were due back at the house at 2 for lunch. The way it´s set out is you enter through one gate but then there´s two houses, ours and the parents/grandparents. Anyways, so we go into theirs and sitting round the table is like 20 family members as it turned out it was someones birthday! Wasn´t expectiong that and they all turn to look and greet the gringas. Lunch was potato salad, chicken and an unidentifiable meat. I thought it was maybe beef, though slightly strange tasting and really chewy/stringy. Anyways, the rule of thumb here, is f it looks odd, tastes odd and you don´t know what it is..... you DON´T ask. Unfortunately my housemate wasnt aware of this and mentioned how much she liked the chicken and then politely enquired as to what the other meat might be ....
....it was a tongue :( hell of a lot harder to stomache after that! lol
So once lunch is over they bring out the massivest cake ever, then all the stuff gets moved to the edge of the room, out comes the boom box, on goes the music, ands its time to bailar! ;) So after an eventful afternoon, returned home to descansar.
Monday morning was our official orientation and a chance to meet all the other volunteers. So is about a 15 min walk to the office and currently there are about 24 volunteers, so quite a few. Anyways, noone actually works on Mondays but every other monday theres a meeting at 10 in the office which everyone goes to, although some people weren´t yet back from their weekend trip. So met people, got told what  we were getting ourselves into and what roughly was the setup for the week. So basically in the mornings, except for the one or two who have spanish lessons then, everyone goes to the markets. Basically we go to different markets everyday, and do activiities/games etc with the kids there who have to go to work with their parents. Then in afternoons some people teach english or have spanish lessons and tghe rest work in the markets again. At the mo i´m all day markets though am hoping to change this to teaching or something as my short attention span is having issues with the repetitiveness. But is still really funn and you can see that the kids really enjoy it aswell which is what counts. Also we were told that a lot of them have really hard lives at home ad are beaten or abused so they get a lot out of these sessions which kind of just give them a break from it all.
So that´s how the days go, and then we´re back arounnd 5/5.30 depending how far away market is. Or like on Wednesday we run the session in a local park.
Quito has nice view in sense its surrounded by all these hills and then where we live in the south looks slightly more run down, though has an amazing bus system and these massive modern malls! then theres the centro historico which is more kinds colonial looking buildings, then theres the north which is more modern.
So in the evenings, we´ve done a little exploring/playing games with Emy. Then on Tuesday it was Byron(guy who set up charity) ´s birthday. So we went over to the volunteer house for a mini fiesta. Then on Wednesday we played cards with the fam, and i think i may have found someone as competitive as i am in the form of my host dad! lol Then last night we went out to Mariscal, which is like the touristy disctrict in the north, and it looked like it couldve been anywhere in the world! But there were like 22 of us so everywhere we went people were trying to convince us to go to their bar/club. Went home relatively early tho, like 1 after some nuggets ad chips! ;)
Today, we only had a half day as there wasn´t market this afternoon. So just been chilling really in the amazing internet cafe, as being so amazing this is the only time i can get a computer as come 5 its packed all evening! lol
Then tomorrow there´s a group of us heading to the jungle for the weekend, so that should be cool, and I´ll let you know how it is!
But for now, all seems good, having a nice time (especially after I discovered i can sit on the roof with my music and watch the world go by!) and our family is soooo nice, not to mention their daughter is the cutest thing in the world. Every time we walk through the door its ´hola amigas´ then she like follows us around saying amigas amigas! Plus shes easily amused by like everything! ;) Though her favorite tv show is this awful cartoon called maka paka, the title character being like this grey blob with donut rings as ears and on the top of its head, then like the weirdest thing is when it goes to bed at the end of the show it curls up hugging a giant rock! lol but im gonna be here for her birthday so thinking of buying a massive piñata and filling it with sweets etc! as think that would be entertaining ;)