Jan. 2 to 8- Week 10 in Cuenca

This week we finally started going to Spanish classes. Why did we wait so long since speaking some Spanish is a definite necessity in Ecuador? Well, we have been taking Spanish on Rosetta Stone for more than 1 year plus we had taken a night school course while still in Arizona so we knew some. We can order food in a restaurant, go to the mercado and pay what was asked , take taxis and explain where we wanted to go- in other words we knew enough Spanish to survive. This course was very basic, a lot of what we already knew and was also attended by three other expat couples much like ourselves. We go twice a week for 1 1/2 hours each time until the end of January. We've already learned several things that we had not known - so far so good.

Again this week, per usual, we went to the mercado near us- Feria Libre. We always seem to be the only gringos we see there, something we cannot understand as the bargains in fresh produce prices are so great. For instance, 5 mangos $1, 1 lb of strawberries $1, 4 bunches of radishes $1, 3 huge cucumbers $1, 1 very fresh large pineapple $1, and the huge bunch of bananas below $1

We walked away carrying 3 large grocery bags for well under $10- you gotta love it!

Saturday night we met three other couples plus one at an Italian restaurant downtown to celebrate Cody and Michael's 29th anniversary. We walked there, about a half hour and of course seeing that it was past 4Pm, the rain came down. Our umbrellas are getting quite a workout, especially after gathering cobwebs for 11 years in Arizona. Once there,we sat and chatted for some time, drank beer and vino. Uwe and I both ordered a personal pizza- WOW, huge and excellent. I had half left over for yet another lunch.

Our happy group

Total cost of meal for all nine of us including several large bottles of beer plus many glasses of vino was $115 including tip and then a $3 taxi ride home- one of our more expensive evenings-LOL