Espanol en Sucre

OK, I´m not going to keep writing in Spanish, as I ain´t that good yet! I have really enjoyed my first week here in Sucre. I have classes for 4 hrs/day, 5 days/week with up to 3 other students, and we are not allowed to speak English, so my brain is quite frazzled by the end. My vocabulary has more than tripled so far, and I´m even confident enough to start conversations with random shopkeepers! Most of the shops selling dry goods/lollies/drinks etc are just little "holes in the wall" - there are so many per square metre that I wonder how any make a living?! There are also millions of Internet places, so I have no excuse for not writing often, although I have been busy exploring the city and doing my homework, the model student that I am ;)

I usually try to find a nice place in the sun to study, because it is usually cold in the shade, and "muy frio" at nights. One day I climbed the hill up to Recoleta Monastery and sat at Cafe Mirador (those who know Sucre will know these places) which has a fantastic view over the whole city, a perfect place to sit in the sun sipping on freshly squeezed juices. I haven´t done much the last few days because I´ve been slightly ill, just the usual mild dose of travellers´ "runs" (sorry about Breezy-style details), nothing my extensive medical kit (thanks Keckers) cannot handle!

My host family are lovely. They are the Directors of the Spanish School, so quite wealthy and if I really need to say something in English I can! They live on the top floor of a 6 storey apartment so the view of the city is amazing. They have two sons - Jose is 11 and Juan is 7 - who are typical of boys of their age. They sometimes laugh at my poor Spanish, but today I whipped Juan at table tennis, so perhaps he will take me seriously now!?! Today I went to the outdoor markets with Sandra and one of the two maids (yes, it does feel like I´m in a hotel) to buy all the food for the week and then we had a BBQ on the terrace. Note that my stomach illness only stopped me eating for 24 hours and then I got hungry again! I have breakfast and lunch at home with the family, and buy my own dinner, usually at a restaurant with my classmates, but the 2 course lunches are so big I really don´t need dinner (note to self: perhaps overeating is cause of stomach aches?!).

The school also organises extra-curricular activities and this week it was a cooking class, which actually turned out to be 15 of us standing around drinking sangria while the teacher made a massive pot of pique de macho - a typical Bolivian dish of spicy meat and vegetables, served with papas fritas (French fries) of course. It only takes me 10 mins to walk home from the main Plaza and the school, so life is pretty easy for me here. The streets are quite narrow, all one-way, with narrow sidewalks, and there are no stop signs and few traffic lights, so all drivers toot their horns as they approach an intersection. At first I thought they were tooting at me, such is my anxiety about crossing roads since stepping out in front of a red double-decker bus in London a few weeks ago! Anyway, enough observations/dribble for now...