Quito, Ecuador
I've been writing all sorts of things to tell you in this funny child's composition notebook I have all week, but I left it in the hotel room and nothing is really finished anyway. But I felt like with all the internet access around, I had to post something.
Estoy en Ecuador hace una semana y ya est� my espa�ol amejorando. Estoy pensando en espa�ol muchas veces, pero no puedo recordar ni bastante vocabulario, ni el pret�rito de los verbos irr�gulares. Eso le hace muy dif�cil. Toda la m�sica es de las noventas. Las canciones de Counting Crows no son malos, pero Chumbawumba es.
Ironic facts about the world:
1. There is not a single copy of Origin of Species for sale in the entire archipelago of Galapagos; not even at the Charles Darwin Research Center.
2. In the middle of all the Counting Crows and 90's songs they are playing in this caf�, they have suddenly tossed up "Strawberry Fields." !Viven los Beatles!
3. Ecuador switched from its own currency to the US dollar to curb its 400% inflation rate, but has still lost 3 of its 16 million inhabitants, mostly the richest, to Spain because of the economy.
International travel is composed of transient facts like these, so trivial they will pass away practically before anyone notices them--that is anyone whose life they are not bound up in. As much as one may claim that traveling is about seeing important buildings and learning about a culture, it's really a matter of living on the surface detritus of facts like these.
Tomorrow I go to Lima.
For those who took french :
I'm in Ecuador for a week now and already my spanish is improving. I'm thinking in Spanish most of the time but I can remember neither enough vocabulary, nor the preterite tense of irregular verbs. That makes if very difficult. All of the music is from the 90's. The Counting Crows songs aren't bad, but Chumbawuma is.
chumbawumba, gene. with a 'b'. sheesh. did you take english?
His spelling gets corrected! But he gets up again! You're never gonna keep Gene down!
Thank you, Sean. That's precisely what I wanted in my head for the remainder of the afternoon!
Christine,
It pains me to write this letter, but my disappointment must be expressed. We all thought that once you were done teaching you would do something interesting with your life. But you seem to be the same boring, do nothing person you always were. When are you going to broaden your horizons? When are you going to look beyond the narrow confines of 14th Street? Girl, it's time to get a life.
Sincerely,
Jealous and Ironic in San Francisco
I don't know why but I can't comment on your Iraq entry, so I'll do it here. I'm sorry about your friend, that is scary and awful. you should join forces with gene to rock the vote come november.
I know who you're writing about, and although we're not good friends like the two of you, it does make me sad. Also, it's weird that this is the first person I know who is going to Iraq, and he's *volunteering* to go *now8.
i don't know who you're talking about. but one of my cousins (shawn) has been there a while now. my mom's 4th grade class wrote him letters last year. i don't think he volunteered to go though.