We just wrapped up our mid-service conference over in Quito, marking a little over a year of service and the beginning of our last ten months. It was great to see everyone and to start planning our last year together in country. It was also nice to hear that most of us have been in the same boat concerning counterparts, housing, projects, etc. Somehow, being in Quito requires the spending of ridiculous amounts of money to take taxis (for fear of getting robbed) and eat delicious lunches, such a sushi or…Burger King. You can’t leave the Super Maxi without spending 10 to 20 dollars on pasta sauce, peanut butter or, for the newly acquired stove at the Runa office, brownie mix and an oven mitt. Another thing I’ve noticed about Quito is that no matter how long I spend there, be it 2 days or 1 week, it is inevitable that I leave sick. I sneeze, my throat hurts, my ears pop on the bus ride back and I’m miserable until I have returned to the jungle and things get back to normal. I just can’t handle the high altitude and cold weather. Being sick, in turn, makes my Spanish hard to understand since I’m too tired and lazy to enunciate my words properly. I hate being sick. This realization has caused me to reminisce back to the early days, when I first arrived in country and my language skills weren’t quite up to par – a combination of lack of knowledge, practice and self-confidence. I will now share with you, my faithful reader(s?), a few examples of what I am talking about: 1. When I first got here and lived at the caves, it was a daily struggle to get through meaningless conversations: what do you like to eat, do you have a boyfriend?, how much money do you make?, why do you only have one sibling?, etc. Through these conversations, I learned that the word for sandwich, “sanduche,” is in fact SANduche, not sanDUche. I also learned that the word for police, “policia,” is not polICia. It’s poliCIA. Everyone got a good laugh about my wrongly accented words. 2. One day, my friend Monica was asking for help with her homework (she had recently returned to high school after having a baby). She had to describe a “paisaje,” or landscape. I said, “That’s easy! It’s the money I give to the bus helper whenever I go to Tena.” I had never heard that group of people laugh so hard. “No no Sarita, that’s PAsaje. Not PAIsaje. But good try.” I laughed at myself for that one. 3. This next one isn’t so much embarrassing for a language slip-up as just plain embarrassing. Tena, the capital of the province and a city about 30 minutes south of me, is a very popular destination for rafting and kayaking, and therefore boasts a very high number of raft and kayak guides. Because these guys work with gringos (foreigners) so often and have heard stories and know people who have actually married one and moved to the states, they try very hard to hook one of their very own. So, hanging out at the bar scene one night, I meet “Pedro,” a raft guide who loves to salsa and lives near Laurel and Dan. After that, he calls me quite often to get me to go learn to kayak, salsa dance, accompany him to his cousin’s graduation party, etc. I eventually get so tired of saying no/ignoring his calls that I think it will be a fantastic idea to make up an excuse. I tell him I’m sick, can’t get out of bed, and that I think I will have my unknown disease for at least a week. I basically forget about that conversation and head on to my daily activities: English class at the caves. After class, I catch the 8:15 Jumandy bus as usual. I sit down in my seat on an almost empty bus and hear, “hola sarita” come from a not-sounding-too-happy voice. I look over and who is it but “Pedro.” I quickly let out an extremely fake cough and try to lower my voice to sound as though I’d lost it and muster up some kind of excuse. I basically end up laughing for the remainder of my 4 minute bus ride home, as I’m sure I’ve been figured out. This, however, is no deterrent for an Ecuadorian man. 4. On my final Language Proficiency Test before we were cleared to go to our sites, I completely messed up “my name is sarah.” I am generally a nervous person, whether it be interviews, oral tests or speaking in front of a crowd, and this was no different. Instead of saying “mi nombre es sarita” or “me llamo sarita,” I combined the two: “mi llamo es sarita.” Luckily my interviewer knew my personality and let it slide; I still ended up being an advanced speaker. 5. Actually living in a Spanish-speaking country, you learn things your high school Spanish teacher never thought it useful to teach you: flirting. Luckily, I have Lydia near me who I can text or call at anytime to ask stupid questions: how do you conjugate this verb? What’s a good way to say this without coming across rude?, etc. Unfortunately, in one instance I texted Lydia about one text too late. A guy I had met and been talking to messaged me and told me he liked me or, ‘me gustas.’ I, not knowing how the verb ‘to like’ could be conjugated between two people, conjugated it right back at him: ‘te gusto tambien.’ Which, I’m not really sure what that translates to. I decided to ask Lydia after sending him the message. She then informed me that “I like you” is always ‘me gustas.’ It makes so much sense now...after the fact. That's all I can think of for now, but I'm sure there are plenty other stories and there will be more to come.