No, not that Days Inn, thankfully.  I have to open by saying I was so fortunate in finding this particular airbnb.  Beatrice, the hostess and all around life saver, is a delight.  First she introduced herself as my Ecuadoran “mother”, which is amusing, because I’m pretty darn sure she is younger than I am.

Then the other day she asked why I was leaving on the 23rd.  I explained that when I booked the room that there were no rooms available after that date for the next few days.  She looked at me and said “For you we will make room”.  Then she said that maybe I would stay with her sister if a room didn’t open up.

Yesterday she invited me to have Christmas dinner with her, her sister and another friend.  It appears that I am very lucky indeed.  Today I went to the kitchen off the verandah to cook my ravioli.  Yup, there was Beatrice, having dinner, and she was quite insistent that I join her and cook my ravioli tomorrow.  Well, her dinner was fish, a Spanish omelet, which was more like a quiche, and a dinner roll.  No real choice there, as hers was delicious and mine was going to be sauceless, oil-less, butter-less ravioli.

Tomorrow I’m thinking I can manage to stay awake most of the day and am taking a tour to Mitad del Mundo, which is described as the middle of the earth, but is actually a few kilometers off.

Some random thoughts:

When you order coffee with milk (cafe con leche) you get a steaming cup of milk with a jar of instant coffee.

When you order coffee with cream (cafe con crema) you get a steaming cup of milk with a jar of instant coffee.

When you don’t understand something, just like North Americans, whoever it is talks louder in the hopes that you will then understand.

When you say something you think is flawless Spanish, they don’t understand you.

Oh, and I learned this quite awhile ago while taking my apparently useless Spanish classes.  When people ask where you’re from, don’t say America.  South America is America, too, and the people are Americans.

In Quito, you weigh 2.2 pounds less than you normally do.