Monday Musings

Kathryn >> Dear Diary, Today I went for a run, learnt some Spanish, forgot a whole lot of Spanish, ate some ice cream and learnt some more Spanish.
Yup, the creative juices have dried a little, with life in a smallish town in a desert really becoming quite tiresome. Winter makes the climate quite bearable, with the mornings and evenings having a definite chill that sends us looking for down vests. The sun which appears around mid-day has a lot of heat in it and so, between 12 and 3, most shops close and people seem to shut down - maybe for a siesta, maybe because it's too hot to attempt doing much! We headed off during this time to check on the mechanic, and get some more things from

the van. En route, we were amused by a man doing some work on the wiring in the street, although his ladder leaned on the wiring, he did take the extraordinary measure of tying himself on, the harness attached to the wiring itself of course! At the mechanic, the car was still in parts, and the mechanic pretty unenthusiastic - we are left wondering just how firm Dan was with him given our cold welcome... The rest of the day was spent on Duolingo - an app that is teaching us Spanish with surprising success - although the application of what we are learning is still questionable.
In the evening we met Antanina who drove us to her student's house for his English lesson. Manuel is about 60 and owns mining and tourism related business further north. He decided to learn English but doesn't like doing homework, so has daily lesson. His English was really impressive given he has only been learning for a few months and certainly put our Spanish to shame! He had some very cool llamas as pets roaming the large grassy garden. He explained a few local dishes to us and over the time 3 or 4 of his 7 children popped in to say hello, all speaking fantastic English!