Day 54 Monday 14 June – Changes

I decided to stay longer in Ecuador. But for this I need to arrange a lot. I decided to do this today. But in the morning Sarah asks me to have lunch with her in Parque Carolina. Plans change. I do some groceries and cook a nice almuerzo to take with me. By then, the sun has disappeared a bit and it starts to rain as soon as we find a place to sit down. When we find a place with a roof the sun comes back. The weather changes even more quickly. We have our lunch and talk a bit in the sun. I tell her about my change of plans and that I need to go to Quicentro shopping mall to ask about changing my ticket. That’s a good chance to have an ice-cream for dessert.

At the LAN airline office they tell me a whole different story than I heard from my travel agency. It would cost me around $ 435 to change the ticket. So I send an e-mail back to my travel agency when I get home to ask how this is. Of course, they all are asleep by the time I send it, so I have to wait for the next day.

I spend part of the afternoon at the café and then have to go to aikido practice. But Mariela gets angry with me, because I didn’t tell her and because I’m being careless going to the north of Quito all by myself. I try to make it right and eventually arrive just a few minutes late at the training.

Even within Ecuador, aikido is different. We start with the usual exercises, but they are different and we take more time. Then the rolling exercises, where 2 people lie flat on their bellies while the rest roll over them – without really touching though. The techniques we practice are familiar: irimi nage and kote gaeshi. My partner points me at my posture, which I then put more firmly. The nice thing about training in different dojo’s is that you learn different thing in each. While I learned the etiquette in Guayaquil, for example, it is not that much stressed here. One thing I am going to learn here though is to fall. It’s all a bit wilder here. But the exercise was rewarding.

At my return, a nice warm meal was waiting for me and we watched some tele.

Day 53 Sunday 13 June – Watching live soccer

Ah lazy Sunday. I spent the day with Mariela and friends in Cumbayá, watching soccer games between different groups on the terrain of the university (San Francisco?). The ladies lost, unfortunately. Perhaps because Mariela wasn’t playing. The guys won 4-2. Chess game also lost. And I also played some chess with Mary, but we didn’t finish because we were going to watch soccer. She’s good though…

The rest of the afternoon I spent like a lazy Sunday afternoon. Not much worth telling in my blog.