Cuenca... first impressions

I just wrote an entire blog entry and of course it was deleted somehow (grrrrr!) so I will try to recreate it, but much more quickly! 

So, here I am in Cuenca. I met the family yesterday and they are seriously sooooooo nice.  The father is Victor, an economist who also imports and exports some sort of machine (a mystery to me), the mother is Eulalia (Lala) and they have three kids - Rebeca and Monica are in college and Estafania is still in highschool.  They have a cat (Siamese called Bambalu) and a dog (a crazy mut called Musollini).  They also have a woman who lives with them to cook and clean and do everything around the house whose name is Miriam and she is super nice too.  After I arrived at their very nice house, they talked to me for about 6 hours straight and then took me on a tour in their car of Cuenca.  My beliefs were confirmed when I saw the entire city... it´s soooo beautiful!  A bit like San Francisco, as we are in a valley surrounded by gigantic mountains and the streets are really hilly.  So far, I really like it here.

I also started class at my new school this morning.  It´s a bit more formal than it was at the beach, but classes are still one on one, which is great because then they tailor it exaclty to whatever you need. My teacher is a very nice woman whose name is Martha.  She teaches (me) spanish in the morning and then in the afternoon, she goes to her other job - she´s a journalist for the local paper!  I don´t think they really have PR people here, so she was really interested in my profession. 

So, my general impressions so far are good and here are how they differ from life on the coast:

First of all, the tap water is safe to drink here - hallellujah - so that means that I can also have ice and raw vegetables and basically anything and I won´t get sick. You just don´t know what a big deal this is until you live without for a couple of weeks.  Second, there is a LOT less poverty here.  And I mean, I don´t think there is hardly any poverty at all.  I guess Cuenca is the most expensive place in Ecuador, so everyone here is much more educated and they have good jobs, etc, so people just seem a lot happier.  And it´s also really nice to see what a real family is like.... but I must admit it´s a little strange to be living with one (that´s not my own) and to be living with one at all being as old as I am after having lived alone for so long. I was trying to tell this to my spanish teacher this morning and she couldn´t understand --- family is very important here, as it is in so many Latin American countries, and she is 35 and still living with her parents because she´s not married.  Mom or Dad - any takers for supporting me till I get married??? ;)

Anyway, this is all I have for now.  Still trying to upload photos... perhaps I can find a usable USB port soon. :) xoxo