Hello all.  I have received messages from people and they mean so much to me.
An email or text from a friend has cheered me up during hard times and made the day far easier. So I am going to do a short post to keep up my end of the bargain.  

 I am still quite tired at night but it is improving. While my responsibilities have increased - I now have lesson planning and Spanish homework—I have more energy most of the time.  Part of this is because I have figured out how to get from one point to the next when it comes to my class, my bus stop, and my Spanish class. I have also figured out how to take a taxi, a great fallback position. But I am still quite impressed with the weariness that comes.  Last night I read  up on the adaptation to altitude in those who move to altitude  as well as  adaptations in the populations that have lived at altitude long enough to adapt genetically.  It was really interesting but very!  comforting as my conclusion was that it would be crazy if I wasn't tired! Also, one of the characteristics of one who is adjusting is spacyness and lack of judgement – so there is no way I can be blamed for going to the Men’s bathroom and not noticing the wall of urinals until I walked out.

Ecuador has daylight from 6-6 as best as I can tell, but being equatorial it is like a constant 12 hour day. It gets dark here about 6:30. Which leads me to my only “getting around” problem. Every night when we ( the three volunteers who live in my house) come home it is dark.  So even though we have come home about 8 times, we still have not found definitive landmarks to consistently get off the at the right bus stop.  We can’t see the street signs and the colors of buildings -one of my favorite things about Latin America -are not visible.  My comrades have determined it is the second light after the three trees shaped like lollipops but I have never been able to see the lollipop tress as I am on the wrong side of the bus. But it is just one small step left for me to get that down.  We also are all confident that getting off the bus too late is far better than getting off too soon as this is a difference between a steep uphill vs downhill.  This is the bus I  take...

The picture at the beginning is a picture of the Confederate Bookstore https://www.facebook.com/Confederate-Bookstore-Quito-Ecuador--136477079699116/ an English language bookstore near my Spanish school and I have found my way there and back. It is not my only source for reading materials but it is a good one so I have now established means of always having a book to read.  I was a bit worried about this – but relaxed a little when my pace of reading dropped to about 3 pages a day. And once I am there with extra time I will ask the owners why the name Confederate?

Ciao!