DAY 11: I think that I'm learning Spanish a lot quicker than the other students in school. I don't know if it's because I took French in high school and the language is very similar, or because I come from Filipino heritage and Tagalog borrows many words from Spanish. All I do know is that most students I've spoken to are doing way more written exercises in class (and for homework), while I've moved on to more conversational work.

As the days go by, my tangeants of conversation get longer and longer and get farther and farther away from the usual getting-to-know-you-traveler-chit-chat. My Spanish has risen to the level where I can -- very slowly mind you -- talk with my tutor Rosa about such topics as the underground women's liberation movement in Latin America and parapsychology.

"Did you learn anything new today?" I asked Pamela, an English girl, at our coffee break.

"I learned how to say, 'Soy una tarta,'" she said. "I am a cake." In Spanish, this is the equivalent of calling yourself a retard.

THE SECRET TO MY SPOKEN SPANISH IS SIMPLE: when using a verb, always mumble the conjugation at the end and let the context of the situation define it. In Spanish, its common to drop the pronoun (I/You/He/She/We etc.) in a sentence because the different conjugation defines it already. Mumbling the verb is particularly handy when you ask your house host, "¿Puedo lavar mi ropa?" ("Can I wash my clothes?") and she hears "¿Puedes lavar mi ropa?" ("Can you wash my clothes?") and is kind enough to take your dirty socks and underwear and wash it for you.

AFTER A NAP, I went out for a walk. It was a sunny day for a change, and I wandered the New City, near the Casa de Cultural Ecuadoriana (picture above). I went out to a city park, where I just sat and read a book, while watching a couple of school boys play a game of soccer. On my way out of the park, I saw three teenage boys peeing in a little ditch, right in front of everyone, without a care in the world. And you thought America was free.

I wandered into the Centro Comercial Espiral, this shopping mall downtown that designed as a spiral. It was sort of like the Guggenheim Museum in New York, only with stores that sold clothes, bootleg DVDs of movies that are still out in theaters, and those coin-operated kiddie rides you'd see in front of a WalMart -- one of which took the form of an imitation Mickey Mouse bent over like he was in a gay porn, waiting for kids to "ride" him.

BACK AT THE HOUSE, I noticed my clothes hanging out in the backyard and mumbled to Blanca, "¿Pued...ooesss... traer mi ropa?" I said the last part of the verb like a tape recording gone bad. It didn't really work this time, but she led me outside where my clothes were hanging. Half of them were still wet, so I left them.

At dinner, I met a new housemate, an Aussie named John, who was one of last week's house guests back for an extra day. His passport had been stolen on a bus ride and he just need a place to crash while he tried to get his documents together. Blanca was more than happy to let him stay another night.

So far this has been the fifth case of theft I've hear on public transportation since I've been here. But everyone that I've spoken to that got stuff ripped off always blames him/herself. "If I had just locked my bag, it wouldn't have happened" is usually the thing they say when slapping themselves in the face. A lot of it has to do that they are gringos too I think. Perhaps my looks will come in handy after all.

At night, Ani and I went out drinking with our new one-night Aussie brother. We went out to some bar and met up with a new group of compadres: Ani's German friend Jurgen; Bettina, from Cologne, Germany; Tonya, from German-speaking Vienna; and a Russian girl who spoke German. If there's anything that Quito has more than Latinos, it's Germans. They are everywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if I opened up a refrigerator and found a German guy in there passing me out a beer.

John and I just sort of sat there while the German words flew, but luckily everyone knew English and we got along together. I was thinking that perhaps after Spanish I should learn German, but then again, the only German you need to know to get by is "bier."