Sch ... ! Dizziness.

The night on Friday was terrible. Actually, sleeping is going well now, but if a dog barks in the house at one in the morning, you wake up. It's damn annoying that he keeps barking and expressing his discomfort for an hour without interruption. There's no way you can fall asleep. Joy reigns when someone from the house finally frees the poor guy.

I don't know if I slept again or just dozed off intermittently. But towards morning, I notice that I can lie on one side, but not on the other. If I put my head on the wrong side, I get dizzy, really dizzy, and I have to sit up immediately. Since it's still three hours until I have to get up, I hope it will pass. But it doesn't. It keeps getting worse and I curse myself for the idea of traveling to Ecuador. It's not just this inexplicable, annoying dizziness. No, there's also the struggle with Spanish, the unresolved issue with the SIM card, the crappy weather! Just cold, since I could hardly make it up the hill on Sunday because of the heat. Cold, cold, and rain. I can't get the wet things dry. It's disgusting. I tried that before getting up, but it didn't work.

I managed to pull myself together for breakfast. Damn, I was still dizzy. Maybe the Itinerol I took will help, I hoped. Just a little for breakfast. Paulina (at some point I have to dedicate a whole blog post to her) poured me a special tea and told me to come back if it doesn't get better. Lie down, rest, that helps.

At school, I was immediately offered to brew a coca tea. I flinched and shook my head. Just let go and see. It got better and better. At the break, I had a herbal tea (sounds better than one with cocaine in it, doesn't it?!) and didn't eat the empanadas with cheese that were freshly made and tempting on the table. Made in the school kitchen by the caretaker, I don't even know her name, even though she made me a tea with fresh herbs from the garden. 'Drink without sugar!' Were there coca leaves in it? But it tasted more like basil and looked like it too.

After school, we said goodbye to two students: Rosi and David. Both are flying to Lima next night. Both independently. David is meeting friends from the States there and visiting Cuzco and Machu Picchu, Rosi is spending a day there before finally flying back to Brazil. Until now, she says in her farewell speech, Peru has been her favorite country, now she has fallen in love with Ecuador. Of course, she adds, after Brazil. Rosi is the one with the selfie stick. Always taking a few dozen selfies, not just one or two. But she is likeable and warm-hearted.

Since I'm pretty sure I won't go to the farewell party in the evening, I say goodbye here. Hardly known and yet tears come to my eyes, I'm a sensitive soul. So what.

I go home for almuerzo (lunch). It's already ready. Martha brings me the soup with pasta in it. I eat together with the man who has been working on the kitchen all week. I don't know his name, or whether he's only here because of the kitchen renovation or if he's generally a kind of housekeeper. He has an indigenous face, is very attentive without talking much, and always wears a T-shirt, even when the day starts at 8 degrees.

It doesn't get colder here, I have learned. Snow in Quito, impossible. Hail is possible, but temperatures at freezing point, you have to go higher up for that. For lunch, I eat very little, at least that's what I tell Martha. She's Paulina's mother, who does physio, if I understood correctly. Despite that, a whole leg of chicken ends up on my plate, with rice, beans, tomatoes, and avocado paste on top of the rice. I've never liked it when I tasted it in Aline's cooking. But it seems that I'm getting used to the taste of this extremely healthy fruit. And considering my current condition, that was probably the best: eating healthy.

Well, the condition was already better. In the afternoon, I decided to go to the supermarket about a kilometer away from here. SIM card!! I loaded 20 dollars, but I still have to test if I can make calls.

Since I was feeling better there, I continued walking to Avenida Naciones Unidas and caught a few Pokémon, because there are still 40 MB credit from the first purchase.

Up at Avenida 6 de Agosto, I sat on a wall at a bus stop for a whole half hour and just watched. Now the feeling came back, the good feeling of 'Wow, I'm allowed to be here'.

By the way, I saw how these blue city buses work. I didn't fully understand it, but I could already discreetly blend in with the bus like a local and without doing anything wrong. The only thing is, I wouldn't have a clue if I was on the right bus.

On the walk back, I picked up the cache at Atahualpa Stadium. It's the stadium in Quito where a few weeks ago the Ecuadorian national football team lost 2-3 to Colombia and ruined their good chance of qualifying for the World Cup.

When I arrived home, I realized that my health was okay, so I wrote this blog and I'm happy that tomorrow I'll be steaming to Cotopaxi on the 'Tren de los Volcanes'. Well, it's not steam and it doesn't matter because of the photos. But what makes me particularly happy: Martha pointed to the red evening sky and said that it will be beautiful tomorrow.

That would be the icing on the cake after this crappy week with rain, cold, rain, etc.