Mi nombre es Jennifer. Me gusta chocolate. A mi no me gusta pollo. Mi esposo gustas futbol mucho.

20 hours of Spanish school and right now, without my notes in front of me, that is about all I can remember. I rule at Spanish adjective hangman, provided the words are only sourced from my list of adjectives which includes hot, cold, slow, fast and bitter, none of which have yet come up in wider conversation. However in 20 hours of Spanish school my teacher did not cover numbers. She seemed to think I should know numbers, even though I can clearly only count to six. I think this should have come apparent when we had a whole lesson on where I had been travelling in the past, which went a little something like this…

- Have you been to America?

- Yes, I have been to America.

- How many days were you there?

- Six.

- Have you been to Spain?

- Yes, I have been to Spain.

- How long were you there?

- Six days.

- Have you been to Australia.

- Yes, for six days I have been to Australia.

- Six days?

- Erm, yes. Six.

Jon did numbers. And times. At first he lorded this extra knowledge over me but it turns out this is more useful than being able to describe coffee as bitter so he has had to do more talking than me which he doesn't really enjoy. This culminated in an argument about who was going to buy bus tickets which I refused to do because I couldn't say 1.45pm. He only bought one ticket in an attempt to prove he didn't really know numbers either.

Having said all that it was definitely worth spending a week at school to learn some basics. And we were lucky to make it to the first day of school, as LAN really didn't want us to get here. It gave quite an insight into how chaotic South American airtravel can be. Our plane was delayed so we ended up on a later plane, with 'free seating, just get on and your bags will be there' from Arequipa to Lima. Which meant the 3 hour layover ended up being a 40 min layover, but we had to leave the airport and go in again to get to Quito. If anyone has travelled with me you will know I'm not the greatest traveller in the world and I like to get places 3 hours early. So I'd just about calmed down from the experience and was looking forward to landing at Quito, taking in my window view (some houses, a garage, the runway 10 metres below us) when the pilot changed his mind and decided to take off again and do another circle of the city. I just managed to get off the plane without having a full blown panic attack, and swore to Jon I wasn't flying again until he pointed out that might make travelling round the world a little difficult.

We are staying with my Aunt Sheila in Quito - she has lived here for over 30 years and speaks considerably more (fluent) Spanish than we do, which makes her an excellent tour guide. As well as bringing us into Quito every day for school, she points out all the sights on the way - mountains here, crazy Colombian drivers causing a bus to crash there - yes we saw our first car accident on the way in one morning, though the driving here rivals Peru in it's craziness, so we have been lucky its only one so far. In all seriousness though, traffic accidents are one of the highest causes of death here, so the Government embarked on a campaign to reduce it by painting blue hearts on the road at fatal accident sites. It's pretty scary when you see 15 hearts from a bus accident painted on to the road with what looks like quite disturbing accuracy as to where exactly each person perished.

Staying with Sheila has meant full access to a kitchen (Curry! Roast chicken! Nutella on toast!), as well as to Fox Sports, so Jon has managed to see the two Chelsea games in Christmas week. Despite watching both of them I forget who they were against. Mainly because the commentator for Fox live is not as good as the one for the delayed games. He made up a little, highly excitable song about Berbatov when he scored (GOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLL) in the Man Utd v Fulham game which went something like 'He comes from Bulgaria and scores with his heel'. Some of the effect gets lost in translation…

We went to see an Ecuadorian league game one evening where the fans' enthusiasm for what was, well, not the greatest standard of football in the world, rivalled said commentators. The game was an inter-Quito derby between La Liga and Nationale for a place in the Copa del America (we think). La Liga is a much more successful team having won numerous titles, but Nationale has a unique selection policy where only Ecuadorian players are permitted to sign for the club. This has lead to two noticeable things about the club - they are very well supported within Ecuador, but they aren't very good and seem to only have signed short midfield players. In fact the formation for this game seemed to be 1-9-1. The game picked up in the last 20 minutes, but the fans were watchable all the way through. We paid $10 for our tickets along the half way line in the terraces, but the hardcore fans were sat behind the goals, and spent most of the game climbing up the 20 feet fences which still line the side of the pitch (despite having been banned in the UK over 20 years ago post-Hilsborough). Occasionally an announcement would threaten to stop the game if they didn't get down, but no one seemed to listen, and nothing happened. They also had lots of flares and fireworks which to me was reminiscent of the infamous Turkish 'Welcome to Hell' scenes, but a bit more good natured - the brass band playing throughout the game seemed to take the edge of it. I learnt a fair amount of Spanish that night, but none of it was repeatable to my respectable teacher the next day. The game finally ended 1-1, with El Nationale going through on goal difference, and Jon planning what other games we can see for the next 3 months and trying to rearrange our travel plans accordingly.

Although school took up a lot of our time we managed to fit in a bit of sight seeing in the afternoons. We went to the linea equinoxiale (another word!), or Equator line, which is just north of Quito in a desert. It rained when we were there but it meant it wasn't very busy so we have pictures of just the two of us on the line which is quite unheard of at sunny weekends. The museum at the equator is pretty interesting (for a museum) - it shows all the different people in Ecuador - a supriosingly high number for such a small country. Shelia was an excellent guide and gathered quite a following of other tourists as we made our way through the tribes from the distinct regions of the coast, andes and amazon. Shelia's worked with many of the groups throughout her time in the country and pointed out which bits of the displays were incorrect (a fair bit actually). We also had an afternoon in the old part of Quito where Jon wanted to go to a museum but I won this time and we didn't. We tried to get into the President's House which is usually open to the public, but it seemed to be shut for a special nativity as the only people who could get in were dressed as shepherds or angels. Unfortunately I didn't have my halo with me that day. We did climb the towers in the Basillica though which gave a good view over town, but I didn't really like the fact that most of the steps were on the outside, not the inside of the tower so I stopped halfway.

We've also (obviously) had Christmas away from home this week, which has been strange. We tried to make it an authentic experience by heading out to the mountains on Christmas Eve to seek out some snow, and get some fresh air visiting Antisana national reserve. Antisana is a 5700m high mountain that used to be part of a private estate with, but was recently taken over by the Government who made it a national reserve. Because it used to be more difficult to gain access it's still fairly quiet there, despite being only an hour or so from Quito. I remember Shelia telling me this was why it was one of her favourite places. I remember her saying it would be a good place to go and get some exercise / fresh air. I don't remember anyone telling me that the main reason people would go there was to bird watch. And not really watch through binoculars because they are right next to the road….

Luckily this was more of a bird safari, in that no one made me get out of the car near the birds. And I don't really mind watching birds through the comfort of a big 4 x 4, with the safety of a window between me and them. We say a huge number of Carunculated Caracaras (which look like black and white waiters, a bit like the famous grouse that dance in the Christmas whiskey advert), some variable hawks, and a flying black face ibis. But the star attraction for birds spotters in Antisana is to try and see a Condor. Sadly, as we were exiting the park it seemed we were not in luck that day until Jess, Shelia's friend, innocently asked 'what's that bird over there'. Cue condor. And another condor. And then some more. Then some excited shouting from Sheila. We had stumbled upon an area where the condors were nesting, and we saw 11 of them flying on the thermal currents in the air, and looking for food. We watched them (mostly in the comfort of the car, but always at a good, safe distance) for over an hour, and saw them land in their nests (noticeable because they are white from all the bird poo that stains the nests. Bleurgh). We even saw three juvenile condors which don't have the white ruffle round the neck. There are only between 50 and 80 condors in the whole of Ecuador, so to see at least 20% of them together was pretty spectacular, even to me, and was a fantastic Christmas present for Sheila who actually likes to bird watch.

So even though we saw some snow on Christmas Eve, the condors, the sun and having breakfast outside on Christmas morning have made it obvious to us we just aren't in Blighty anymore…

This week we...

STAYED

· At Casa de Sleech in Tumbaco. It's extremely exclusive and not really open to the likes of you unless you bring English foodstuff, and lots of attention for Max, the bouncer who keeps out unwanted guests. And you don't want to mess with Max. He may lick you to death.

ATE

· Turkey and all the trimmings - paxo stuffing, pigs in blankets and NO SPROUTS. The perfect Christmas day Christmas lunch. We even had cathedral city cheddar on our Christmas tea cheese plate. To cheese snobs out there Cathedral City may not be too exotic. But after a month of South American cheese it is heaven.

· Curry, made by Jon. It was delicious, but we had to have it with pitta not naan bread as indian takeaway hasn't yet taken off in Ecuador.

· Big American breakfasts in the Magic Bean in Gringoland (Mariscal Sucre). I will be visiting there again before we leave for more giant apple pancakes.

· At Red Hot Chilli Peppers in Gringoland for fajitas. They were OK, but it was worth it as when we left there were some confused looking Germans wearing Red Hot Chilli Pepper tops who walked in. Band tops, not restaurant tops obviously, otherwise they would just be staff.

· Paninis at El Espanol where we discovered the greatest bottle of wine for only $8 - a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon called Tocornal, which quickly became the Christmas wine of choice

· Sorbets at Helderia San Augustin in Quito old town. They have three variations of passion fruit sorbets which were DEEE-LICIOUS

LEARNT

· Quito taxis don't like the cut of our jib… or they think Jon isn't assertive enough for this machismo culture to stop for him.

· We came to an unspoken agreement with our Spanish teachers. We accepted they will give us homework, and they accepted we would not to it so it was never mentioned the next day.

· Learning numbers in a foreign language is quite fundamental.

· A sports bar in South America named after a favoured London football club will not make the best margaritas in town. But you will forget this after two drinks for one price.

· You can recreate a traditional English Christmas on the equator providing you have fabulous relatives who are prepared to smuggle Cadbury's foodstuffs into the country and purchase a 17 kilo ostrich-like turkey for the big meal, then defrost it for 6 days....

· We have seen the future and it involves Settlers of Catan. Future guests to our house beware - it may have 16 pages of rules but is surprisingly addictive.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH OUR FEATHERED FOE

· Other than the bird watching through 'choice', we have not (yet) directly encountered any chickens in Ecuador, but I am keeping my eyes peeled at all times. However we did see one crossing a road on the way to Antisana. Cue more bad jokes - though marginally more material than nuns on the run jokes…