We are so lucky to be staying with a family in Tumbaco, a village in the next valley from Quito, the parents of a friend of Damian´s. Faviola, José and Santiago have been amazing and have made us so welcome here.

Since we have been in Quito we have had a tour of the city from the family, where we saw the oldest church in South America, and lots of statues of Bolivar of course.

We have been to two football matches, our new team here is Nacional. They are a great team and I now have a football shirt, shock horror. ( i have been wearing it to sleep in not in the daytime don´t worry!)

There has been really heavy rain here because it is the rainy season, and most of the costal part of Ecuador is under about 5metres of water. this is a national emergency and there has been loads in the news about it.

we have also been helping Faviola, who volunteers with the health centre in the village. We have been making up food parcels to give out ot the 500 or so poorest families in the area, containing rice, beans, sugar, quinoa, powder milk etc. today we were helping prepare salads and fruit salads as part of a food education scheme for some of the poorer indigenous families who live locally and have a very poor diet, with too much carbohydrates (such as maize and rice) and too little vegetables. kind of similar to some of the stuff me and damian had seen done in leeds, so it was interesting to see how similar these things work.

We have been following the diplomatic crisis in full, its been very interesting, suffice to say just don´t believe anything at all you hear in the news, even to some extent the BBC because we´ve realised just how differently events can be portrayed depending on who owns your media!