¡Hola! Mi nombre es Simon y soy Ingles...

I never liked learning German at school.  I´m not sure whether it was because I wasn´t interested in the language, or because our German teacher had the personality of a Gestapo General.

I was therefore a bit apprehensive when I headed up to the language school for my first Spanish lesson.  Myself and a Welsh girl from the hostel, Hannah, had signed up for two hours of lessons per day with Patricia, a larger than life Chilean woman.  I was expecting to ease in quite slowly with a bit of "my name is" etc.  No chance - we went straight into the uses of the verbs ´ser´ and ´estar´, then the conjugation of those verbs.  I´m sure I´ll get mocked for admitting this, but at that point I couldn´t even remember what a verb was. Or how verbs are used in the English language, let alone Spanish!  On top of that Patricia doesn´t speak any English.  I can honestly say that I didn´t have a clue what was going on for the first 10 minutes.

Anyway, after a shocker of a start, I started picking stuff up (thank goodness!).  Not only that, but I really really enjoyed the rest of the lesson.  That was Monday and now it´s Friday.  I can´t believe the difference 10 hours of lessons have made!  Don´t get me wrong, there are small animals that can speak more Spanish than me, but I´m now able to have basic conversations with people.  I´m going to do some more lessons when I get to a cheaper country like Bolivia, but for now I´m just trying to chat to anyone who will humor me.

Aside from the lessons, this week I´ve visited a beautiful black sand beach on the shore of lake Villarica and went Hydrospeeding!  This activity involved throwing myself down grade III rapids holding onto something resembling an over-sized child's swimming float (you know the ones you had when you were learning to swim at school).  It sounds ridiculous but it was great fun (that´s not me in the picture by the way).

I´m not sure what I´m going to do next.  I can´t make my mind up whether to go North, South, East or West.  To confuse the matter further, I was also asked if I´d like to work at this hostel....  Hopefully I´ll have made my mind up by the time I write the next post! Chao for now. 

The town of Pucon.

The moon comes up after another beautiful day.

The weather is so hot that beer needs to be frozen.  We slightly overestimated on this one...

A view of the hill next to lake Villarica from the black sand beach.  The three trees that stick out on the ridge are the town´s mascot.

Doing my homework on the beach!

I´m currently living in something resembling a large beehive....

This statue of Jesus keeps an eye on the town.