Speaking Spanish - warning dense text and no pictures

At USFQ
The faculty that I have met at USFQ all speak English, so I am not getting a lot of practice at speaking Spanish with them.  It’s just more efficient for them to speak in English with me.

However, at lunch the other day I sat at a table with seven different professors and they all talked in Spanish most of the time.  It didn’t bother me that I couldn’t understand much of what they were saying, because I figure this is one way I can get my ear trained to the speed and accent.

If you get them to speak in Spanish to you, they speak rapidly, and then you say "habla despacio por favor" (speak slower please), and they immediately switch to English.

One-on-one Conversation
On Tuesday (9/4) I have an appointment set up to have a one hour one-on-one conversation with USFQ professor Claudia (a Spanish profesora).  I’m hoping that works into a regular meeting.  Also I just learned of a language school here in Cumbayá.  I’m going to give them a call tomorrow (Monday, 9/3).  Another option is to go to Quito where there are numerous language schools.  I’m just hoping to avoid the two hours in a bus required to go Quito and then come back.  But if that’s what it takes, I’ll probably do it.

Grant
I have a grant from the IU OVPIA (Office of the Vice Present for International Affairs) that will help pay for Spanish lessons while I’m here.  Why would they pay for that?  IU takes international studies seriously, check out their “Factbook” web page.  I plan to take computing students from IU Southeast on Dr. Magdalena's Summer in Ecuador program every other year for next some many years.

Miscommunication because of context?
I’m pretty sure that sometimes the person to whom you are speaking in your broken Spanish just cannot understand you because of context problems.  Here’s an example.  When I first got here (10 days ago or so) I asked Estella (Cecilia’s made) about riding the bus to Quito from Cumbayá.  I knew she rode it, so that was not the problem.  The problem was I was asking (in Spanish of course): How often do the buses go from Cumbayá to Quito?  If you’ve seen my post from the other day you know the answer is about 10 every 10 minutes.  So I think the problem was that this question made absolutely no sense to her because busses go ALL the time, not just once or twice an hour (like I was thinking).