First Full Week

Well, today marks the end of my first full week in Quito. It went pretty well. I am enjoying my classes at ACLAS (Andean Center for Latin American Studies) so far, and I am figuring out how to get around Quito a little bit. Also, I am starting to understand more of what my family is saying, so that makes me very very happy.

This week, I learned to use the bus. Depending on what time of day you use the bus, it´s not so bad. There are times though that it can only be described as an experience. There is another Willamette student living across the street, Kayla, so luckily we learned to use the bus together, and her host mom, Maria Eugenia, showed us how to do it on the first day. In the morning, it is rush hour time. We leave our houses at about 7:45, walk down a big hill, so we get to the bus ¨stop¨ at about 8. There are some actual bus stops but you can pretty much wave down any bus, and just hop on as it drives by. When we get on the bus in the morning, there are usually 100+ people on it already. This makes it very difficult to move. I have found the best way to move through the crowd is to grab the overhead bars and just pull myself through non-existent spaces, because there really is no other option. There is even a man who has the job of standing at the open bus door to make sure nobody falls out. In the afternoon though, it´s not so bad.

At ACLAS, where all of us Willamette students are studying this month taking Spanish classes, we have also started taking dance classes on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. We are learning to Salsa right now, and later on, we will learn to Merengue. We will try at least. There are 17 of us, and we are all taking the class. The problem is that there are 13 girls and only 4 boys, so it makes partnering up a little bit difficult. We are working around that issue though, and it has been a lot of fun.

On Friday, a few of us went to a part of Quito called Mariscal, or Gringolandia. Kayla, Stephanie and I went earlier than most people to take some time to walk around, and eat dinner there before the night life starts up. We enjoyed are time, although we did end up getting kind of bored between the time that we finished eating, and things really start happening for the night. Gringolandia, true to it´s name has tons of gringos, and once it gets dark, the streets are completely full of people. We did meet up with other people from our group eventually, but by that time Stephanie and I had decided that as it was our first night out, we didn´t want to make it too late, and we both headed home at about 11, which is really when things are just getting started. It was a fun night though.

Today, I went to a country-ish part of Quito with my family and Kayla to see my brother Jaime´s house. He has a house, that is not completed yet, that has horses, and an amazing view of the mountains. My family, by the way, is something like this:

Papa Fausto, Mama Beatriz (who I won´t meet until Wednesday, as she has been in Argentina with my sister), my brother Fausto, his wife, Deseña, their baby, Mariapaz, Deseña´s mother, abuelita Carmen, my brother Jaime, my sister Maria Isabel (who is in Argentina right now) and today I met two more people, my niece Maria Elena, and my nephew Juan Jose. They are all very nice people, and I am looking forward to getting to know them better of the next few months. My niece and nephew are five year old twins, and they are adorable, so I can´t wait for them to come back again. Right now though, I have to study for a quiz that I have tomorrow. Chao!