Quito: Day 1

I have been in Ecuador for a little over 24 hours now and I have already seen many, many interesting things and survived my first series of linguistic misunderstandings. After a long wait at the O´Hare airport, my flights went incredibly smoothly - leaving me to believe that South American airlines are most definitely more efficient, timely, and generally fantabulous than American airlines. My connections, one as short as 45 minutes, were of no concern because all of my flights were on time or even early - yay!

As has often been the case in my experiences of international travel, I found a few companions along the way. First, I met an elderly Salvadoran couple in Chicago who were on the same flight as I was - and also the site of my first misunderstanding. I was shocked to find that I could manage a most basic and probably butchered conversation with the Salvadoran woman and was pretty sure that she was telling me that she and her husband were headed for Winnipeg at the same time as my flight to Guatemala and that THEN they would stay only a few hours in Winnipeg and continue on to El Salvador! It made no sense to me, but I clarified - esta noche, no a noche? but alas, when I saw them again in the waiting room it was clear that I hadn´t understood most of conversation at all. and so it begins.

My second traveling companion was a man from Chicago, originally from Cuenca a city in southern Ecuador, who was on every leg of my flight - I don´t think there were many of us. We didn´t talk until we were both waiting for our last connection in San Jose. I asked him if the gate was the right one, in Spanish, and after discovering he spoke English we chatted for quite a while. This conversation left me with a name and address of a Colombian restaurant in Chicago that this man owns (but no one involved is Colombian - this didn´t seem to be a problem to him...) and a phone number for his family in Cuenca in case I ended up coming to that city. Lovely!

My family and school here in Quito are great so far. My family, Carlos, Nancy, Karla Sofia (17) and Maria Jose (11) are nice, high spirited and most hospitable. I have my own room with a DVD player and TV and a whole drawer of Spanish DVDs to select from. I think I might watch a couple of the American movies that they have in Spanish so I can hope to pick something up. Our apartment is the first floor of a small apartment building in a relatively quiet part of Quito (La Floresta barrio) and it´s only a 10 minute walk to my school. I´ll need to get used to the schedule here but I think I´ll like it. The main meal of the day is at 1:30 or so and I´m not sure that supper is even a sit down affair. Last night I ate on my own, and Carlos ate later, and the girls were eating when I arrived at 3 p.m. But that was the weekend so we´ll see how it works during the work week. The girls start school at 7 a.m. and are done by 1 p.m. and the adult work world works in a similar way with morning work ending by 1 and restarting from 3-7 p.m.

My school is located in a nice building with a great computer lab, where I´m posting this from. My teacher´s name is Sandra and I have four hours of study with her every morning. At break I had a chance to meet some of the other students including a couple of Canadians and a few Americans and Australians. I´m back at the school now for a short class in idiomas or local expressions. Tuesdays and Thursdays there are salsa classes, Wednesdays, cooking, and Thursday night is an evening bus tour of the old city. I won´t do it all this week but I´m definitely thinking about joining a camping trip into the mountains this weekend.

It´s been a long time since I´ve been out of the Western world and much of the feel of Quito reminds me of places I´ve been in West Africa and China. Less order, more noise, and more dirt than at home. But I like it. I´m trying to remember to be more careful crossing the street, and taking the time to look up into the mountains whenever I can. Quito is situated between 2 large mountains. Es muy bonita!

This will end up being a long post without photos (I´ll try to add photos later in the week. I think I might have to find an internet cafe for that - these computers don´t seem to be equipped for inputing photos) but I´ll close with a couple of things I´m learning about Ecuador. First, I learned in my lessons this morning that Ecuador has a new constitution. And one of the features of this constitution is that Quichua, an indigenous language, is now officially one of Ecuador´s languages along with Spanish. My teacher said that this is really significant for the indigenous people and has a lot of implications for the educational system. It´s my sense so far that Ecuador is a fairly politically liberal society (although I may be wrong) as in addition to the new constitution that also made steps towards more inclusive language (Spanish is very male centered), much of the graffiti around town seem to be about issues facing miners and farmers (again, this is based on my basic interpretations) and I noticed a women´s organization just up the street from my school that stated on their sign ¨Without women, there is not democracy¨. Amen.

That´s all for now - so far I´m having a really good time, can´t understand much of what my host family say, but I´m doing my best.