I've been here for a week now and it's incredible. The first full day, we ate breakfast at a cafe nearby the hotel in Quito, then took a bus to San Antonio, a town about 30 minutes away, famous because the equator runs through the town. We stayed at a place called Rancho Alegre, and had classroom sessions during the day followed by some activity at night. The first night was a salsa dancing lession. I am horrible, but it was still fun. The second night we watched a movie about two women traveling around Ecuador. The third night we listened to a performance of music native to the Andes that was absolutely incredible. Each member of the band played three or four different instuments, and between each song they all switched which instrument they were on. One of the musician's girlfriend was there, and she had us get up and try to follow the dance moves she was doing, but I didn't even come close to getting it. Each afternoon, we had some time to explore the town. About a 30 minute walk from our hotel was a park and a huge monument marking the line that people used to think was the equator. The equator is actually about 200 meteres away and runs through an ancient site used by the local indigenous people (who did know it was the equator and oriented the site accordingly), but when the Europeans came and tried to measure the equator, they got it slightly wrong.
Eating is a big deal here. Every day, they served us food five times. Breakfast, followed by a snack, then lunch followed by a snack, then dinner. Everything was delicious. There's rice at every meal, along with a lot of soup and tons of different kinds of juices. My favorite juice so far is one made from blackberries. The fruit is incredible.
The fourth day (Thursday), we did what our academic directors Leonore and Fabian call a drop off. In groups of three, we were given the name of a town, and we had to figure out how to get there by bus, and then get back to the hotel we stayed in the first night in Quito. In the town, we were suppose to eat lunch, buy an ice cream, and talk to the locals about the towns history. My group went to Nanegalito, a tiny town on the edge of the cloud forest. The bus ride was the best part. The road winds constantly downward through the mountains, with a sharp drop on one or both sides of the road at all times. It was a little scary, but an incredible experience. Thursday night we went out to a club in Quito. We got a lot of looks. Apparently a group of fourteen gringos all dancing together in one club is a phenomenon.
Friday afternoon, we began our homestays. My family has four people, the two parents (Vladi and Elsita), a nineteen year old son named Felipe, and a 22 year old daughter named Ana Belen. The first night, Ana Belen took me to a friend's house with her, where another girl on my program is staying. There were tons of people there, and they built a campfire in a backyard, and we all sat around it for hours. After breakfast on Saturday, my host parents took me grocery shopping with them. The grocery store is a huge supermarket called Megamaxi, and it's located inside a shopping mall (apparently most supermarkets are). There were tons of fruits and vegetables I had never seen, and everything was so cheap compared to in the US. Then we got ice cream (they eat a TON of ice cream here, you see signs for it on every street corner, and it's incredible), and returned to the house for lunch.
Today, my host father took me on a hike up Ilalo, the volcano that towers over the town. Los Chillos, where we're staying, is a suburb of Quito about 45 minutes outside the city, but it feels completely different. Los Chillos is at about 8000 feet and the top of Ilalo is at about 9500. The path is incredibly steep, and I had to stop and rest every ten minutes or so, because it was so difficult to breathe. The views, however, were amazing. From the top, you can see all of Los Chillos, and a fair amount of Quito. I have pictures which I'll post when I have a chance to upload them from my camera. Along the entire route, random cows grazed, and there were also a number of cultivated fields, mostly growing corn. The people who own them climb the mountain once or twice a day to tend to their crops. We even saw one woman who was climbing it barefoot.
On the way down, it was so steep that the entire thing was a kind of run/walk, with a chance to slow down only every ten meters or so. The fact I fell over once, and my host father fell over twice. Every time one of us fell, he would say "es normal." After the hike, he took me to drink coconut milk (they just wack off the top and put a straw in it), and I also tried a juice made purely from cane sugar that is the sweetest thing I have ever eaten.
Classes start tomorrow morning at 8am, which is when we find out what Spanish level we're in. So far my Spanish has been better than I thought. My host family keeps saying I speak really well, since their previous student apparently was pretty awful, but I still have a long ways to go.
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