Hello! So it’s the end of my first day in Ecuador and it was definitely a success. How I feel now is completely different from how I felt when I first went to Spain. I think it has a lot to do with my having prepared, agonized, and dreamed about going to Spain for three years before it happened. For Ecuador, I didn’t even take it seriously until about a month before I flew out. Of course, that had a lot to do with me not knowing whether I could actually go or not but it’s sort of counterintuitive that the more I prepare, the more nervous I get (In this situation, I don’t think it would be the same in a test-taking scenario). Of course when I went to Spain it was my first time doing something like this and at least now I’m more prepared, in that respect.
Anyway, to update you on what’s happening now: I live with Marcela (Mami) and Carolina (Carola, for short). Marcela has two other children, Jose is a civil engineer and lives on the coast (I haven’t met him yet, but he visits about twice a month) and Marisabel lives in France with her husband and they were visiting but left just this morning. She is fluent in English and was really helpful last night when I was getting the big briefing on how the house is run. From past experience, I know that it’s essential to completely understand the house’s basic rules from the get-go. Everyone is really kind and I feel very welcome. I’m trying really hard to ask questions and to ask Marcela to repeat something if I don’t understand. I think that was one of my biggest problems from when I was in Spain. I would smile and nod a lot because I was embarrassed to not understand. I’ve pretty much decided that I’m going to be shameless and it seems to be working to my benefit (so far).
I understand a lot more than I can articulate myself. At orientation today I understood almost everything (when I wasn’t spacing out. Unlike with English lectures, I have to devote my entire attention to the speaker to catch what they are saying. I think I took it for granted being able to just sit back and take in English) but at dinner tonight with Marcela, Carolina, and her boyfriend I understood almost nothing. At one point they all stopped talking and looked at me. Clearly someone had asked me a question but I completely missed it. I sat there like a deer in headlights and said ¿que? They laughed.
Anyway, this house is beautiful. They don’t make houses like this in the States. It is big and has about five or six staggered levels. It is older and has high ceilings and it is very spacious. It is filled with art, much of it painted my Marcela. She is very good. My bedroom is big, has a desk, huge closet, and its own bathroom. Each bedroom has its own bathroom. And I have a big window that looks over Quito and Pichincha, a huge Volcano that borders the eastern side of the city. They (we?) have a maid named Rebecca and she is lovely. She will be my motivation to keep this room looking nice.
So today at orientation I met all the other students. There are 21 Area Studies students and there are six in the other IES program here in Quito, a friend of mine from high school is one of those six. Everyone is really nice and I think I’m doing pretty well on names so far. We went to lunch at a restaurant to try some authentic Ecuadorian food. It was delicious but there was a lot of chicken involved. I couldn’t bring myself to eat it quite yet. I just ate around it. Also, we had some really good juice, called tomato juice but it’s made from “tomate de arból.” It’s an Ecuadorian tomato, very different from what we think of but very delicious.
Orientation went well. The IES Abroad Center is modern and the staff is really nice. They joke a lot. The only mishap I had was in the bathroom: next to the toilet is a sign that says not to flush paper. I had a moment of confusion. Are they talking about toilet paper? Still not sure, but the toilet seems to have flushed just fine.
Okay, I think that’s about it. Except for some FACTOIDS!
· Buses here have their own lane that goes down the middle of the street and blocks out other vehicles with a curb. I vote its good idea. Wink, wink American cities.
· There are alarms attached to the bedroom doors in this house and many others in case ladrones come into your house at night. So if you wanted to get a glass of water at night, you would have to scream down three staggered levels to Marcela to let you out. She recommends keeping a bottle of water in your room.
· Ecuador’s electric infrastructure is powered by dam and since water levels are low, they are cutting back on electricity. The result is that the entire country is divided into sectors and each sector gets a two-hour time block in which their electricity is shut off each day. The time-block for each sector changes daily and is published in the newspaper. Ecuadorians have gotten really good at resetting their alarm clocks. They say the problem should be fixed by February.
· The people of Quito have endearingly nick-named the part of town where foreigners like to hang out as “Gringolandia.”
· My Skype username is: pamela.m.holtz if you’d like to chat!
Okay…I promise to take some photos tomorrow. Looks like we’ll be visiting “El Centro Histórico” or Quito’s historic downtown. Should be nice.
¡Hasta mañana!
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