Soy gringa!! :)

Hola everybody!!! If you just happened upon this very lovely work of art (my blog:)) and have no idea why you are reading this, I might just ask you the same question:) Also, if you didn't know, I am in Quito, Ecuador!! Que bueno, no? I am here for the next week and then I will be in Guayaquil for the next 5 or 6 months with the program AFS (American Field Service) and I will be doing community service with los ninos. I will be living with a family during my stay that I will be meeting next week. In my family there will be the mother Juana, her son Christian, and her daughter Denisse. All that I know about them so far is that they are Catholic, they have dogs (yeah!!), and they have internet access, so I will be able to use it for this blog.

So far my stay in Quito has been muy bueno! There are 8 other people that are doing community service along with me:) there is Anouk from Montreal, Canada who speaks french and is CRAZY!! We laugh a lot:) Then Tone (pronounced "tuna") is from Norway and she is very sweet. Kristoffer is also from Norway and he is crazy as well. He seems to enjoy making fun of me and my accent, because I am an American... I think he is jealous:) The other Norwegian is Erika and then there are four Danes: Morten, Kenneth, Kristine, and Michelle. They are all a lot of fun to hang out with. Luckily they all speak english!

On Friday, July 18 I flew into Quito during a thunder and lightning storm! It was sweet:) just looking out the window and seeing the flashes of light. I met Anouk when we landed and now we are staying in a hostal for the week.

On Saturday, July 19, we met the others and had an orientation. I know... way exciting, huh? I seriously couldn't contain myself with all of the excitement:) that night we went out to a bar (I let them know before we went that I don't drink) and saw a little part of the city. There were little children that would try to sell you cigarettes on the street. It was so sad, there was one girl that had her baby brother slung on her back, and when I climbed in the taxi she kept knocking on my window:( It made me very grateful for all that I have!

On Sunday, July 20, we went to the Mitad del Mundo, which is supposedly where the equator is. So I got to be in the northern and southern hemisphere at the same time!! I know... way exciting:)

The past three days I have been having spanish classes. It is very exhausting!!! This whole week I will be learning spanish for 8 hours every day... By the end of each day I am very tired. But I guess it will all be worth it. We went to a market and the parque and tomorrow I get to learn how to salsa:) Every day I am becoming less of a gringa... if that is possible... I am still not used to all the looks that our group gets. And the honking. It is all very strange.

Some of my first impressions of Ecuador:
-the buses are INSANE! The drivers don't even wait for the doors to shut before they jolt off. I am sure the nine of us look absolutely ridiculous! We were falling all over the place and laughing our heads off - and the people on the bus just stared at us:) they go really fast and half the time people are hanging out the doors... es muy loco.
-I eat the exact same thing every single day for lunch and dinner. We start with some sort of soup followed by a plate of rice and vegetables with a different type of meat. So, there is usually no surprise there... oh, except, sometimes there is corn in the soup, which makes for a really good surprise:) Pretty much everything is fried. And I had no idea that there were so many ways of preparing bananas. They have banana chips, fried bananas, mini bananas, and today, there were bananas in my soup. Mmmm, delicious:) but it really is quite good, just the same every day.
-Everything is very colorful - the buildings, the streets, the graffiti that is all over. It is a lot of fun to be able to look at! The mountains are huge, which is good because I was afraid that I'd miss the mountains in Utah.

So, yes, that is my fun and goodness so far:) hurray!!! hasta luego!!!