I'm going to have a very hard time coming up with interesting names for all of these...

Hi hi hi! Hola hola hola!

As I sit at the dining room table looking out at some gorgeous mountains covered by a little bit of clouds I can't help but think how unique this place is. There are palm trees lining the streets and there are mountains absolutely everywhere you look. The list of things we were taught to watch out for and be cautious of included both volcanoes and robbers. In Ecuador it is possible, as we were told at orientation yesterday, to wake up in the Amazon, eat lunch at the foot of a mountain, and then go have dinner on the beach. What a place.

Yesterday was orientation day so my family brought me to campus at about 7:45. Yes this was very early, but it's much easier to wake up early when it is not cold and dark outside so I didn't really have much trouble with that! We all got nametags and went in sat in this sort of lecture room, University of North Carolina and Michigan State were definitely the two schools with the biggest USFQ population, which was kind of cool. We were taught about the history of Ecuador, the services available to us, health, safety, security, etc. We were also introduced to some staff and got a campus tour. The campus is gorgeous. The tour was a little bit confusing, but that wasn't such a big deal seeing as it took us around 5 minutes to do the whole thing. :) What a contrast to MSU. During our little coffee break I met a girl who was from Mississippi who had also studied at USFQ this past summer, so she was able to tell me a little bit of what it was like and she talked to one of the campus tour guides about the places she'd visited before and the places he thought she should visit. Quite entertaining. After orientation the Michigan State students (I don't know why we get special treatment, but we kind of do...ha ha) had pizza with Maricarmen, our resident director. Maricarmen is a cheery, lovely woman who is sort of like a mother bird who has enfolded us all in her wings. After pizza, Christina, Tracy, Beth, and I went to get our phones. Well...Beth took us to get our phones because she had already gotten hers. I feel like the guy at Movistar (the popular phone company here) had probably had a lot of gringos come in recently because he knew exactly what we were after, cheap phones without real plans. Ha ha. So now I have my phone! Which is really nice because I feel a lot safer leaving the house with a way to call my host family or people I'm meeting up with.

It was Joe's birthday yesterday so the plan was that we were all going to go out later, but my host family really wanted me to go to a birthday dinner for my mom's sister. Of course I wanted to go to that too, but it was still sort of difficult because I was trying to explain that I would love to be able to do both while trying not to insult them or make them unhappy. I think I did a good job because it seemed totally fine with them that I do both. Yay! First kind of conflict dealt with. :) So later that night I went with my host family to my host mom's sister's house in another part of Quito. We hung out, watched some TV (because we were there way earlier than everyone else was supposed to get there), had some tea, etc. I was thinking it a bit odd when at 7:30 there was no food being made for a dinner that was supposed to start at 8:00. I mean I know Ecuadorian time is different and 8:00 means anytime after 8 but still. That was when the cooks arrived. Two guys came to make the birthday dinner food. At first I was taken aback, but I'm thinking that's how the wealthy do it in Ecuador. We didn't eat until 9:45. No wait, I didn't eat until 9:45, everyone else started at around 10 but the food was ready and so my family said I could eat so that I could leave and go out with people. Ha ha. In Ecuador it is custom to greet everyone with a kiss on the cheek. Even if you don't know them at all, if you meet them you kiss them on the cheek, so when Isabel and I came downstairs to eat after putting Joaquin to bed and there was a circle of 20 Ecuadorians sitting and chatting and celebrating, I went around and kissed them all on the cheek. I felt silly, but it was also very cool.

After eating Isabel called a taxi for me. At this point it was raining so most of the taxi cooperatives didn't have open taxis, but we foudn one and then she waited with me and told the taxi driver where to go. I was headed for Mariscal, or Plaza Foch, which is a totally tourist place where all the gringos go to party. Ha ha. I got there and waited a few minutes for my friends who were meeting me there after going out to eat for Joe's birthday. We were with Matt's host sisters and they took us to Bungalow 6, which I found it later is apparently the most gringo-tastic bar. Ha ha. It was SO much fun. Almost all the people from our group were there and I don't know it was just awesome. Much better than the clubs I had gone to in the states. We danced and hung out for a while then went outside with the purpose of calling a taxi then going back inside, but we just ended up hanging out outside with this guy who is an exchange student at MSU who is from Quito who we had met last semester. We chatted up him and his friends for awhile (it was no longer raining). There were like 4 police officers on the corner we were standing on which was kind of weird but they didn't really do anything for the whole half hour we were out there. I didn't notice how odd it was for awhile, but then I got kind of wary. Hmm... Anyways, one of the guys we were with flagged down a taxi for me and Rebecca and then we headed home! All in all a greatly fantastic night.

Today the plan is to meet up with Becky and go exploring. It looks to be a gorgeous day outside right now so let's hope it doesn't rain later!!! Although it probably will. :)

-EM