The First Week

Hi everyone!  Sorry this took so long to get started. It´s been almost a full week now since I touched down in the Quito airport, but quite honestly feels much longer than that because so much has happened in the last week.  I got in at about 11 o'clock last Sunday night, and by the time I got through customs and such it was nearly 12.  My new host mom, Gina Salgado, was waiting at the aiport to pick me up with a little green sign that said "Tyler Garwood" on it.  It was a pretty weird sensation meeting someone who I knew absolutely nothing about, as well as had/still have some trouble communicating with, and thinking that I would be spending the next four months in her house.  After a short car ride to the house, in which the car stalled at least four times, I was so exhausted that, once shown my room, I simply plopped down on my bed and fell asleep, anticipating having to be at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito at 9 the next morning. However, I was misinformed about this, and had to run out of the house the next morning because our orientation actually started at 8.  The bus that goes to Cumbayá, which is where the university is located, has a stop virtually right outside my apartment building´s door, and the bus comes to the stop about every three or four minutes.  I got on the bus with Gina, and we proceed to leave the high montane valley that houses Quito to the lower elevation of Cumbayá.  The bus ride is pretty indescribable.  First of all, it is incredibly beautiful.  Once you get over a small crest, you can see the whole valley that Cumbayá and other neigboring towns are located in, and in the immediate vicinity, you are surrounded by cliffs and tropical trees.  As for the buses themselves, they are actually very nice and incredibly cheap; it only costs me 25 cents to take the 30 minute bus ride to class.  As you might expect, traffic here goes at a pretty breakneck speed, and the bus is no exception.  So basically you are flying down a mountain surrounded by, if you are a midwesterner, a pretty foreign scene.  Makes me excited to go to class every morning!

But anyway, Gina dropped me off at the university and then took the bus back to town.  The town of Cumbayá is slightly more urban than I would have imagined, but in some ways is similar to American college towns, with lots of good places for students to eat and shop.  The campus itself is beautiful; it is quite colorful and built in Fransciscan-style architecture, as the name of the university would imply.  Since it was an orientation day, there were only international students on campus.  We sat through a lot of orienting, most of which was interesting and useful, but basically what you would expect.  They talked about Ecuadorian customs and history, as well as the best ways to stay safe and healthy.  This was also my first real chance to meet the people in my program.   There are 21 students, most of them from Madison, but a good number of others from California and East Coast schools.  All in all, it seems like a pretty good group!  We were also given the chance to meet with our TA, named Emilia, who graduated from USFQ a few years ago.  After being shown around campus more, we were given lunch in the cafeteria, which was quite good, and consisted of pear juice, fish, rice, and vegetables.  After this we did a few other activities that I can´t quite remember and then went home.  This was my first time taking the bus by myself, but luckily it was easy to figure out and I made it home without a hitch.  I basically was wiped out from the last 48 hours, so I sat around for a bit and then went sleep, only waking up for dinner and then going back to bed. 

So basically, that was my first day!  A lot has happened since then.  Essentially, being at the university takes up about 9 hours of my day during the week: we have a Tropical Ecology class from 9 to 12 in the morning, then a two hour lunch break, and then Spanish class from 2 to 5 in the afternoon, and then riding the bus takes about an hour of my day.  Getting lunch is fun because we get to try a lot of the little places around campus that serve a large amount of food for an incredibly low price.  You can get a 3 course meal here for as little as 2 dollars, and I don´t think that I have gotten sick from one yet.  I have been getting a significant amount of homework for Spanish, so that along with staying in touch with people and trying to do all the stuff that needs to be done to register my visa, has kept me busy during the week.  However, I have found time to hang out with our program's group of students, as well as my host mom Gina.  Our class went to the Quito Botanical Garden yesterday, which was quite impressive and got me excited for actually seeing these plants in the field! Also, it was located in a large park called Parque Carolina, which was packed with people just enjoying the weekend, which I thought was really cool. And in an hour I will be going to my host mom´s mother´s birthday, and will meet the extended family, which should be fun!

As far as pictures go, I will try to get some up soon.  I don´t have wifi in the apartment that I live in, and the computer I use there is old, so I need to register my laptop for wifi at the university, so hopefully they will follow soon!