El Primer Día

P1:

After leaving my house at 6pm on Thursday, I arrived in Quito yesterday around 3:30pm. (Oh shoot I need to get used to military time, I’ll try to use that from now on). ALSO: handy tip, don’t use the “okay” sign, use the thumbs up, but that’s another story. Anyway, Lilly and I landed at the Quito airport at 14:00, got through customs easily, and ventured out into the terminal expecting to see our Pitzer in Ecuador guide/professor/all-around-helpful-person, Sebastian, waiting for us with a sign with our names as he had told us he would during our orientation. He wasn’t there. After a few minutes of concern and debate and then a couple failed attempts at calling him, he appeared through the crowd. He greeted us warmly and then directed us towards a taxi. Now: brief interlude. At our Pitzer orientation we had been told Sebastian would take us directly from the airport to the hotel. Thus, when Sebastian put Lilly and I in a taxi and told us he had paid the driver already and given him directions and that he would see us the next day at 10, we were a little surprised. We knew his partner Viviana would be at the hotel, but beyond that we were on our own. Sebastian told us the ride would be about an hour so we decided we might as well sit back and enjoy the view.

Ecuador is beautiful. It is mountainous with rich green colors and interesting types of trees. There were puffy clouds to contrast the perfect blue of the sky. At one point, we made a turn and a view of a city on the tip of a mountain unfurled above us. I felt a bit like I’d imagine the people finding Atlantis would feel. It was breathtaking. The car began its ascent of the hill and I realized that this must be Quito. Once in the city the car maneuvered around traffic and people and motorcycles and then suddenly pulled over on the side of the street. The driver told us that our hotel was just up the street a little. Lilly and I looked at each other, confused and nervous. We couldn’t see the hotel name anywhere and couldn’t decide if this street was particularly sketchy. We looked for the street name Sebastian had mentioned, but the sign was angled away from us. A man from down the road came to grab our bags and we had no choice but to follow. After almost 20 hours of travel we were a bit frazzled. The man with our bags stopped outside of a nondescript building and bade us to go in. We paused, but then noticed the doormat read the name of the hotel and then walked in, feeling relieved. Viviana leapt up from her chair and welcomed us with hugs and kisses then helped us get our room squared away.

I’d like to say that because Lilly and I were the first here, we toured around the city and went on some grand adventure, but the truth is that we were both so tired that we stayed in the hotel and did nothing while still not letting each other sleep. I fell asleep promptly and happily at 9:30 - whoops! I mean 21:30. 

P2:

Today was filled with its own set of adventures. The group of us traveled around the historic part of Quito, seeing some ornate churches and the incredible view from la basilica (one of the views is below). We also enjoyed delicious food and beverages. However, the funniest part of the day happened before we left the hotel.

Lilly and I were told that breakfast was served between 7 and 9, so we woke up at 8 to get an 8:30 breakfast. We walked down to the café and I showed my breakfast voucher to the man that had helped with our bags the day before. Side note: everything is in Spanish. I realize that that’s a “duh” thing to say, but it makes everything more confusing. Writing my stories down in English makes me feel very silly, but rest assured it was much more convoluted in real life. Lilly and I were directed into the café to the cashier. We got menus and ordered something. I showed my voucher again but they waved it away. I thought that that was weird, but I assumed that they simply did not need it. As we walked towards a table in the back, we realized that there was a side room with a breakfast buffet. We didn’t want to be rude so we decided to wait to eat what we ordered and not worry about our obvious mistake. (Sorry Pitzer funds…) When our food arrived, we were not given any utensils. This was strange as our breakfast consisted of yogurt, fruit in a cup, bread with spreads on the side, and a hardboiled egg. We looked around for utensils, but didn’t see any. We discussed the possibilities and landed on the idea that perhaps Ecuadorians did not use utensils. We began eating all of our food with our hands and drinking our yogurt. I promise it isn’t as gross as it seems. To be honest, I’ve always been tactile with my food (my mom managed to mostly break me of that by middle school) and apparently so has Lilly so we were having a grand old time. We finished our meal and headed back to our room to wait until it was time to meet with Sebastian, Viviana, and the rest of our group. To kill the time we decided to read up on culture and customs in Ecuador. We found a couple web pages and under “etiquette” of the first one the first note was “Ecuadorians use utensils for everything, even fruit.” We looked at each other slightly horrified, realizing how barbaric and horribly foreign we must have seemed and how the looks we were getting were perhaps not because of my blonde hair and blue eyes. Whoops.

At least tomorrow when we join our host families, I won’t dig in to my first homemade meal in Ecuador with my fingers.

P.S. I just ran downstairs to see if I could get a new wifi password because my last one got lost somewhere in my luggage yesterday. After practicing before I left my room and during the elevator ride down, I asked the concierge IN SPANISH if I could have a new wifi password because I lost my old one. I was very proud of myself when 1. It came out correctly and 2. He responded in Spanish. As I walked giddily towards the elevator, the concierge stopped me and said in a positive tone, in Spanish, that I should practice my Spanish. Well, there goes sounding native.