First Impressions-- August 21

¡Hola de Ecuador!

We start off our four month exchange program with a 6 day orientation starting in Quito and working our way down the country to Guayaquil where the university is. 

Quito is a beautiful  and artistic city nestled in the Andes mountains. It is a long narrow strip of urbanization only where the mountains will allow buildings to be built. That is why Guayaquil is the most populated city rather than Quito: the flat terrain of the coast is much easier to build on. 

The driving is crazy because the streets are very narrow and steep. 1/5 of the cars are not allowed on the roads each day because the streets would get too congested. Pedestrians have no rights. The best you will get is that if you put yourself into the street, cars may slow down a little so that you can run as fast as you can across. 

There are about 23 students in the exchange program with me: 4 from Canada, 6 from the United States, 4 from Mexico, 3 from France, 1 from Russia, 1 from Holland, 2 from South Korea, and 2 from China. They are all very nice and the language that we all have most in common is English then Spanish. Most of orientation will be in English, but when we get to Guayaquil and are with our host families and studying at the university there will be more Spanish use. 

I landed at about 5pm local time, then had an hour long ride to the hotel. After that, my roommate and I were both so tired that we went straight to bed. We had to be ready to explore Quito the next day!