Monday, August 27, 2012

Vamos a La Playa :)

On Friday, August 24th, I went to La Playa Almendro with a group of 8 friends. Four were Ecuatorianos and 4 were Americans. We stayed in a resort/hotel/apartment place that had 2 bedrooms with lots of bunk beds. All of the palm trees there looked like this! Here is a picture of our pool.


It was cool to go to the beach because the environment there is totally different from our industrial city of Quito. The beach is about a 4 or 5 hour car drive and it's a 9 hour bus ride. Thankfully we have Ecuadorian friends with cars! I was so happy to be able to wear shorts at the beach because no one wears shorts in Quito. Ecuador is usually a pretty conservative and Catholic country so people do not wear revealing clothing. 


Here is a picture of our group in our place at dinnertime:



and here is LA PLAYA :) 


Sunday, August 26, 2012

Riding The Bus

Since Quito (the capital of Ecuador) is such a huge city like Chicago or New York, most people rely on public transportation. It only costs 25 cents (centavos) which is way better than 60 cents at MSU! and you can actually go places...instead of going 1/4 of a mile on a campus. The buses can be pretty scary when they are packed because people will run into you and that is the perfect opportunity to steal your money or your phone. Here is a picture of mi amiga Emily on a super crowded bus and she is using the two-hand stance to keep her body in place. Oh yeah, did I mention that the bus drivers are crazy? I swear sometimes it feels like a monkey took over the wheel. 

I take two buses to school in the morning, but on the way home I take one bus and then walk home from the station. The bus station is called "Ecovia" and red and blue buses go there. The other station right next to it has the green buses for Tumbaco and Cumbaya. Here is a picture outside the bus station walking on my way home. 


Saturday, August 25, 2012

Mis Clases

Our first day of school was August 20th. I am taking four classes, which will transfer to MSU as 12 credits. Two of my classes have all Ecuadorians in them and the other two have gringos (foreign exchange students like myself). As you might have guessed, the gringo classes are WAY easier than the classes with Ecuadorians in them. Here is my schedule. I have classes everyday....so much for "party abroad".


SIC means psychology and "arte" is my art appreciation class which is more like are philosophy. The Spanish class is a 300 level and the last class is about the Ecuadorian culture so it is very interesting and very useful in regards to explaining why things are the way they are here. 

As you can see, my very first class on August 20, 2012 was psychology. My teacher is a young female with dirty blonde hair. On the first day she asked us to one at a time tell the class our name, our major, our year, and what we think makes a good teacher. Oh, and by the way, don't forget that this is all in Spanish! Talk about nerve-racking...I was super nervous about having to speak in front of all of these Ecuatorianos because I did not want them to notice right away that I was not from Ecuador. I mean, my blonde hair probably gave it away immediately, but hey, I have seen a few blonde Ecuatorianos. Thankfully, there was one other English speaker in my class. Her name is Elyse and she was about 10 people in front of my turn in line so she had to break the ice for us Americans. Her response was "Pienso que un buen profesor es una persona simpactico", which means that a good teacher is someone who is nice. That was all she said and the whole class laughed (including her) because she knew that she was speaking Spanish that you learn on your very first day of school. I was so happy that she went first. When it came time for my turn, I tried to express myself, but did so briefly. I was relieved when my turn was over. That was my experience of my first class on my very first day at my new school.


Friday, August 24, 2012

First Week of Escuela :)

 My school here in Ecuador is called La Universidad de San Franscisco Quito (USFQ). The school mascot is a dragon and our colors are red and black. I love my school and the campus is absolutely breathtaking. The university is in a region called Cumbaya. There are around 200 international students attending the university this semester and 90% of them are American. There are 4,500 undergraduate students here.
Below is a picture of the "Lagoon" that has a waterfall and there are always lots of 
        students hanging out here and napping all throughout the school day.

 At first, I was scared to take my camera on the bus because I did not want it to get stolen. However, later in the week I took the chance to snap some beautiful photos on my way into campus. I take 2 buses to get to school. The first bus I catch on the next street over from my house and ride it 3 minutes to the bus station. Then I get on a green bus that takes me to Cumbaya. All of the buses that go to school are green. This is helpful because it prevented me from getting too lost during my first week.

There is a river down there....can you see it??


Friday, August 17, 2012

First Day in Ecuador

August 15th was my first full day in Ecuador. I had a few errands to run so my host mom and her kids came with me. First stop was putting minutes on my pay-as-you-go phone. It is super annoying when you cannot call or text anyone just because you have ran out of minutes. However, one trick around this is that you can still receive texts and calls so you can just make everyone call you :)

After purchasing minutes, we went to La Mariscal which is a place with lots of tiendas (stores). It is also a fun place at night because there are tons of bars and clubs. A lot of the international kids hang out there. Foreign people are called gringos. Anywhere else, this is taken as an insult, but here in Ecuador people state things just as a matter of fact, not to be rude. If you look Chinese, even if you are Ecuadorian, they call you Chino and it's like your nickname. Very weird. Anyways, so we went to the Mariscal and I purchased a purse/bag for everyday use when I did not have my school backpack. I also purchased two cute scarfs. I cannot wait to go back there and shop for souvenirs for everyone!

Here is a picture of my host mom with the kids :) 
Here is the view walking towards my house. We are second to last on the left.
Here is the view leaving my house and looking at the Pichincha Mountain in the distance. 


The kids were so incredibly patient during our shopping trip so my host mom bought them lunch. They had salchichas y papas which means hot dogs and fries. Linet sometimes has an issue with eating her food and will start throwing up her food instead of digesting it. This happened today. She threw up a little bit on the table and then just kept eating. The only thing I could do is laugh. More pictures of sweet Linet to come soon :)

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Finally Arriving In Ecuador

           My journey to Ecuador started at 7am on August 14th (my best friend Ashley Ballarin's birthday!) when I left my grandparents' cottage to head to the Chicago airport. I traveled with three other girls from MSU: Amanda S., Emily B., and Chanika D. Our flight left at 12:20pm and we arrived in Miami at 4:25pm. Then we had a 3 hour layover. This was a rough time for me because I had a stomach ache and I was starting to have second thoughts as to if I could really go 4 and a half months straight without seeing my family and friends. The only positive thought that I had was that I had to think of it as an adventure. I love traveling and exploring and I also knew this experience be vital for me to improve my Spanish for my future career. I started feeling better and we loaded the plane for our 7:55 pm flight. We finally landed in Quito, Ecuador at 10:55 pm which was 11:55pm Michigan time. 
       However, this was not the end of our long journey---we still had to go through customs. This took a good hour for them to look at our passports and examine our suitcases. Once we got through customs, there was an area with people waiting for their families coming off the plane. There were so many people! There were also many families of exchange students since this was the day that our directors advised us to arrive. The families had signs with the names of their students and it was absolute chaos. I did not see my name so Sara Sanchez (a director) was helping me look when suddenly a man came running at me with a huge smile on his face. It was mi papa (Guillermo)! He was so excited to see me and gave me a big hug and kiss on the cheek (kissing on the cheek is the way that Ecuadorians greet each other and say good-bye....as I would quickly learn). 

        He told me that he had been waiting at the airport for an hour. I felt so bad! He did not seem too concerned. We took a cab to my new house and talked the entire way. My Spanish must have been awful since I was tired from a full day of traveling, but it felt so easy to me.  My host mom (Lorena) was waiting for me when we got to the house. They live in condominiums that are very beautiful and they have two kids: Leandro (5 years) and Linet (almost 2 years). The kids were passed out in their parents bed. They were so cute! I was bummed that they were sleeping because that meant I would have to wait another day to actually meet them and to give them their gifts from me. My new parents gave me a quick tour and showed me how everything worked in my room. We talked for almost an hour and then decided we should probably get to bed. Here is what my room looked like before I unpacked. I somehow had the energy to unpack EVERYTHING before I went to bed. It made me feel much better to sleep being all settled in at my new house :)



Thursday, August 9, 2012

Here I go!

I really hate packing. What makes it worse is that I have to pack for 4 months! I do not even know where to begin. I wish that I could just fast forward through my trip so that I know exactly what I will use/need and what I won't. I will be living out of these 2 suitcases until December 27th! Here goes nothing!