First Impressions

Yesterday we arrived in Quito after a full day of travel. I met up with some of the other NILIs in Houston and our plane left late (funny that the first thing I saw at George Bush airport was a Fox News gift shop). We finally got to Ecuador at about 11:30 and got through customs and immigration after midnight.

First impression: Ecuadorians are horrible drivers. When I was leaving the airport I saw a woman manage a sixteen-point turnabout, all just to pull into a parking spot. She had to back the car out twice and restart, almost hitting our van and another pedestrian. The program director here told me that almost all Ecuadorians are first generation drivers and they never grew up riding with their parents. Riding to the campus I also learned that there are no posted speed limits (or at least ones that locals know about) and red lights after midnight are usually ignored. While cruising about 50 miles an hour through the city and changing lanes (without slowing down or signaling) I realized how much my dad (an ex-driver's ed instructor) would have flipped out. It’s probably less intense during the day, but that was my first impression.

We finally got to the campus super late and had a quick orientation. Don’t drink the water and don’t flush any toilet paper. Great. Then we realized that our roommates were already sleeping and we had to wake them up to get in the rooms. After waking two sleepy Latinos I realized that the beds were tiny, and the only one left was a rickety top bunk. The bed was moved to the ground and I tried to quickly unpack but I also realized that the bathroom has no fan and is partly open to the rest of the room. This will definitely be an interesting experience.

Today I was able to talk to my roommates more and they are really cool guys. Gustavo is from Columbia and rides a motorcycle, and Yoan is from Venezuela and used to play pro baseball there. Other than that we’ve just been having meetings and language assessments, and I even got a cell phone! The school schedule is awesome because it’s only one class at a time for 3-4 weeks. We also have field trips every week with no classes for the day, and there are a bunch of weekend and weeklong trips. The cafeteria food is really good too: it’s all Ecuadorian. Tonight there is a welcoming party, which will be fun because there are seven of us and the school is no more than forty people. Hasta luego!