Ecuador!

We made it!  Our flight was great, I think I'm going to be very impressed with LAN Airlines over the next 18 months.  I watched Pirates of the Caribbean 4 and had some delicious chicken with tomato sauce and free red wine.  Good times.

Upon our arrival at UIO we were quickly screened, our baggage was scanned, and our host families were waiting for us just through the doors.  I was placed with Rosa, the director of Vita Verde Language School where we're studying Spanish.  Her son Mateo was at the airport as well.  He and I are going to get along just great.  He likes math, video games, and cards.  He's also quite tech savvy and enjoys playing around on my iPad.

Rosa is great, she really knows Quito and the surrounding area.  I asked her about a few trips that previous ChACErs have taken and it sounds like we'll be able to travel just about every weekend.  Bring it on!  I'm most excited about the week we'll spend in the Amazon at Tena in September.  We're also hoping to do a three day backpacking trek up a volcano.

Day one of class was intense.  We started at 8:15 and spoke straight Spanish until 1:30.  I'm with Ryan since we apparently have commensurate Spanish knowledge, but he's way better than me.  Today we covered ser vs. estar, some special cases of tener and haber, and practiced a lot in the past tense.  Tomorrow we're going to a market for part of class.  I sure hope it's fruitful.

After class we were all quite hungry so we went to the cafe down the street called Cafe Libro.  We each paid $4 (they use US currency in Ecuador) and were served cafeteria style.  The first course was a bowl of what was called "Sopa de Calabasa" which I translated to "Pumpkin Soup" but it tasted more potato and corn based.  Whatever it was I enjoyed it thoroughly.  We also had something that resembled passion fruit and a strawberry smoothie.  When we were finished we walked back up to the counter to get a plate of rice and our choice of chicken or beef.  I went with the beef and it was quite good.  

 We decided to take a walk around the city after lunch and wound up at a bar that was showing the olympics.  We ordered Pisco Sours, the signature drink of Chile, and quickly found out that Ecuadorian Pisto Sours are not nearly the same.  Waaaay too sweet.  We rode our sugar highs back to our host families' houses.  Mateo taught me an Ecuadorian card game I've been very excited to learn called Cuarenta (40).  It's a fun game that can be very simple or, if you want to count cards like I want to, very complex.  I'm excited to get better.  
 


We had a great dinner of chicken and rice with this delicious corn and egg dish (yellow in the picture).  After dinner Mateo and I played Super Mario Wii until we were exhausted, and now I'm headed to bed. 

I wanted to be detailed in today's post because I'm guessing this is what most of my days will be like in Ecuador.  I'll be back with anything earth-shattering that happens in the next week, otherwise I'll post about our trip to Isla de la Plata (this weekend) on Monday.

Hasta Pronto!