Arrival in Quito!

Hola! Thanks for reading my blog:) As most of you know, this summer I'm in Ecuador for 4 weeks participating in a program for 1st year medical students called Interhealth South America. We'll be learning Spanish and providing health care to the local people in 3 parts of the country-the capital city of Quito, a rural indigenous village called Otavalo, and a village in the rainforest.

So on Sunday, I spent most of the day traveling and luckily had everything go really smoothly. About 1/3 of the program participants were stuck in Atlanta and didn't make it in until 5am Monday and 2 girls had their luggage lost, so I'm definitely thankful I didn't experience that! I arrived in Quito about 730pm. There was a woman there waiting to take me and another girl who was on my flight to our host family. My roommate's name is Katie, she's from UNC med school and we're getting along great so far. We each get our own room with dressers to put all our things in which makes it feel more like home.

We arrived at our apartment building and were greeted by our wonderful host mom, Olga. She calls us mi hija (my daughter) or mi amor (my love) and has been taking great care of us. For breakfast she makes us eggs and toast with jam then she packs us a bagged lunch with a sandwich and fruit to bring to school. For dinner last night we had this amazing quinoa soup, rice, cucumbers, and these tuna biscuits with corn and potatoes in them.

There's one other girl living in the apartment too. When we arrived she was hanging out on the couch and only spoke to us in Spanish, so Katie and I assumed she was Olga's daughter. Then about an hour or so into the conversation, she goes "oh and y'all should about the shower..." and we were like what's happening?! So of course being the airhead I am, I was like "wow, you speak perfect English!". Turns out, her name's Peggy and she's from Texas but teaches high school Spanish so she's fluent and is really helpful to have when we don't quite get what Olga's trying to tell us. She's staying here for 2 months to maintain her fluency since she hadn't been to a Spanish speaking country for 3 years.

As far as school goes, we've started about 8 both days and end about 5. We have a typical ridiculously long Spanish lunch from 12-3 and I've been exploring the city with Katie and another new friend, Erin, from UVA med school. Each day we had Spanish lessons and orientation about the program and education on culture in Ecuador. So far, the 33 of us have been split into 2 groups, beginner and advanced. I'm in the beginning group and there's a really wide variation with some students having absolutely zero spanish and a bunch of us with 4-5 years from high school. I feel bad for the ones with no Spanish experience since the instructor speaks only in Spanish! The teacher told me I have a nice accent so that was pretty exciting, but I definitely have a lot of work to do to remember all the tenses and increase my vocabulary. After today, we'll be split into small groups of 4 and 2 for the rest of our lessons with other students that have similar levels of fluency. It'll be nice to have more individualized instruction and hopefully make a lot of progress on my speaking level. All the participants seem really nice and are from med schools from all over the country including Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, and Texas.

The culture here in Quito actually isn't as different as I expected. For the most part, everyone leaves you alone when you're walking on the street and goes about their business. We're making sure to be safe and only travel with someone else, but I've felt very safe so far. They dress is normal jeans or business attire, but we hear in Otavalo it's much more traditional dress in long skirts, etc and the culture is much less modern. One strange thing here is that the plumbing system isn't great, so after you go to the bathroom you throw your toilet paper in the waste baskets. A lot of public places don't have toilet paper at all, so we were told to always have some with us. Oh and they also have to boil the water to make it safe to drink so I've been carrying around a personal supply in my water bottle since you all know how much I need my water!

The biggest change so far has surprisingly been the altitude-we're at about 10000 feet! I didn't have any problems with altitude sickness, but poor Katie's had tingly fingers since arriving and if you stand up quickly or exert yourself, you definitely feel more lightheaded than usual. It's really beautiful scenery throughout the city though and we have a great view of the mountains from our apartment's living room. The weather's been beautiful-getting to about 70 during the day and this is the dry season so no rain so far, but Olga says there are sometimes afternoon showers. They don't heat the houses at all so in the apartment at night it gets a bit chilly but there's plenty of blankets on the bed so it's not too bad. Because we're at such a high altitude (or as Katie says "we're much closer to the sky") the sun is super strong. Just from walking around my cheeks have gotten a little red and the temperature difference in the shade vs the sun feels way bigger than normal.

This is actually our last day in Quito for a week. Tomorrow we're leaving at 7:30am to head to Otavalo by bus, about a 3-4 hour ride. We'll be spending from Wed-Wed there in a hotel, then when we return I'll be spending 11 more days here in Quito with my host family.

Well I think that's all for now, we're about to eat dinner. I got a cool app for my iphone where I can write posts without Internet, so I'll try to keep it updated then post every few days when I can find wifi. Adios amigos!