First Day - In San Antonio

I´m in an internet cafe and the keyboard is different, it´s hard to type. So yesterday we flew and got to the hotel around 11:00 totally wiped out with the flights and the altitude. I could notice the difference in my breathing right away - you can´t breath in quite as deeply and you get tired really quickly, like just going up and down stairs. The LANEcuador flight was REALLY nice, it was a very classy plane. You didn´t have to pay for everything like on American airlines and the seats were nice and it came with a warm blanket. I saw that we were supposed to get a snack and I expected pretzels or peanuts but instead after a couple hours in the air we get served teriaki chicken and fried rice with a good bun and a kind of tasty cheesecake with dulce de leche on top. I was sitting next to a professor from la Universidad de San Franscico with the medical school. He was friendly but we didn´t talk that much. I had a window seat and I got to see all the lights of Quito as we flew in. At the airport immigration and customs were so easy, I didn´t say a word for either. When we got through customs there were tons of Ecuadorians standing there waiting for friends or family to come in. There were a lot of kids and lots of balloons.

We took a bus to the Hotel Alston, which was pretty nice. It has very eclectic art, like unicorn sillouettes and English countryside watercolors and portraits of women and medieval tapestries. We had big queen beds to ourselves and slept three to a room. We had a little meeting to go over important things like not to put toilet paper in the toilet and then we packed three days worth of stuff for the orientation trip to Rancho Alegre.

We got up at 7:00 this morning and ate breakfast (covered by tuition - all food is going to be) at a cute little place called Esta Cafe. We had a bowl of fresh fruit with yogurt (that was served in a pitcher) and granola and sugar cane syrup. Then eggs and bacon and a really good fluffy pancake. I also got a hot chocolate that was very tasty. I got to send Mommy and Daddy a little email saying I´m alive but then we had to run off to catch a bus.

Now we´re in San Antonio, near Mitad del Mundo. It´s a quiet town, not very rural, about an half-hour from Quito. We´ve been going over basic orientation things and our itinerary (finally!) and we´ve had a snack, lunch and later cake since it was one girl´s birthday yesterday. Our big activity, our first ¨experiential learning,¨was getting assigned a three person group to go into the town and find a certain type of business and ask them some questions about what it was like and whatever we thought was interesting. My group went to bazares, which are like paper and knick-knack shops. There are a few really small family-owned ones. Everyone except one woman was really friendly.

So far I like everyone and we´re all friendly with each other and getting to know each other. It´s been pretty easy to get along so far and there´s no one in our group that I wouldn´t hang out with. We´re a bigger group than I expected - there are about 25 of us. I thought it would be closer to a dozen or so. Leonore and Fabian are our Academic Directors and they seem really organized yet laidback and flexible. So far most everything has been in English but they say in a couple days we´ll be in all-Spanish mode, which is good with me. I think I´ve done well with the Spanish so far.

That´s all for now. We´ve got salsa lessons tonight and we all want to go to bed early. You can tell by just looking at us that we´re all so tired.