Monday, February 9, 2009: Starting Classes

Today was the first day of normal classes. By classes, I mean Spanish since that’s really what we have right now. A couple times a week or so we’ll have history/culture/politics/economy/development lectures in Spanish, but everyday we have five hours of Spanish lessons. I got up at 6:15 and got ready and met Amanda, who lives a couple houses away, to catch a bus. We went with her host brother, who helped us get off at the right stop and walk the rest of the way to the school.

Classes start at 8:00. We’ve split into Spanish levels and I am in the group that our professor calls either high intermediate or low advanced, whatever we prefer. I have by far the least Spanish experience in the group so I’m kind of surprised I’m there but I think its good, I’d rather be in as high a level as possible to go faster. In class I feel like I’m doing pretty well but I can still hardly say anything to my host family and can hardly ever understand them unless they slow down a little for me. Like, I can’t eavesdrop to find our more about them because I can’t understand if its not face-to-face. My family seems to talk faster than a lot of other people, but its probably just because they are close.

The two inside dogs hang out on my bed a lot. It’s good since I like them but sometimes they are kind of dirty. The white one hangs out with me all the time but right now the black schnauzer is with me, she doesn’t usually jump up on my bed.

Classes are over at 1:00 and so I hung out with Amanda and Gina for a few hours after class. Otherwise I would just be doing nothing here all day. Amanda and I walked over to Gina’s neighborhood about 15 minutes away, and we tried to find each other at the entrance but there are three entrances and we went to all three. Amanda’s house is huge and fancy – there’s a little balcony looking over the living room and they have fancy red patterned living room furniture. When you walk in there’s a huge sweeping staircase like movie mansions. Some of the things are a little tacky, but it’s a nice house. Gina’s house is on top of a hill in one of the gated neighborhoods. They have huge paintings everywhere. In the living room there are some nice ones of Old Quito.