First few weeks in Quito

In the future I won't breeze through everything as quickly as I am about to do, but I need to do some catching up.

Ok, We got to Quito and were picked up by our host mom, Rosa. We spent the first weekend in a rather nice hostal before we officially moved in with our host families. Lauren, Molly and myself all live with Rosa, while Brian and Katy live with another family.

I can sum up our first few weeks in Quito with hitting up a few sites in the Old Town area, riding up the Teleferico which takes you to the top of the mountain next to Quito (the bottom two pictures on the left are from there), seeing two soccer games the first being between Ecuador and Bolivia and the second between two club teams here, hanging out a lot in Mariscol which is the gringo area in Quito, and dancing a lot.

Quito itself is a rather large city, about 2 million people. Surprisingly, it is rather chilly here. It is always between 50 - 70 degrees. I am probably the tallest person here, which has made me consider obtaining a visa so I can join the olympic basketball team.

My spanish is coming along slowly. Me and Katy have class together as we are far behind the others in the group in terms of spanish speaking. We have class for 6 hours a day which is rather draining and has nearly led the two of us to want to kill the other at some points.

I have also spent more time in internet cafes than I can count, fortunately it is somewhat cheap. Oh, and I found a bar that shows NFL games and have already spent two sundays glued to the TV and my computer checking my fantasy football scores.