First week with the host family!

Life in Quito - quite a contrast to the cloud forest last week!  I feel bad for my lungs!  Pollution kind of gets stuck in a cloud over the city since Quito is surrounded by mountains/volcanoes.  Starting to get the hang of navigating the city a little bit, and settling into a routine.  Sunday we all moved in with our homestay families throughout Quito.  Didn't know what to expect but so far the family I'm staying with has been super welcoming!  Gladys and René are my host padres, and they have a 23 year old son studying architecture, 20 year old daughter who wants to teach, and a poodle named Brando.  It's a little weird jumping into living in a random family's home, but so far so good.  The main difficulty is just communicating, but it's going to make my Spanish better for sure!
The first day I got here, Gladys and René took me to see the historic section of Quito, which was really neat!  That part of the city was founded in the 1530s, and there are a lot of old churches that have pretty amazing architecture.

Santo Domingo church

(not the same as above)

Basically, a brief day in the life so far -
Breakfast is bread + jam, 'coffee' (powdered/instant), and fruit, sometimes scrambled eggs or panqueques (very different form our pancakes!).  10 min. walk to the bus stop where I meet my amiga Libby and we tackle the crazy bus system to get to school.  Spanish class from 8 to 10, ecology/Ecuador-related lecture from 8:30 to 1.  Back home for a HUGE lunch.  I can't eat that much at one time!  Always soup, every day.  Plus rice and something with it.  Plus vegetables, plus juice, sometimes more.  But they don't really eat dinner, just tea and bread with jam usually.  So far been spending my free time working on projects for my classes and exploring the area.

It's been really interesting to see some cultural differences.  Things that seem simple or easy often end up more complicated, probably a combination of different perspectives and my communication difficulties.  I think Gladys made her first PB&J ever for me this morning for me to take for lunch during our minga today (more later).  She asked if I wanted cheese in it too.  I convinced her it was ok without cheese.  A few days ago I went to the grocery store nearby with Gladys and her mom, who lives in an adjacent apartment.  I mentioned that I was going to get a few apples to bring to classes during the day, and she seemed very confused by that, whereas it obviously doesn't seem like an issue to me.  Then the next morning, I was eating breakfast and she came in and asked, "So, your apples!  Are you bringing all of them today?"  Nope, just one.  And every day since then I get up and go to the bathroom to get ready, and come back to find the Gladys has filled my water bottle and put an apple on my bed.  Just random things that you wouldn't think of are a little different/surprising!

Today we all went to Yaroqui to work on a reforestation project that SIT has been helping with for a little while, planting trees to help offset our carbon footprint from the program (flights, etc.).  Today we planted about 120 trees!  I was part of a group trying to identify and measure all of the trees from this planting and from previous semesters.  It was a lot of work, but we had a good time!  The altitude has a surprisingly huge effect on how you feel during any physical activity...kind of frustrating, but hopefully it'll wear off over time!

So gorgeous and peaceful there!

alpacas!