Lisa's Adventures in Ecuador!: Some highlights from the first week

The last few days have been such a blur! It's amazing waking up every day and seeing the Andes. We have mostly had a bunch of orientation meetings and lectures. The first day we had a 'drop off,' which literally means we each got on a bus for a little while and then got off randomly throughout the city to try to navigate back. I am definitely not a city person, but I made it back!
Quito is a city of about 1.6 million people, nestled in the valley between the western and eastern chains of the Andes that run down through Ecuador. The population is predominately mestizo, a mix of Spanish and indigenous peoples. There are four very different regions of the country - the Sierra (where I am now), the Oriente (the Amazon, we get to spend a week there!), the coast, and the Galápagos (also get to spend a week there too.)

Really didn't know what to expect coming down here! So much to learn here. A lot of really new and different experiences, but definitely not 100% separate from American culture. Lots of American food (KFC, McDonalds, hamburguesas and papas fritas at restaurants) and music (Lady Gaga is playing now at the restaurant/outdoor internet cafe I'm at right now.) We have a great group of people on the program! Food is cheap here which is nice, but we do have to be careful about the water and food, it can be easy to get sick. I do like the humitas here! They're similar to tamales. The other night we all got to go to a salsa dancing class which was really fun. There are a lot of things to think about just because of being a gringa here. Gringo isn't automatically used in a negative way, but it tends to be associated with having money and being somewhat naiive, so we just have to be extra careful and somewhat conservative.

Life in the city is going to be really different from the week we're spending in the Intag Cloud Forest, living in a rural village. Quito is very developed, but the country as a whole has a lot of poverty. Yesterday we all went to a forest reserve called Yanacocha, on the western side of the Andes. Leaving Quito and driving up through the mountains, the way of life gets a lot different. Yanacocha is at 3500m, or 11,000 ft, so it was pretty chilly and very cloudy. We split into groups of our Spanish classes and spent the day only speaking Spanish! Learned a lot of different plants and talked to our Spanish professor Luis Alfonso about environmental and social problems in Ecuador. Ecuador has a history of exploitation of minerals, logging, and petroleum, all of which threaten the remaining forest here. Can see a lot of deforestation on the mountains surrounding Quito. Deforestation is especially damaging because the forest cover is key in the water cycle which provides all the precipitation that maintains the ecosystems and provides water for the people here. I could go on for a lot longer about all that I've learned in the last few days, but I do have some reading to do! I'll write more later, but I also don't want to keep writing these long ramble-y posts for y'all! Here's a few photos from Yanacocha & the trip up there.