Welcome back to my continuation of trip to Ecuador. When I last left off, I finished discussing my travel down and first night in the country. In the morning, I went downstairs to get some breakfast. I had to get used to the fact that refrigerated milk wasn't common (I think it was powdered form) and that it was room temperature. I also had tea, juice and toast to eat/drink, which was a lot for me since I don't normally eat breakfast. My host mom gave me a note that had her cell and the address so when I called a taxi at the end of class, I could easily get home (more on that later).
From there we drove to this stadium in the city which became our meeting point for all of trip. We went to Universidad de San Francisco de Quito for orientation, where we had a tour of the campus which was super beautiful. The orientation was a little scary as the guide made sure we knew that we need to be careful at night and to not get arrested, kidnapped or not to have our passports stolen, which I understood but I kept thinking I was gonna get abducted by a non-legitimate taxi driver (the real ones had correct papers on their cars).
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| A part of campus |
It was an interesting environment because the students dress up all of time for class, which was different with the US since I remember rolling out of bed with my sweatpants on and heading to class straight from that. What I liked about my class was that most of it didn't take place in the classroom but during all of our field trips across the city. Our class was about colonial Quito so we went to many churches and museums to learn about the history of the city through the modern age. Another thing that was interesting to learn about Ecuador, was the climate diversity. Living near the Equator, I figured it would be scorching hot. Nope, it was a moderate 60-70
degrees everyday and rained every afternoon. It even got down to the
40s at night, which I hated. I discovered it was because we were in the
Andes mountains, which was a different climate from the Amazon, the
coast, and the Galapagos.
One of the best things that we did that I will remember was when we went to Mitad del Mundo (Half of the World), where the equator was
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| Both hemispheres! |
Alongside this place, we went to another area close by that called themselves the more accurate equator where we did some fun tests like try to walk across the line and trying to balance an egg on a nail. All in-all it was a super fun day and it was cute to see all of us getting picked up by our host parents at the end of it. Most of the time, I would have to use a taxi. One of the more interesting stories I have was my first taxi that I took. My taxi driver had no idea where I needed to go despite me showing him what my host mom had written. I then called her on his cell phone where she freaked out and had me put her on the phone with him. The problem was she didn't put the entirety of the name of the communidad that she lived in so he didn't know exactly what I meant. Another thing that I learned about this country was that small change was key. I brought a bunch of cash, but most taxis didn't take 20s or 10s to make change so I always had a mini-panic attack. Despite these issues, I still had a good couple of days for my trip.
Next Time: Our away trip to Otavalo and Chimborazo for the weekend
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