First Day

Its afternoon naptime in day 1 on Study Abroad. Jimmy is playing very loud metal music, wich is very melodic and comforting. Pilar is making fun of it by screeching, which is not.

I thought I'd tell you more about my host family, because I didn’t do so well on that last time ( I wrote that last entry right after I got to the house, but I didn't post it until….well, whatever time I posted it.) They are a very medical family. The grandmother, the host of Malcolm was the second woman dentist in Quito, she was the only woman in her class. She is a dental surgeon. Pilar is also a dentist, but for children. Her brother (that’s who Roberto is!), is a medical economist, and I’ll definitely be taking to him about that stuff. Jimmy is in his last year of physical therapy school. He exhibits this mostly by massaging people and muttering, after we say hello to someone with a bent spine “His scoliosis is terrible. He needs treatment.” Very easy to get along with. They are very friendly, but very comfortable with silence. They are also both fluent in English (jimmy’s father is American), but they are awesome about not using it, unless I ask specifically what a word means and they can’t really describe it in Spanish. They also are great about not correcting my grammar unless I stutter over a verb for like 35 hours. I’m understanding a lot of what people thing. Vocab is awesome, grammar not so easy. Whatever, It'll come.

Its been a nice day. I woke up really early and freaked out that everyone had left the house because I had woken up so late. I ran into the living room to find the sun had not yet risen. I cleaned my room compulsively. Slept for another two hours. LOL! For breakfast, Jimmy’s best friend Kiki came over (he has another name), and Pilar’s friend J-something and her son Yefferson. Yefferson was like the crankiest kid I have ever seen. He was at the birthday party they had had there yesterday, but he didn't get to have any geletin because his teeth hurt. His ma brought him over so he could have the missing jeletin and have his teeth examined. He just was eating this jello-cup-thing and crying. We would try to talk or play with him and he would just like moan at you. When pilar opened up his mouth, I could see why. He had lost one of his teeth, normal for a 4 year old, but the hole had gotten totally infected, and the infection had spread to his tongue, which was coated nastily.

We ate violently salty scrambled eggs, some bread from the bakery downstairs, filled with what might have been cheese, coffee, and this pulpy juice made from a fruit called the “tree tomato” which looks like a giant crusty grape. It tastes like a salty, melon-tomato. (that was for you, Zak, as far as the breakfast foods go. They sell yogurt downstairs too! So I can get my yogurt on (but not FAGE ) It was a great breakfast, very relaxed, paper napkins, Yeferson pouting and throwing this old cake all over the floor. I understoon a bunch of what people were saying. At one point, we (or they, I was just looking back and forth like I was at a tennis match, mouth slightly agape. You know, the Dana look) were talking about teachers being jerks and hitting your hands with rulers and stuff like that, and Kiki said “that’s why we wear black.” Which I thought was insightful and meaningful. Its ok if you disagree.

Then we waited around for a while. It was awkward for me, everyone else was ok. We started walking, and we walked to this sweet museum called the Antiguo Hospital Militar. It used to be an old military hospital, as you could probably guess. It's a huge, castle sort of building on top of a hill.

• OH SIDE NOTE. Damn there are a lot of hills. There are like three streets that are not on hills and they are highways I think. San Francisco like
It had a big exhibit in the Contemorary Art center celebrating the bicentennial of the Quiteño revolucion, which happened in 1809. I’m not sure if the whole museum is contemporary art or just that part, but it is a really beautiful building, very light and bright, but made of very old stone, gothic arches and all. Also, the exhibit we saw was about history, but there were some photographs from Mexico in the ‘30s in the lobby. Also, it only cost 50 cents per person on weekends, 2$ on weekdays.

It was really cool to go to an museum exhibit in Spanish. I learned a lot of words, all of which I have forgotten. But it really made me appreciate the design of exhibits, because I still got a lot out of pictures, dioramas and interactive parts. Also, between parts of the exhibit, you got to walk on these out door elevated terraces, like around the walls of the castle, so that was sweet. The exhibit clearly had a lot of money, because there were two movies that were part of it, each having 5 huge screens that had different images on them at all times. VERY CONFUSING. Also, to make it more “real” they had animated the pictures of all these old Spanish generals, so Quiroga’s mouth would move awkwardly and his eyebrows would go up and down as he discussed his desire for freedom from the Audencia. Weird.

We walked up another hill to this giant cathedral, I think it is called the basilica. Alters, weird plastic dolls of saints, beautiful stained glass. Instead of gargoyles, they have animals of the Amazon, like tapirs, monkeys, and lizards. And armadillos!

Ate a “mora” popsicle. I am told “mora” is raspberry, and it was purple, but it sort of tasted like grapes. Hmmm. We walked home and I took a nap. I don't know for how long, because I don’t have any type of clock or anything.

When I got up, Pilar’s friend, C-something was there with her exchange student, Neal. It was really awkward, because Pilar told me that Neal went to Georgetown University, so I was like “How do you like DC?!?” and he was like “I live in Oregon.” Anyway, we had stir fried veggies, green beans, pasta, some chicken, and some giant home made French fried potato things. Instead of catchup, they use tomato paste and mayonase that they squeeze out of these packet things with caps. Sort of like a square tube. Also, soy sauce is super-rare there, Pilar says she really dishes out for Kikkomen. Basically, we sat around and talked about drinking. Neal is really into drinking, and describe “La bomba de carro irlandesa” y “la bomba de sake.” Everyone else sort of alternated between drinking stories of their own and sharing looks about Neal’s self professed alcoholism. We ate geletin after the meal, and it was really horrible. Jimmy thought so too, and stabbed the geletin with a spoon repeatedly.

After lunch, the ladies wanted to talk, so we went into Pilar’s room, me awkwardly sideways on the bed, and watched about three hours of My Name is Earl, which is really funny by the way. Its like True Blood, but funny. It was also weird because all three of us are fluent in English, and the show was in English, but whenever we talked, it was always in Spanish. It was nice to be in a place where people take immersion seriously. That sounds totally pretentious, but its different here. Normally, everyone in Spanish class is speaking English as soon as the teacher turns his back, but here it makes sense to speak in Spanish. It makes sense, culturally, respectfully, easily, to speak Spanish. That’s good.



Neal+ his madre left. He gave jimmy his number and didn’t even ask if I had a cellphone, which made me feel like a lame little kid, but that’s sort of what I am here. Then I wateched some TV, felt lonely. As I was typing some of this, this weird neighbor lady came by and brought us a lot of food. Apparently she stops by every day, and Pilar never knows what to say to her. So I ate a quarter avacado and some salsa for dinner. That’s all I wanted. Then, I watched “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire,” The Ecuador Edition. They only win 50,000 dollars. This seems false advertising. Also, the Simpsons is equally funny in Spanish.

In summation: I write too much, I’m learning a lot, it’s freezing here, the food is great, I love my host family, school is totally unknown.

And I still don’t have my backpack. Be sure to pack shirts and a toothbrush in each bag you check when traveling abroad.