First Day of Spanish Class

Weather: High was about 70 and once it rained in the afternoon it dipped to 60. Very humid.

Today, Penelope drove me to USFQ for 10am and once I arrived we were split up into groups of six. We were paired with a student that attends the university and they took us on a tour. The campus is absolutely stunning and definitely not your ordinary campus. Part of the campus is actually across the street in a shopping mall. An entire wing is closed off and reserved for the university. I was surprised by the amount of guards they had at the university. There was one in just about every room in the mall and on campus I saw at least one in every building. All the tour guides were super nice and could speak English really well. Our tour guide Camilla actually offered to take us on a road trip to Quito. Today I actually met more students that are participating in the program. These were exchange and international students, once again everyone was really nice but I didn't get to know them as well as my fellow IES students. We were pretty split up today so it was hard to socialize whereas yesterday we were all together from 8:30-5:30pm.

After the tour, we got our SIM cards and student IDs. I officially have an Ecuadorian number...it's weird but I'm communicating via WhatsApp so it's not too much different. However, I do have Uber set up with my Ecuadorian number in case I ever needed to take one here. They provided us lunch and once again the juice was off the charts. Today's lunch featured watermelon juice, the food wasn't as great as yesterday, but it was still so fresh and was delicious.

From 2-5 today through Friday we all take Spanish courses. I'm in beginner Spanish and today's class was a great review of everything I've learned in the past. I wish I was in intermediate just because I want to enhance my skills but I think/hope by the time I leave here in May I will be on the intermediate level.

One challenge that I knew existed but became a reality today was how spread out we all are. After the Spanish course I went across the street to the part of campus located within the mall to meet up with a few friends. I realized that it was almost 5:30 and getting somewhat dark. I did not want to have to walk in the dark from the bus stop to my host house so I ended up leaving my friends around 5:45. I think most of us did this program for the Galapagos aspect of it, and most of the people I talk with in my program are excited to be in the islands just because of how close we will all be. We will all be within walking distance so it'll be a lot easier to meet up with each other once we are done for the day. Don't get me wrong I'm learning to love Quito and the scenery here is unreal. However, once I go back to my homestay for dinner it's dark out and to go out is just not feasible unless it's a weekend day and we don't have class.

Today I conquered my biggest fear and something that was truly overwhelming me... I navigated the bus from USFQ back to Primavera successfully! I actually showed a guy Conor who is in my program the way back; it turns out he lives a couple houses up the street from me. He took the bus there this morning and said it was a pretty easy commute so we'll be making the commute together tomorrow morning.

For dinner I had chickpea soup with carrots, avocado, and another vegetable that I'm not sure of the name. Ines put a bit of wine in the soup broth for taste. I can't believe I've been eating as much soup as I have been and actually liking it. After dinner Ines had me try ice cream she made, it was really sweet and definitely not as creamy as ice cream in the states. Ines started making eggnog so I jumped in and helped her (only with stirring things). It was so cool or cheveres as they say here. She explained to me around Christmas she sells a lot of it, but now that Christmas is over she doesn't sell as much. Tonight we only made two big bottles of it.

On a side note, the past couple of days I have been boiling matico leaves and applying the water part onto my face. Apparently it's a natural approach to combating acne and believe it or not I've actually seen an improvement. My host family all has beautiful skin, and all they use is matico. I wasn't kidding when I said everything here is natural, fresh, and made from scratch.

The pictures featured today are of the USFQ campus (the first 6 are of the physical campus and the last 2 are of the campus in the mall across the street). Just a fun fact the basketball court was built in 28 days. USFQ was the first private university in Ecuador. That being said, the university has so much money which allows it to have all different forms of architecture to accommodate all the different schools that are associated with the campus. The pagoda is where people take meditation classes...yes meditation classes! The total enrollment is about 9,000 students at USFQ, and like UMaine the admission of new students keeps increasing which is why they had to expand into a mall. The pictures below are of my dinner, and Ines making egg nog!