QUITO

The plane left at 745 this morning from miami and we have been going ever since.  Unfortunately I was seperated from my fellow student travelers for the plane ride.  however this turned out to be a welcome surprise.  sitting next to me I found a short man in a suit with a blanket on and reading the newspaper.  At first we exchanged a few words in spanish and he attempted some broken english realizing that i was infact a gringo.  then i began to question him about all types of things, customs and things i had been curious about concerning ecuador.  it turned out that this man, whos name was herold was from ecuador.  he was a wealth of knowledge about all sorts of things that only a native would realize.  i also found out that herold was afraid of flying so this made for some very interesting turbulence sessions when i attempted to console him with spanish words.  also it turned out that he has 2 girlfriends (player) 1 in columbia and one in ecuador.  the one in columbia is his favorite, she has a better figure apparently in less provocative words than he used.  in all he was a nice guy...

Once we arrived in quito which is the capital we were immediately ushered onto ironically a red white and blue bus... we were then assualted by the cornucopia of drifters and folk trying to eak out a meager living by selling fruits and trinkets on the streets.

sounds like a dream

hotel quito is supposedly one of the nicest hotels in ecuador, although i think it unnecessary that we stay there becuase im sure it is rather costly.  regardless it is a nice place with a breathtaking view out of its main lobby overlooking the pool and the mountians.

That is another cool thing about ecuador, it is full of mountains.  for instance when flying over the city we encountered cotopaxi which is a volcano, it appeared as high as we were flying.  it is quite the snowcapped beauty.

being my first time to south america i was sure that it would be very strange to see it.  however the city itself is very similar to other cities that one would encounter in america.  not as large or grandoise but just as busy.  something else that struck as different were the amount of poor folk in the city.  they are every where and we obviously being white, rich americans are the object of their lust.  very saddening i must say.  also the men catcall the girls relentlessly.  its funny at first and then it comes to a point were you wonder if ecuadorian men have any respect for women, who knows.  overall the city is very interesting and i will add to this when i have downloaded my photos which i cant do right now becuase i dont have my connector cable and we are in an internet cafe.  by we i mean jay, valerie, mallory, karlee  and myself.  after we checked into the hotel we went out to find some food and we did at taco nazo.  it was a delicious mexican restuarant(odd that we go to ecuador and eat mexican food).  i got tacos con carne in corn tortillas- delicious.  then we wandered around the city until we were able to find an internet cafe.  its only 90 cents an hour.  whats even more incredible is that gas is only 1.40 a gallon here, sounds like a dream.

the city itself is located inbetween many mountains.  its currently cloudy.  we are all very tired becuase we only got 3 hours of sleep last night and didnt really fall asleep on the plane.  so i will add more to this later and im sure that my writing must seem erratic, im just a bad writer and very sleepy.