Quito day 1

Note to self, always carry your sun glass. At almost twice the elevation of denver the sun is really really bright, my eyes are actually throbbing about a 1.5 hour walkabout. I arrived at my host familys house about 2am last night, local time (which is eastern time) after staying up till 3am the night before getting my packing finished, then awoke at 5:30am to catch the bus for my 10am flight. I was asleep by 2:30 after preparing a water bottle to purify over night. I was too excited to really sleep anyway so i didn't mind my procrastinating nature this time around. If it hadn't snowed 7 inches that evening i could probably have slept in a little for my flight but thats what you got to do. UP at 7:00 am then off to school at 7:30. spanish on jet lag is a hard combination and as i re+read this blog so is writing. By 10:30 my brain was ful but we continued anyway till 1pm. The school is about a 20 minute walk from the host family where i return for all my meals and then back again for more orientation, cooking classes (tonight is cold shrimp), salsa dances, birthday parties. THe place is also crawling with germans. I met two very nice fraulines and we will meet at 10pm to go to a local club called the bungalo. sweet. Bungalo is spanish. See i knew this because of my lessons.
Tomorrow we go on a field trip to a market, my spanish teacher is coming with and we will do our lesson on the bus. I have a load of verbs and vocab to memorize tonight. This will happen sometime between cold shrimp, my siesta, and the club. First day back as a student and i'm already slacken! booya.

Elsa, the mother of the family i'm staying with, is the only one who speaks a little english. Luckily she speaks more english than i do spanish. it can be very disorienting not being able to unerstand any words (written or spoken). I Hope my brain will open up a little and let some of this language in or it will be a very rough 40 days. Learning my lesson from Italy i bought a nice pocket spanish/english dictionary so when hand gestures fail i can use the key word or two of what i am trying to say. FOr example, trying to explain that the family did not need to cook dinner for me tonight because i was taking a seafood cooking class i said. "today, I go school, seafood class" well in spanish of course but i don't remember what those words are at the moment.

Overall i think today was great success! I'm off to find some bread. I have a feeling cold shrimp will not extinguish the hunger that is starting to spread in my tummy.