Quito...finally

Well, after about 36 hours of travel and 24 hours later than I expected I have arrived in Quito. On Monday my flight to Houston was redirected to San Antonio because of bad weather. There I was treated to 3 hours of screaming babies and a lecture from my seat-mate on why South American natives need to be converted to Christianity. By the time we were finally able to leave San Antonio for Houston I had missed my flight to Quito. On the bright side however, I seem to be one of the few people who got a free hotel room and meal vouture (at least according to the people grumbling on the shuttle to the hotel). Because only one flight leaves from Houston to Quito a day, I ended up spending 24 hours in Houston. Although a day in Houston was annoying, it served as a very gentle transition into a Spanish-speaking country after I navigated my way through the airport and to my Hilton Garden Inn in Spanish. My host mother picked me up at the airport and was extremely friendly and very accomodating. She lives with her husband (who is in Bolivia for a month on business) in an apartment in the middle of Old Quito (Quito is split into Quito colonial and Quito moderno). They have three kids: their son lives in the next apartment over, their second oldest daughter lives across the street, and the oldest daughter lives in Austin with her husband but is coming to visit tomorrow. This morning I hopped on my bus for the very easy 10-minute ride to my school. The other students in my program are really cool (but it took us until the afternoon to really start talking to each other) and we spent the morning in a beautiful modern art museum. Gauging from the amount of participation in the afternoon session, I think my Spanish is about average for the program and I could understand most of the things our profesora said. This evening my group went to dinner in a nice restaurant in Quito moderno. My host brother picked me up with his girlfriend for the busride home and I´m excited to get to know him better. He originally went to college for chemistry but changed to film-making and is currently working on getting his first movie sold. We get along really well and after about an hour he was completely comfortable correcting all of my Spanish mistakes. Now I´m heading to bed since I have to register my visa tomorrow at 8:00 in the morning. I hope this finds everyone well! ¡Ciao!

Coming Soon: my internship, the other students in the program, and more details about Quito