I made it!

Hola, familia! and Chris. I made it to Ecuador early Wednesday morning after a few hours of delay (our plane arrived in Miami late, and then they had to fix it once it got there). My homestay mother and sister met me at the airport and got me back to my home-away-from-home safely.

The next day I was up early to take a spanish placement test at the university I´ll be studying at and take a tour of the campus (which is rather compact compared to Cornell´s sprawling boundaries). On Monday, I´ll start my spanish class and a cultural class that examines the history, culture, literature, politics, etc. of Ecuador and Guayaquil. As far as I know, there will only be two people in this class: Danielle, a premed college student from Chicago, and me. It should be cozy. Those classes will be in the afternoon after almuerzo (lunch). In the morning I´ll be at my volunteer position in La Fundacion Cariño. It will be a long day, but I do have Fridays off and it looks like there are trips for the exchange students to different parts of Ecuador almost every weekend.

My family here is very... chill. My sister is studying gastronomy (or the culinary arts) at the same university I´ll also be studying at and my brother works and is studying economics there as well. They both speak English really ridiculously well (compared to my Spanish). We try to reserve the English for "emergency situations" (like communicating that the toilet paper can not go in the toilet, otherwise, it will clog and overflow), but I´m trying to wean myself off of those situations and improve my Spanish. There is also a little black poodle that hangs around the house named ¨Bonbon¨(marshmallow). Everyone is very sweet and welcoming. I´m trying to make up for what I lack in Spansih skills by keeping my room very very neat.

For the past two days, I was in the city of Valdivia walking on the beaches, checking out the wildlife, and receiving my official orientation from the program´s director. Also, there was a whole lot of delicious seafood involved. I also got to sleep in a nice little thatched-roof hut (complete with mosquito nets and crickets the size of my pinky). It´s hard to describe the scenery with words. I´m hoping to get some pictures up when I start using the computers at the university.

Speaking of computers, there seem to be no shortage of them. It makes me glad I didn´t bring my laptop; one less thing to worry about. My family has a really nice computer (and internet) that they´ve offered to let me use, and there are multiple computer labs I can use for free at the university. In addition, I´ve seen a few ¨cyber cafes¨near my house. In the next few days, I hope to make a trip to the centro comercial (i.e. mall) and get a cell phone and some shampoo.

One of the program directors commented that Ecuador has just about everything that the United States has, it´s just that a lot of it is in a different form than we´re used to. So you have to ask for help sometimes to get what you need. That´s where the language skills come in. Hopefully they´ll get a little better in the next couple of weeks.