Hello once again! Well the adventures just don't stop here in Quito. On Tuesday, me and my group of friends went down to the historical center of the city, which is in the south where the buildings are older and the people are poorer. We went back to some of the places that my host family had brought me one of my first nights here, so some of the pictures that I took at night I now have during the day time. We went to La Plaza Grande, La Plaza de San Fransisco, and of course, La Basilica. We also ate in a really cool indoor courtyard, which is hidden in La Plaza Grande.
After exploring the historical district for a while, we headed back up to a more northern part of town, to a huge park called El Parque Carolina, where we've hung out before. We started tossing a frisbee around, which is an interesting thing for Ecuadorians because practically no one here knows what frisbee is. Occasionally we would notice some Ecuadorians standing there watching us. We had been playing frisbee for at least a half an hour before a group of kids from Boston University came over to say hi and play with us. BU apparently has a good-sized Quito study abroad program as well. We all introduced ourselves and were playing for several minutes before I realized that I knew one of the kids, he had gone to camp with me in New Mexico back in 2002. I haven't seen this kid in six years and suddenly run into him in a park in Quito. What are the odds? It started to get a little late, and you don't want to be in Parque Carolina after nightfall, so we all went our separate ways.
I got home, had some dinner with my family, and then they invited me to come with them to a guitar concert in a really nice theater in the South of Quito. This place was really amazing, it was called Teatro Mexico, and the concert was performed in memory of a famous Ecuadorian guitar player named Homero Hidrovo, who died 29 years ago at (almost) the age of 40. The four guitarists who played were Wilson Perez, Rodrigo Cevallos, Victor Armijos, and Terry Pazmino. I've never heard of any of them before, but they are all very good Ecuadorian guitar players. At one point in the concert, they brought Homero Hidrovo's mother on stage. She must have been around 90 years old! They gave her flowers, it was really sweet.
The next day was Wednesday and it was my first day of classes. I'm taking five classes, four of which I have on Monday and Wednesday. I had a class that talks about society's relationship with ecosystems, I have a jewelery making class, which seems like it will be awesome, I have a Spanish class, and also an evolution class, though I think I'll switch out of that into something else. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have a tropical rain forest ecology class, which sounds like it will be treat. All in all, classes look like they'll be good. I plan on joining the ultimate frisbee club that was started here last year by K students.
Tidbit: Going to the bathroom in Ecuador is a bit different than it is in the States. The biggest difference is that you're not supposed to flush your toilet paper. In every bathroom there's a little waste basket for you to put your used paper. This is because the pipes are too small and if too much toilet paper gets flushed, things get clogged and it isn't pretty. Another weird thing that I haven't fully figured out is that in some public restrooms, the toilet paper dispenser is outside of the stall, so you have to remember to grab your TP before you go in the stall, and you'd better hope you brought enough. I'm proud to report that as of now, I haven't had any toilet paper catastrophes.
Oh, and in my last entry I forgot to mention a few things about buses, like the most important part of the money-collector's job – he gets to lean out of the door of the moving bus and announce repeatedly where the bus is going. When you're getting on or off a bus in Quito, there isn't always a guarantee that it will stop moving for you. Sometimes a mere reduction of speed is all they give you. Another interesting thing about the buses here is that they don't seem to have any set schedule. You just stand on the corner or in the bus station and within five minutes, usually, a bus appears. Sometimes several buses arrive at the same time. They just get there whenever they do. Luckily there're enough buses cruising through the city that you don't have to wait too long for any particular bus. Oh, and did I mention that every bus ride costs just 25 cents? This might get changed in the near future, but for now I'm enjoying the fact that a full day of bus riding for me costs about as much as one bus ride in the United States.
Don't forget to check out my photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/JoeyKilmer/ and as always, be on the lookout for new blog entries.
I hope everyone's doing well!
~Joey
