I Made It!

So, I made it to Ecuador. It was definitely an interesting day yesterday. Not knowing if I was going to have a seat on my flight from Charlotte to Miami, I got at the airport 3 hours early to find out that I did indeed have a seat. Since the small plane I rode on from Charlotte to Miami wasn´t worthy of a real gate at the airport, we were parked on the taxiway and put on a bus that took us to the airport.

Since I didn´t book my ticket here until Monday because of my series of unfortunate kidney events, I had a middle seat from Miami to Quito. The flight was about 3 hours and 40 minutes and it was quite bumpy to be on a large plane. Arriving at the Quito airport was interesting. The airport is right in the middle of the city. So, when you are landing, it looks like you are landing right on top of multiple buildings. But, it turns out you are on the runway. Customs was much easier than I expected. Basically they just stamped my passport and sent my bags through an x-ray machine and that was it. As I was walking through the area where people get picked up by cabs and stuff, I heard my name called. It was some random guy at a cab window. It turns out my driver had called him to let him know that he was running a couple minutes late and I just needed to wait. Eventually my driver, Benecio, came and drove me to my host family´s house. It could have possibly been the scariest ride I have ever taken in my life.

My host mom is very nice. She speaks english rather well. I can have a conversation with her. I have my own bedroom with a great view of the city. The flight path for the airport runs right outside my window so I can sit on my bed and watch planes fly right over! I´ll put up pictures of my home sometime later.

I slept ok last night. I am right in the middle of the city and there are all kinds of car horns and such. There is a major issue in this city with car alarms. Apparently when a bus drives by and jars a car it can cause the alarm to go off. Also, my host mom says the wind from busses cause fruit to fall from the trees and land on cars and set the alarms off. Apparently, the windows in my bedroom are not very thick because I heard alarms all night.

There is another man staying in the apartment until Thursday. His name is Ray and he has been here for 3 weeks already. He told me a lot about the city last night and then we walked around a bit this morning. I have discovered this little internet cafe this morning while walking. It is cheap and it has phone booths where I can call the United States for about 7 cents per minute. It is good.

For now, I am going to run. I really don´t have anything at all to do today. I think I´ll go back and get my backpack and walk to a park and read or something. There are all kinds of parks around the city. If anything excited happens by tomorrow evening, I will update again. Otherwise, I´ll update after my first day of language classes on Monday.

Until next time, Zach will leave it at that.