Ayer, El Segundo Dia de Orientacion

I was going to post my first two days together but ended up writing too damn much...sorry.....

So yesterday started off interesting because I got to take the bus to and from USFQ. All the other students had to be there at 9:30...Chi and I got a phone call at night indicating that we needed to be there at 8:30 because the rest of the students in my program had arrived. There are seven of us in total,however I´m the only G...guy, which can be a good thing ;). Again, the program is called International Partnerships in Service-Learning and Leadership. We all have one class that we will take together, Social Organizations and Development, and we all have a site that we will be doing community service with 20hrs a week. Mine is called Colegio Ipatia Cardenas...I hear it´s far from where I live but that´s about all I know. Today I´ll find out what exactly I´ll be doing.

At first I took the wrong red bus but eventually figured it out and got to USFQ with 10min to spare, but it turns out I got there before most of the other students anyway. Our profesor, Tania Ledergerber, introduced herself and talked a bit about IPSL and then she helped us with registration because there were still some kinks to be worked out. After that we all went to more orienation al coliseo, Collessium.

I walked into this profesor talking about the different accents and languages found in the country of Ecuador, roughly the size of Colorado. He then went on a spiel about accents of Cuenca, a southern Ecuadorian town and how they could be equated to the Southern accents found in ....guess where...yes Alabama. I should´ve walked up and slapped him, jk. It was true, but I like the Southern accent. He then went on a racist tirade about security in big cities and how Quito is like Chicago or New York in los Estados Unidos. But he had never been robbed in Qutio in 50 some odd years but he gave a telling story about his experience in New York. Within ten minutes there were three attempted robberies in a McDonalds. Guess who the culprits were...yes you know...it´s on the tip of your tongue....the criminally and violently predisposed BLACKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Two blacks came and stole a japanese family´s bag then while he and the father of the japanese family chased the two down, the profesors family was robbed by knife in the same McDonalds.

MORAL OF THE STORY... be wary of those evil Blacks, look over you shoulder, hold your wife close, and if he reaches in his back pocket for his wallet to show you I.D. don´t hesitate to unload 41 bullets in him because it very well might be a GUN!!!! of course this is all satire but that´s what i´m sure the overwhelmingly white majority of international students pulled from this charla(speech). check out this neat link for more on the irrationality of black criminals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeOaTpYl8mE

Anywho, after a long 4hr orientation session that included a long and very scary story about thievery and crime in Quito our group of 7 and two professors from the program left to go eat on IPSL. It was a semi-mexican restaurant with pizza and wraps...good food. We tried to purchase cell phones...but they were too expensive. I got to call home though for 15 cents a min. not too bad compared to cingular´s 2.50 a min.!!!

By that point we had formed a solid group of about 7 students. We all left USFQ on the green bus back to Quito. We all got on the red bus and traveled for a good 20min to central Quito, that is more colonial and wow, I swear every vista es bellismo(every view is gorgeous...really). The picture at the top is one from right outside the university. See the green bus???? The ones below are of our venture to colonial Quito where we discoverd una huelga(a protest). It was small but there were maybe 50-100 chapas(cops, slang for police) all around with guns. When I say guns, I mean GUNS, like ones that take your life not injure you but END you....haha. A little scary but so long as you have your wits about you and stay out of harms way...you´re good.

From there we took two taxis to la Mariscal which is a gringo area with bars, restaurants and clubs...aka Birmingham´s Southside area times 10. Me, Chisara and Bastian were in one taxi and arrived at the wrong restaurant called the Coffeetree. There were two and the taxi took us to the wrong one. So we asked about 10 different people where the OTHER coffeetree was and ended up walking about 25 blocks until we found it. Our other friends were half-way through they´re meal at that point. But it was all good, we ate, I had un hurucan(huricane, an awesome drink from New Orleans, very fruity).

Again one hell of a day and night...I just hope the rest aren´t as adventurous as this one.....

ciao por unos dias

ps quite possibly the best item I brought to quito was the 39 bolsilla(pocket) micro-suede jacket my wonderful mother purchased. In this jacket I conceal my notebooks, camera, pens,pencils and countless other trinkets....thanks