Y estoy aquí...(and now I´m here)

So. Much. To. Say.... Well, I´ll start at the beginning: When I got to Jackson with mama and daddy on Saturday, we said our goodbyes and I found Shruti, Cameron, and Anna at the terminal for our connecting flight to Houston (from whence we would go on to Quito). To our disappointment, our plane getting to Jackson was late and, hence, no amount of running (or me nearly killing myself falling up an escalator) did us any good in making our second flight once we got to Houston. After about 5 straight hours, no joke, at the Continental customer service desk, the four of us desfortunados were booked for a (fairly crazy) series of flights that would get us to Quito: from Houston to Caracas, Venezuela, at midnight that saturday, and from there to Bogotá, Colombia Sunday morning at 5 or so, and from Bogotá finally to Quito, arriving at a little before 11:00 am. This plan went off without a hitch, as long as you don´t consider losing your luggage to be a hitch (my host mom did get them yesterday, luckily, so I´m good in that regard).

Anyway, bagless, the four of us left the baggage claim to find representatives from our host family´s waiting for us (which was miraculous in itself, given the flight circumstances). My host mother´s son, Andrés, was there to pick me up, and we went first to their house, which is in Cumbaya, a very nice outer neighborhood of Quito where the University San Francisco de Quito (where I´m studying now) is. Andrés and the rest of the family are great. My host mom, Alba, is a doctor (either an orthodontist or something similar) as are seemingly everyone else in the family. Alba´s parents (awesome, and adorable) live on the first floor of the house, the second has an office, living room, kitchen, and dining room, my room and andrés´room and another guest room are on the third floor, and Alba is on the top floor. Alba´s neices and their daughters, María Sara and Isabella (4 and 3, respectively) are also over all the time and are tons of fun. Last night (4th of July) was Isabella´s 3rd birthday, and the whole family, including Alba´s other son and her brother and sister and all their spouses were there to celebrate, which luckily I got to be a part of. But over all the house is extremely comfortable and everyone is super-nice, helpful, accomadating. While of course there are language barriers sometimes, I have been surprised by how easily I´ve been able to speak to them, although it probably helps that they try to speak more slowly and clearly for me.

As far as school activities, since we arrived late I missed the bus tour of Quito which was a bummer, but I at least got to catch up on some of the sleep that I had missed for the prior 36 hours or so. On monday morning, Alba took me to the University for orientation, and she explained the bus system that I take to school every day now. The orientation consisted of a lot of statistics and about things to watch out for while in Ecuador (like pickpockets, altitude sickness, and the fact that 90% of students end up with diarrhea within the first week or so). None of this has affected me yet, ojalá (God willing), but I won´t be surprised if and when it does at least. Over all though, the neighborhoods we´ve been in seem really safe, and a bunch of us went out for dinner last night with no problems, despite the fact that it was monday night when almost everything seems to be closed down here (we seemed to be the only ones celebrating the 4th of july for some reason, haha). Real classes started today, and I have to say, they are going to be really challenging. I have class from 9-2 every day, split in to sections on grammar and conversation/culture and judging by the load I´ve got right now, I´ll probably be working on homework most of the time i´m not in classes. Ugh. But I feel confident that if I am able to wade through all of this work, my spanish should be drastically better.

That´s probably as much as I should right for now, I already have a project that I have to complete for tomorrow, plus a lot more stuff! I don´t have internet at my house right now, so I´m limited to checking email and everything while I´m at school. As soon as I have another opportunity to do so and have enough to say, though, I´ll be sure to post again! Hasta entonces! (until then!)