August 22, 2007

Hello Everyone!

This is my first week in Ecuador and I am having a blast. I live just a couple minutes outside of Quito in Tumbaco. My first host family is the Peñaherrera family and they are all great. My father's name is Sergio. My mother's is Carmen. My older brother who is 20 is Carlos Antonio. And my younger sister who is 14 is Ana Isabel. The family has a maid named Blanca and I have a German shepherd named Charlie. Maria Olivia just left for Sugarland, Texas on Tuesday morning so I got to unpack later that day. The houses have been under construction for a while so there have been workers coming in and out fixing appliances. There is the main house and two guest houses. Since the appliances in the main house aren't working yet we are eating in one of the guest houses. We have had rice with every meal so it is a good thing that I like it. We also have homemade juice from the local berries and fruits here. Really the most interesting thing that I have eaten so far has been the fish head soup. I am just really glad that they told me what it was after I ate it because it was actually pretty good. They don't really like spicy food so it doesn't look like I will be having any of that for a while.

So far the family has kept me busy so there isn't really time for homesickness, but when I found myself sitting in my room alone is when you start thinking about everything, so I got out of bed, got ready and went and watched one of the many TV series the family is addicted to with Carlos Antonio. I have met so much family from both sides and they are all very welcoming. Just tonight I went and saw the Bugs Bunny On Ice show at the Coliseum in Quito which was very interesting to see in Spanish, but I had a good time. Hopefully by my next entry I will have pictures to show you all because my laptop is the only way I can get pictures on here. So until I figure out how to get the laptop connected to this internet, no pictures.

Sincerely,
Lindsey

October 2, 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

How is everyone? Everything has been going great here. I haven’t written in a while because I have been so busy with school, Spanish classes after school, studying for the Psat test, getting to meet new people and going out and having fun every week. Sorry about my grammar and spelling. Still trying to work on figuring out this key board. Some of the highlights of this past month have been that:

1. I started school on September 3 at Colegio Henri Becquerel . I am in Quinto Curso which is equivalent to Junior year of high school. There are two classes of about 20 students in my grade and over 2/3 of it are boys. Every Monday all the students in the entire school line up by their grade and sex for about 15 minutes in the morning. The only only thing I really don’t like about Mondays, other than it just being another day after a weekend is that all the girls have to wear their navy blue and forest green skirts with navy blue knee socks, and black leather shoes. Oh yeah… and its pretty cold in the mornings in Quito so that makes it much more fun. It gets to about 55 degrees and its not even winter yet. My school bus/van comes and picks me up at 6:30 in the morning and I get to school at about 7:45. I met a lot of really interesting people on my bus. The funny thing is that you hear almost 5 languages on it. I have a friend from Belgium named Cecile, Ana from Austria, and Steffi from Germany. Each one of them speaks 3-4 languages and surprisingly only one of them can speak a little English. So it is really good that my only way of communication with the other exchange students is Spanish. There is about 14 people all together that ride my bus and nearly every day each one of them laughs at me hitting my head on the ceiling. I have noticed that hear that everything is really small. From clothing to doorways to the people everything is small. It was pretty difficult finding a uniform that fit me and wasn’t to short in length. But I found that I wasn’t the only tall girl here. Two of the other exchange girls are pretty similar in size. Now down to the fun stuff about school. Well…during school I don’t hang out much with the other exchange students just the locals. My group of friends are really the people in my class. To name the girls there is Juliana, Maya, Paloma, Gaby, and Cristina. The other 15 are boys. Almost every weekend just the people in my class have a get-together or a barbeque kind of thing so I have gotten to know a lot of them in these past few weeks. They are all really funny and in and out of school every body plays soccer. Even in the classroom. When the teachers are out or switching classes the kids turn the desk around and make it a goal. Unbelievable I know, but it is so hilarious. I have even recorded some of it. Another thing I have recorded is the choreography all the girls in each grade need to come up with for the day of sports which was this Saturday. The songs my grade did choreography to was a weird techno song called Destination, another one called Sopa de Caracol, Minidito, and what do you know Thriller by Michael Jackson. Definitely something that I wont forget. Another thing that the other exchange students in the school and I have taken up is teaching English to primary school students. I found that I am learning a lot more Spanish with them than I am every where else.

2. This last Friday was the last day of my two week course of Spanish lessons with all the exchange students in Quito. It was so much fun. I met about 40 exchange students from all over the world and each one of them was so different from the next. In the classes we got divided up in to how much Spanish we knew already. I was in a group with a boy from Switzerland, a boy from Canada and another girl from the States. We were that group that made the most noise, but had the most fun while we learned. Everything we did turned into a game which also made us competitive, which made it even more fun. It’s a bummer that its over now but all of us decided that we are going to try to get together at least once a week. They are getting together tonight but I don’t think I will be making it because I am pretty sick and sound like a dying rabbit every time I open mouth. So it doesn’t look like I will be doing any thing for a while.

3. This Saturday a couple of Exchange students and myself went to Las Cascadas which is the waterfalls and I had a great time. We had to walk up a really steep mountain to get to them, but it was so worth it. We walked through a river for about two hours. I don’t know how many times I almost fell, but the system they had definitely worked. There was a girl in between every guy and every time you slip there is some one there to catch you in front or behind you. They would help you get up a cliff or help you jump down off a rock, so it was very nice having someone there. They would even carry bags. I felt kind of bad because I had a lot of stuff in mine but they wouldn’t take no for an answer. I met a lot of new people on that trip and I am glad I did. We climbed through pitch black caves, and walked through really cold water, but the waterfalls were so beautiful and so worth every scratch along the way.

4. The week before school started Carlos Antonio took me to a remade Colonial home in South Quito called San Lucas. It was exactly how I want my future home to look like. It was three stories high and I had Carlos take a picture of me on the 2nd story. We took the public buses because it is probably the quickest way of transportation and ofund that Carlos and I were at least a head taller than everyone else standing on it. Also on that trip to South Quito we visited one of the most beautiful churches in Quito called the Compania. It was amazing how everything was so perfectly painted in gold from the ceiling to the floor. There wasn’t aloud any pictures so that was a bummer but I will find some post cards. The next day my Rotary Counselor, Edgar Yanez, took me and his grand daughter Daniela to the middle of the world! I got to have each leg on both the northern and the southern hemisphere. There was also a museum in the park about all of Ecuador and the history Quito. There was also a show in the middle of the park of the traditional dance of Ecuador which was very beautiful to watch. After that park Edgar took me to a restaurant built on an old volcanic crater. That restaurant is supposedly a very famous restaurant where a lot of South American presidents go to eat and the when they do go to eat there the security is so high that the valley below it is swarmed with military and the sky is filled with helicopters. I took a picture of the boards that held all the signatures of the many presidents that visited “El Crater.”

5. Two weeks before school started Carmen’s Father and his wife took me and Carlos Antonio to Santo Domingo de Los Colorados with them for 3 days. It was so much fun. It took about 3 hours to get there but the trip went so fast and getting to see all the changes in climate as you went up and down mountains getting closer to the coast. When we got there it was night so I couldn’t see much, but I could definitely feel the humidity of the jungle and right then I almost started drinking the mosquito repellent. There weren't any windows in the house we stayed in, only screens so the next morning I woke up to the sound of the roosters at sun up and dogs barking at the chickens. After we had breakfast, Mr. Brown ( Carmen’s father) took Carlos Antonio and I down to a jungle tour sort of thing and dropped us off. Our guide greeted us with a snake wrapped around his wrist to his elbow. He asked if we wanted to hold it and right when I went to hold it he followed with “it only bit me a couple times” and laughed as I jumped away. W the then he took the snake off his other arm I could see that he wasn’t lying about it biting him. After I was a little weirded-out from that, he took us into the jungle and my camera was on the entire time. I saw some monkeys, owls, termites and a lot of bugs. After Carlos Antonio saw the tarantula he made me walk in front of him and every time he got scared he grabbed on to my shoulders and asked me if I saw any thing coming or if the coast was clear, so I was laughing the entire time. You didn’t really notice how humid it was in there until you got out and realized your clothes were drenched. After our tour of the jungle Carlos and I had to walk back to the house which was a really nice walk because you got to feel the breeze of the cars that flew pass you on the road. A little after we got back we had lunch and then went on another journey to some farming fields and down to the river that ran through the property. At one of the farms we had to get some Papaya to bring back home with us. They were actually a chore to get because f how high the trees grow and how heavy the fruits are. It was a job for three men so I had to watch as they took a 15 foot stick with a plunger looking thing tied to the tip of it so its easier to break the fruit from the tree. The other two had to try to catch the 10 pound fruit without letting it fall and break. We ended up with about 10 good fruit and left about 15 smashed. Other than those few trips, we mostly stayed on the paragola which is a really big canopy almost hanging over a cliff with a great view of Santo Domingo.

6. I also have attended three Rotary meetings. The first one was just to meet the Rotarians in the club, the second was to have an official introduction and the third one was the presentation of a boy from New York named Andrew. He and the girl from Belgium named Cecile are he only exchange students in the club and we will all be trading houses and host families in the first or second week of January.

That is it for this entry so until next time…hope you like the pictures. Feel free to e-mail me. I would love to hear what is going on in all of your lives. My e-mail is lalco@hotmail.com.

Miss you all,

Lindsey