Week One – Arriving in Ecuador

Author: Masha

Week One

May/June 2019

Anyone who has been following my blogs for a while knows that I like to break things up by week, for those of you new to this blog, each week of my trip I will be posting a blog post, labeled by that week.

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This week I traveled to Quito, Ecuador, where I will be spending the summer. I have been to Ecuador one other time, more than 15 years ago, and absolutely loved it. Granted, while a lot changes in 15 years, I have fond memories of Ecuador and was eager to return. Ecuador is a country in South America, it straddles the equator, and is roughly the size of Oregon.

I was fortunate to receive a Fellowship to study Quechua (Kichwa) in the Amazon for seven weeks. After this class, I will travel with family, then take a Nursing class in Quito. While my program did not start until Sunday, I chose to arrive on Wednesday, for cost and acclimatization reasons (Quito is 9,350 ft above sea level), and enjoyed walking around the Centro Historico and going to the Teleferico at the foot of Pichincha (located at roughly 12,000 ft above sea level). Although I have enjoyed the beauty of the city, the coolness of the climate, and the friendliness of everyone I have met, I have not slept well. This is because there is a group of 20 high school students from Colorado are in the rooms around mine and the floor above me. They are loud.

In addition to screaming of useless sentences in English, such as “aren’t we having a cheese party!” their group leaders also conduct room checks to make sure they are in their rooms and relatively quiet, at convenient hours such as 1 and 2 in the morning. This involves more shouting, “make a noise so we know you’re in there!” I’m sure I was loud and rowdy when I was studying abroad in high school, but now at the ripe old age of 26, I find it extremely annoying. I try and tell myself, this is a good experience for them, but when I’m needlessly awake at 2am, it’s hard to be compassionate.

Today, Sunday, I have finally met the other students studying at the same field school where I will be studying Quechua (Kichwa). We went on a tour of el Museo del San Francisco, which was gorgeous, and this afternoon we will be going hummingbird watching, to hot springs, and one other thing (I don’t remember what it was) before finally making our way to the field school in the Napo region of the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Here are some photos I took throughout the week: