Here is a recap of the past 24 hours…
Yesterday I flew from Charlotte to Miami to Quito. The 2 flights, for the most part, were uneventful. During the flight to Ecuador though, there was a strange young man on board. He was American, in his early 20’s and was just…. weird. As he got on the plane, he sat down in a exit row seat, you know, the one with extra leg room. Soon enough, the actual passenger who was ticketed that seat came along. The strange guy checked his ticket and got up, then moved 4 rows back to a center seat of a three seater. He still at this time had his carry on bag, a large roller than I assumed would barely fit in the overhead bin. He meandered to his correct seat and then began to work on putting that carry on in the bin above. Do you ever get that feeling you know something bad is about to happen? Well I felt it. I KNEW he was going to drop the luggage. And he did. On the head of a lady. Who had a baby. She was really nice about it though, and didn’t seem to have been hurt at all. Baby was fine too. Ok… one more incident with strange guy – about half way through the flight, he got up and pulled his carry on back out, sat it in the middle of the aisle, squatted down and was there for the next 20 minutes. Passengers and flight attendants alike were crawling over and around him. Apparently, he was taking some medication – for 20 minutes. On the floor. In the aisle.
Moving along, I got to Ecuador at 7ish last night, made it easily through customs, got my luggage and then headed out to the lobby area where someone from the school was supposed to be waiting to pick me up. An HOUR LATER, and no one is around. I checked inside and out, then finally settled on a taxi. I speak very little Spanish of course, so the taxi driver ripped me off and overcharged me for the ride to my studio, but the school said they’d pay since they screwed up. Seems that some emails got mixed up and they thought I was coming in tonight, not last night. No matter, I made it to my studio safe and sound. I checked in with Alanna and the kids and went to bed.
This morning, the lady who owns my studio took me on a quick walking tour of the local area. She showed me some little places to eat, etc, and then took me to Supermaxi. Yes, I know… make your funny jokes. Supermaxi is a large supermarket chain pretty much like you’d see in the states. It is not a really absorbent feminine hygiene product, although those are sold there as well. The store has a good mix of American and Ecuadorian items, though the American stuff seems to be marked up quite a bit. I bought some simple groceries, then took a taxi back to my place. Its a 15 minute walk uphill with groceries at 9000 ft. I’m not quite acclimated to the altitude yet, so I’m getting short of breath easily and I have a mild headache most of time. Should go away soon though.
This evening, I took a taxi to a local mall just to get out for a bit. They have a KFC there, so I chowed down on some southern fried chicken. I shopped for a bit, mostly window browsing and then headed back to the studio to call it a night.
Tomorrow I’m meeting some of the new teachers for lunch, and then we’ll start working on Wednesday. Everything is pretty good so far but I do really miss my family. Its going to be a long 2 months without them.
Ok enough for now. Here are some random pics…
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| The view from my bathroom. |
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| A tree in the middle of the road. |
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| This dude had a 23 on his shirt. So I took a pic. |
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| In case you forget that this is still a third world country, here are some kids playing in the trash. |