I have been in Ecuador for about 5 and a half days now, it's wonderful! I am living in North Quito  about 5 minutes away from the airport, luckily the planes don’t wake me up anymore. My host family here is completely delightful, however I must include that living with a boy my age is.. well, to say the least, interesting. He is always trying to prove he’s better at things than me, like for example at arm wrestling, and just so you know, I have beat him every time. 

The weather here is great, very similar to Washington ’s summer. It’s not very hot only about 70ºF, but I am not sure about this because everything is in Celsius. The major difference about the Seattle area and here is, I haven’t seen rain yet! It has only rained once and that was at night. It took a couple days to get use to the fact that it won’t be raining seven days in a row. 

The plane ride down was one of the most interesting things that has happened yet. The flight from Seattle to Houston only ran about 15 minutes late, it was a very pleasant ride. When we landed it was 93ºF in Houston , but not for long, because as soon as I found my next terminal a storm hit. The plane before ours in the same terminal was delayed two hours because of a technical problem and the storm, so my flight was moved to another terminal, on the other side of the building. 

Due to the change in terminals our flight was delayed about half an hour, so like any Seattle raised person I went to go get a Starbucks drink. After I said my order, I quickly realized that coffee is handed very different in Texas . All I said was ¨Can I have a tall-coffee-frap-with-whip?¨ Both the register lady and man writing my order on the clear cup, stopped looked at me, and one said under their breath to the other, that’s a frappicino with cream, right? The other replied Whip cream, I think, or maybe it’s whipped cream. The looked at me. I said again, Can I have a tall, coffee, frappicino, with the white fluffy stuff. This they understood. After my drink was made I went back to my new terminal to wait, the other Rotarian traveling to Ecuador and I decided that we needed to call someone and tell them our plane was running late. I was just about to call the Rotary district president in Ecuador when our plane got moved back another half hour. We excepted this and decided it was really good we were going to call. So I went to a pay phone and called to Ecuador, it didn’t occur to me until the phone was ringing that I didn’t know how to say our plane has been delayed an hour in Spanish, so I did my best, people all around we were helping me say what I needed to the president’s wife, who luckily understood, but when she asked me why, and what time would the plane be coming now, I had to pass the phone over to a nice man who translated for her what I was saying. 

When I got back to my seat, I discovered that the plane had been delayed again another half hour. We pulled out our Spanish-English dictionaries to pass the time. A half hour later a voice came over the loud speaker to say our plane was delayed yet again, this time an additional hour. So, we went back to talking and studying, not ten minutes later the man’s voice came over the loud speaker to day our terminal was moved again, to another building. So very tired and frustrated we went to out new terminal and waited until boarding. Boarding started late, and it took a long time, so by the time our plane took off it was running 3 hours later than the original time. The airport in Quito stayed open an additional 2 hours just for our flight. When we landed in Quito at 2 AM Saturday morning, I was very thankful for the airport official holding my name on a piece of paper. He took me and another Rotarian through immigration quickly, we never even had to say a word, he helped us retrieve our luggage and walked us right past customs. After I met my family he walked our luggage to the car and said goodbye. My family told me it would be only 5 minutes until we got home and then I could sleep, no questions were asked. It was the best sleep I have ever had. Six and half hours in Houston is too much for one day. 

So far, since I have been here I have gone to the city’s lookout, taken a few buses, which is an experience in it’s self, and I have gone to the Equator. It has been really fun and I am looking forward to what ever comes next. 

I will keep you updated and I will send a picture soon,

Love, Gabby