yo soy frigging scared?

---

buenos tardes amigos!
i was all set to write an awesome first blog, but then my cell phone rang and it was the boy i love, and then it kept cutting out and i was so so so sad. so now i am not in a bloggy mood, and i don´t have a lot of time, but i thought i´d share a few interesting tidbits.
for one, i am definitely suffering from culture shock.. or just plain scared-ness. quito seems like a great city, the house we´re in is nice (but cold), and carlos (my program coordinator) and the other people in the house seem cool. but i´m totally overwhelmed. i spent the first three days crying, and i still feel like crying often, although i haven´t yet today .. so that´s an improvement. in addition, i have some sort of weird bronchitis strep thing that keeps me up all night coughing and basically makes me even more exhausted than i already am. so it´s not the ideal start, but it is improving every day.
here are a few things i thought i´d share:
1. my first day in quito, my first time on the trolley, my purse gets slashed (and yes, i was watching it closely, but trying to get off the trolley and push through a bajillion aggressive ecuadorians is close to impossible, so when it got stuck behind me all i could do was pull). there are about a billion holes in it now, but luckily my money was in my pocket and my camera wasn´t taken. go me!
2. quito is not that warm! when the sun is out it´s toasty, but when it´s not.. it´s not. and we´re all freezing at night. you´d think the equator would be boiling hot.. i wish.
3. i started my spanish classes, and the teacher, paulina, is super nice. there are only four of us starting at the beginning of this month, and one guy, ian, is only in quito for a week.. he and i were put in the beginner group and the other two girls in the more advanced one.. so when ian leaves i guess i will get one on one spanish lessons, which is pretty great. i already learned a lot today, most of it being food-related, but i got to say "pass the aroz (rice)" today at lunch, so that was exciting.
4. carlos thinks he found me a placement.. in case you guys didn´t hear, the one i was supposed to do got screwed up, which seriously majorly pissed me off, but he found me one that is really similar, working with street kids, and it sounds really great, so he´s going through the proccess of getting me signed up and hopefully i´ll be good to go then!
5. this one is good news and bad news... the bad news is, i´m homesick. the good news is.. i´m homesick! i couldn´t believe it. when i went to australia it was like.. kay peace out, i never want to come home again. clearly youpeople are corrupting me and ruining my life by possibly maybe actually making me like where i live (nick, if you´re thinking i´m talking about you right now.. i am).
i have lots more to share, but that´s it for now. i need to go relax (read my book.. apparently no one else here does that and they keep complaining about being bored in the house, and i´m all, hi, shuttup?!) and not cry because my cell phone conversation failed. or becuase i am scared to go on a trolley again. or because my hands are freezing..

but on the bright side, i can see a volcano from my balcony.

hasta luego,
-a.

---

Comments

[meg]

i love you.
buy some mittens to keep your hands warm, call your sister, and remember somebunny loves you!