Hello friends and family. Just for the sake of ease, I am going to continue my adventures now in Ecuador on this same blog so that once in a while you can keep up with me but not have to find a new site. I obviously am here for a very different purpose, but I am not a fan of facebook so I just want the people I am close to to be able to see pictures, know what I am doing, know how I am feeling, and still know what God is doing in my life in this very different place.

I arrived on Saturday in Quito, a large city in the sierra region of Ecuador. I was there one night by myself and then one more night with 7 other members of our 11 member group (very small!) The 8 of us went to a town on the Equator  called San Antonio from Monday to Thurs and on Tuesday night the other 3 joined us (they were stuck in the Miami airport). In San Antonio we did a lot of listening and some fun activities for orientation. Then Friday we went to "Los Chillos" where I am now staying with my family!!! :)

The first week was fun, but really difficult for me. I think I underestimated what I was doing in hopping from culture to culture. Ecuador has many artistic elements to it I did not expect, and the people of course are very different from Africa. I guess I was also expecting to see a lot  of poverty, dirty cities, people living on bare minimum... but clearly Africa has much more poverty. But it is ok and I am excited to learn about the culture.

The other difficult thing, probably moreso than the new culture was the culture shock of United States college students. I found myself very internally frustrated at my lack of many things. I felt like communication was more difficult, one because my mind is still kinda in Africa, and two I spent a lot of my summer in silence, and in the US we talk a lot. I think there were many things that just came as a shock and made it hard for me to feel comfortable, but I have been trying my best to ignore my discomfort and just engage. I think it is going much better at this point.

My host family is wonderful! I love my mom and I have a 19 year old brother and a very sweet 13 year old sister. The mother is named Sol (which if you dont speak spanish it means "sun") the brother is named Christian and the sister is Camila or "Cami." I have yet to meet the father who should be back from a trip today. I am glad the younger sister can speak english well so when I get stuck I can ask for help. But honestly I am doing well in understanding (at least better than I though) and the family is very patient with me. next week we will be starting just Spanish class. There are 3 teacher for 11 students, and we will be studying 5 hours a day 5 days a week, plus some other classes in some afternoons. By the end of 4 weeks I should be pretty good!

Yesterday was the highlight so far. Sol said "You want to go for a walk with Cami, Chris, and Martin?" (Martin is a HUGE dog). And so I agreed and they told me they were going to climb the hill to the top where there is a cross (in spanish "cruz"). Ok.... NOT A HILL. It was DEFINITELY a mountain. I will have to take a picture, you can see the cross from my house.... its so steep and tall. I litterally think it was the hardest hike I have ever done. There were 3 times near the end where we had to stop for a min, and I literally thought I can not finish this walk. First, it was steep the whole way, no flat parts, no nothing. Second, the altitude in the city is 10,000 feet so already I am trying to adjust to breathing less air. I was so proud though when I made it and as you can see below it was SO worth it.