I just took today’s malaria pill, and I’m not allowed to lay down for the next 30 minutes. So, what better thing would there be to do that to write a quick blurb about what I did today!
So what did I do? I MET THE PRESIDENT OF ECUADOR!!!! Well, not really….I merely saw him from a distance. But still, I have been living in the US for nearly 20 years and have been in the proximity to our President twice; I come to Ecuador and in less than 24 hours, I have already achieved that! Here’s a picture I took of him (apparently, in the last election there were 10 candidates, and he still won with 54% of the votes. He is very popular and the people were going crazy for him! He was executive branch crack cocaine and we were the desperate power-hungry tricks.)
It seemed my classmates and I had stumbled upon the changing of the guard ceremony in the historic plaza of Quito. I just found it truly ironic that I found myself in a military ceremony on the same day as Memorial Day back home! Soon the ceremony ended and we were off; however, we were given but a sampling of the addictive charm of the president and we wanted more. Our group walked up to the palace gates….and guess what….THEY LET US IN!! Apparently it’s no big deal in Quito to request entrance to the palace. We were in, but unfortunately for us, the source of our newfound addiction was behind several heavily guarded gates and up many flights of stairs. Nevertheless, I was still able to make a new friend amid the disappointment.
Disclaimer: If the “tartness” of the metaphor presented in today’s blog was a little too pungent, I’d blame the malaria pill.
**crackle crackle** Excuse the interruption passengers, this is your captain speaking. It would seem that we must delay our departure by thirty minutes or so. It would seem that we have a valve that isn’t functioning as it should, but don’t worry. Maintenance will come and remove it, we should be able to get by just fine. That is all **crackle crackle**
Large black lady: WHAT THE **** IS THIS ****?!?!?
(MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY)
As you can all see, my trip to Ecuador didn’t begin very smoothly. It all started with the valve but then continued to snowball into an avalanche of comedic errors! Upon arriving (late might I say) to Miami, I had to book it to gate D23 from D32, a feat that I thought would be easy enough to accomplish in a small amount of time; however, they decided for some reason to stretch out the “D” section of the airport so that D23 was about a 10 minute walk from D32 (weird). I finally arrive at my gate, not having any idea what time it was because I left my cell phone at home while I was away. So I’m scrambling to find clock to know how much time I had before we left…..turns out the nearest clock was by gate 29. So I found out I only had like 45 minutes until departure, so I hung around the gate….until they announced that the flight was going to be delayed about 30 minutes…JOY! So I took this opportunity to try to call my family to ease their worrying. So the great telephone search began. I looked high and low for a pay phone somewhere but couldn’t do it. So I bit and asked the information booth. You’ll never guess which gate it was at…..D29, THE SAEM ONE WITH THE CLOCK (what makes this gate so special that is gets all this attention from the MIA staff??). Long story short, they weren’t working, and I needed to get back to my gate.
The time finally came to take off for Quito. I was so excited. Despite the delay, the flight was great and my heart swelled with happiness when I could see the twinkling Quito lights below me! I met Nelly Gavilanes (my host mom) at the airport and we took a taxi back to her house, which is fabulous might I add (If Ecuador had a Better Homes and Garden magazine, la casa de Gavilanes would be on the cover!) I’ll post pictures with tomorrow’s update. It is late, I am officially unpacked, and I have to get up bright and early in order to eat breakfast and make it to orientation (which consists of a placement exam…wish me luck)!
Hasta Mañana!
