Hola de Ecuador

Here I am, in Ecuador, and everything is all right with me! So, let's start from the beginning. At Wednesday the 20th I woke up very early to go to the airport. (The night before, my friends and family came to say goodbye, which was really nice! Thanks guys) as we were quite early at the airport and we had to wait for Noë and Jana, I could think about wether I didn't forget anything. As I'm here for almost 1 week, I think I didn't forget anything. YES!! Saying goodbye to my parents wasn't easy. After we checked in and did all the controll stuff, I went to a Belgian toilet for the last time. This was probably the last time that I could throw the toilet paper in the toilet, cause here we have to throw it in a bin. Then, we boarded the plane for a 30 min. flight from Brussels to Amsterdam. There, we didn't have much time but we managed to board our big plane on time. As we boarded the plane, we already met some people of YFU Finland. Then we took off for a 11 hour flight to Quito. I had a weird feeling during take off, because at that point, we were really gone to Ecuador for 10 months. The flight went good. I saw some movies, ate really good plane food and we also searched other students from YFU (and we found some!). After 11 hours and a beautiful approach we landed in Quito. And omg, this is such a big city! It is located on an altitude of 2500 meters (between the mountains) and someone told me that Quito has a 'length' of 70 km. Luckily, my (almost) 60 kg of luggage also arrived. 

Some YFU volunteers were waiting for us and then we left to our orientation camp in Quito. This was in a place of the local church community. We arrived first and I was the only boy so I had a room for myself. Later on that night, some other people arrived (including 3 girls of Wallonia and an Estonian guy so I wasn't the only guy). Because we were all tired, we didn't do anything. As dinner we had pasta with... Rice! Then, during the night, actually something very cool happened: we had an earthquake. It had a scale of 3.1 one and nobody felt it! What a crazy experience. Also during the night, the rest of the students arrived. We were now four in our room: me, Andreas from Estonia, Vilhelm from Sweden and Ben(jamin) from the USA. All very nice guys!! Well, actually not everyone arrived. There are 47 students that go to Ecuador and 24 of them are from Germany. Guess what, they flew from Frankfurt via Miami to Quito but because of some weather problems in Miami, they missed their plane to Quito and had to wait for 17 hours. This is actually not so funny but you have to confess, somehow it's funny to laugh with the misery of someone else ;). So actually we, the non-Germans were already a close group and then there was an invation of Germans. During the orientation, the volunteers prepared us for this year and they always talked about 'crazy Ecuadorians'. At noon, we played some football and 'ecuabolli' (the national sport, looks like volleyball) and at night, they tried to teach us how to dance. It's not easy but I hope to become a pro in it! The second day we went to some place for some visa stuff, which basically ment we had to wait a lot. Also Felipe, one of the volunteers, had his birthday. And here in Ecuador, there are 2 'rituals' when it's your birthday: you have to bite from a cake and then they'll put your face into it, and they slap you with a leather belt, so for example when you become 18, they slap you 18 times. Can't wait for my birthday! We also went to a very nice and new shopping hall, and I drunk a very good and cheap mango smoothie. Oh, everything is so cheap here. For example, a ride with the bus costs 0,25$, that's no money for some good transport. Taxi costs 1$, very expensive don't you think? On the 23rd we went to Ibarra (me, a Canadian girl, two German girls and a girl from Wallonia). They said that the ride to Ibarra would take 1,5 hour and for example, students that are going to the coast, had to sit on the bus for 10 hours, so students who didn't went to the coast laughed a lot with them. Although, that funny moment didn't last for long, because it took us almost 2 hours to leave Quito because of the traffic. I nearly had 7 heart attacks because of our crazy driver. But a couple of hours later, we were in Ibarra, my home town for a small year! It's a quite big city, I expected it to be smaller. Everybody was so nervous to meet their families. Finally, I met mine. My host mother is really nice! My hostfather Manuel and two older hostsisters Celene and Priscilla and the dog Hercules are also nice! I hope they like me. Our house is quite different then a Belgian house. It's quite small and old, but for me it's really ok. We didn't do a lot that day, I tried to put all my clothes in the closet and had a rest. We also ate rice two times, for lunch and dinner. Close to our house, there's a very nice and big park. My bed is a little bit too small but I slept good the first night. Yesterday and today we went to Quito, to the appartment of my host sister Priscilla who studies there. I actually expected to do a 'citytrip' but all we did was eating and watching TV, so the highlights of Quito will be for another time. The communication with my family here isn't easy but I have my dictionarry with me every second of the day and my Spanish is getting better every minute.

So that's about it. It's a very nice country and I'm trying to adapt to everything here. For the moment, I'm typing this blogpost on my iPod, and please, don't search for language mistakes. At this point, I'm thinking and speaking only in English and Spanish, so crazy things are going on in my brain. Everything is said, no Dutch part for today. If you still want to ask something, just shoot!!

Adios muchachos, a la proxima (tot de volgende!) 

'El Vincent' (that's how my hostmother calls me)