Day One

Things that happened on the first day of our trip-

  On the first leg of our flight I met a nice woman and her daughter who were traveling in a group of 88 to Tuscany, Italy from Newark, Ohio. The trip was arranged through their chamber of commerce and the woman sitting next to me was in charge of all 88 people. Both flights were fairly smooth with only a touch of turbulence towards the end of the flight from Atlanta to Quito.

   In Atlanta we had a three hour layover between our flights so we put all of our bags in one spot and took shifts watching them as we each went in search of food. About five of us all went to TGI Fridays for a beer and our last real American meal before the flight.

   The flight to Quito was surprisingly productive, I finished Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk and started a second book and watched The Big Year a bird spotting movie with Owen Wilson, Jack Black and Steve Martin-I found it quirky and entertaining. By the time we reached Quito we were all exhausted from traveling, but we still had to go through customs and find our guide who would get us to our bus. Customs wasn´t horribly rigorous, we only had to fill out immigration forms which is a very small piece of paper and some of us got randomly selected to send our bags through an x-ray machine. Our guide ended up being a very friendly woman named Wallis who works with our university in Cuenca. She took us to our bus which at the time I found to be excitingly reminiscent of the Knight Bus from Harry Potter with curtains in each window and comfy seats.

   As we drove to our hotel it was about ten thirty at night and there was a spooky fog in the city, creating a very cool effect. It reminded me of being on one of the islands from the Jurassic Park movies with shapes of buildings and palm trees protruding through the omniscient fog. Our hotel, the Hotel Quito, was amazing. it had a crazy balcony view from each room that we weren´t able to fully appreciate until the morning, and a lobby that was just crazy with its orange chairs and wide open spaces.

   Before falling asleep my roommate and I flicked through the channels on the TV to see if there was much of a difference from American programming. We were surprised to find the television set to CNN. We ended up finding a multitude of American shows dubbed into Spanish, like Family Guy and the movie I Love You Man. In our exhaustion, every line was hilarious.