Follow the Journey

Finally ended my devastatingly long fasting streak over our 16 hours of plane rides when we all got to Community Hostel and indulged in our first taste of a traditional Ecuadorian meal here…bacon cheeseburgers! Not exactly what I was anticipating but it was absolutely starvation quenching material and delicious – and no doubt because this hostel is phenomenal. It was not exactly what I was expecting when I envisioned some small and rank street corner, spring bed, broken mirror complex. So settling in with wooden flooring, furnished bathrooms, woolly blankets, and GOURMET food was astonishing to me. But I’m some what suspicious this situation here is a bit of a cultural buffer before we really delve into our reality here, which I’m still really looking forward to. So far though, we’ve spent most of our time in Quito organizing and orienting all of our group members with new agreements, Carpe policies, and the safety and health precautions while we’re here. Quito is not the safest city, there’s a fair amount of crime here as in any major metropolitan area and generally given the level of poverty people can be desperate and things can be dangerous. We haven’t really encountered such serious circumstances with theft or violence but we all go out in groups and avoid some areas at night just to play it safe. Probably the most amazing thing to me so far is the food down here. Almost every restaruant has the same items on the menu which creates some steep competition and brings the prices way down – my lunch of rice, chicken, beans, soup, and juice was 2 dollars. When things are that cheap it kind of makes you want to eat everything, which most of us have been doing…except me because I’m allergic to everything that’s tastes good. Actually, that’s a lie because almost everything I’ve had has been delicious (excluding the chicken head and feet I had this morning). Were still only 3 days in so there’s not much to say yet, I’ll post more info and photos if I can next week!