Mindo

The weekend was fantastic. There's no way I can do it justice, but I'll try.

So for the past week, this girl named Kelly and I have been planning a trip to a small town in Ecuador called Mindo, about two and half hours to the northwest of Quito. On Friday, we all met up at La Ofelia station, everyone dressed like explorers, and boarded a bus. The ride there was absolutely breathtaking. Once we were out of Quito, the road grew narrower and hugged the mountain side, and out the window were mountains covered in green forests and open plains with grazing animals, with the occasional house sitting atop a hill. The mountains ascended into a blanket of clouds, so that when your eye followed it up, the trees turned into silhouttes, and then vanished into the sky. The sky itself was blanketed by clouds, and very quickly it began to rain. It was raining when we arrived, and we were met by the dueña of our hostel.

After buying our return tickets, we followed her into Mindo, and down a road into the darkness, on a little path that branched off. The hostel was more like two big wooden cabins, one of which had four double beds and four single beds, to fit a total of 12 people. The house was homey and comfortable, but the design was strange, with an extra room that was separate from the rest of the house, an attic with a bed, bathrooms in strange places, and a layout that gave no absolute distinction between the outside and inside. But it was wonderful!

The following day, we had a delicious breakfast prepared by the dueña of the hostel. We discovered that we were sharing the second cabin with a group of young adults from Germany who were in Ecuador on a government-sponsored, year-long volunteering excursion. After everyone had woken up and eaten, we broke up into groups and went to our different activities. As it was, all four guys unanimously wanted to go on a hike. So we took our backpacks, and after buying some food in town, set off for a hiking trail that led to a set of waterfalls. After hiking up a mountain road, we reached a group of people waiting in line for a gondola that took people across a huge valley to another mountain. There, we ran into two girls from our group, and traveled across with them. There was a sign pointing to the right for Cascada Reina, so we took it, expecting to find a waterfall soon. After walking for thirty minutes, we realized we were in for a more extensive hike than we had initially thought. We eventually reached the waterfall. We spent the rest of the day hiking back, and then traveling to other waterfalls.

The hike was beautiful. It rained off and on the whole time, and my panama hat became permanently disfigured by the humidity and rain. We all stepped into mud up to our ankles, and at every waterfall, we jumped into the river, wearing jeans and shoes. After the first one, we were all trekking around with the constant feel of water and mud in our socks and shoes. The vegetation was omnipresent and gorgeous. The hike was not like a hike through the Rockies, where there is open sky and open land. The sky was covered by clouds, and the plant life grew everywhere, with leaves bigger than I have ever seen, often creating a sort of tunnel, along the path. Sometimes trees created ceilings of leaves wide enough for the six of us to stand under. And the plant life was very different from the kind in the states. It was beautiful and lush, and there was something almost prehistoric about it.

By evening, we were trekking back into town, wet shirts, soaked pants, shoes hemorraging water. We found all the girls back at the hostel waiting for us, dropped our stuff, and went to dinner. We were starving.

By Sunday, almost everyone had run out of money. The ATM in town rejected most of our debit cards, so we had no way to get more. Everyone was exhausted, and we spent the rest of the day lounging around, waiting for our respective buses to arrive and bring us back. I was on one of the earliest buses with a friend of mine. We got back to Quito and, lacking enough money for a cab ride back, started asking around about a metrobus that could take us back. After talking to many people, and hopping on the wrong bus accidentaly, we finally found ourselves on the right bus, headed home.

A final story. The hostel that was stayed at had two buildings, but between the two of them was a third building. On Saturday morning, I noticed a white man sweeping the porch, so I approached him and began speaking to him in Spanish. We began to talk, and I soon discovered he spoke english as well. He was from Germany, and had moved to Quito thirteen years ago to work for a company. The company folded, but he loved Ecuador so much, he decided to stay and open his own company selling parts for alternative energy. He worked in Quito during the week, and every weekend drove out to Mindo. He said he loved Germany but it was different there. It was civilization and ordered. Latin America was different, and he said in Mindo, it was paradise.

Last night I had my first real run-in with "Ecuadorian time". So my ecuafamilia really wanted me to take salsa lessons while I'm here because it's important to the people here and I don't know it. I wasn't going to pursue it, but they found classes for me that were cheap and just a few buildings down, so I decided I didn't really have a good reason not to go, so I would. The first class was at seven, so at 6:50 I got up and announced that I was leaving. My ecuapadre looked at me quizzically and said it was at seven. I was confused. I looked at the clock. Yep, it was definitely 6:50. I checked my brain. Yep "siete" was definitely what he said and was definitely the spanish word for seven. I said, yes, it's in ten minutes. He nodded, exactly, I had ten minutes, and it was right over there. I was so confused. I told him it would take me ten minutes to get to the building and find the class. He smiled and shrugged and kept watching tv. I was going to say goodbye to my ecuamadre, but she was in the bathroom, so I just left. I got to the building and started looking for the class, when all of a sudden my phone rang. It was my ecuamadre who was in a frenzy. I had left and we were just about to eat dinner. I told her the class was starting. She spoke so quickly that I couldn't understand what she was saying, but I gathered that she was saying, again, it was time for dinner and I had to come back. I was SO confused, but I told her I would come back and she calmed down and we hung up. Back at the apartment, she was bustling around the kitchen speaking in a frenzied voice about how she had come out of the bathroom and my ecuapadre had said that I had left and we hadn't eaten. I said, okay that's totally fine, I'll just go to the class tomorrow. At that, she looked at me quizzically. No, I could go today, after dinner. But, I countered, the class starts at seven, and it's 7:05. She found this very funny. If it started at seven, I could be there at 7:15 no problem. For someone as punctual as myself, ecuadorian time is very difficult to swallow.

After the class, I came back to find that some friends of my ecuapadres were visiting. The man was a longtime friend of my ecuapadre. The contrast between them could not have been more different. My ecuapadre is the stereotypical grandpa, especially when his grandson is around. His friend was the the stereotypical, old school business upper class type. I had a good time talking to them, and we talked about the states. I asked if he wanted to visit the states and he said, no, he had already seen enough of it in movies. To which I said that the real United States was very different than what they presented in the movies. My ecuapadres mentioned at one point that I was trying to visit Machu Picchu, to which he scoffed and said Peru was the same as Ecuador and that I didn't need to visit there. He told me after Ecuador I needed to visit Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, and after that I didn't need to see any more of South America.

I went to the class again today, and I got back at around 8:15. When I did, I walked in and found my ecuapadres, my ecuahermano, ecuahermana and ecuasobrino all on the bed, watching something on a laptop. My ecuahermano's wife stood off to the side of the bed. I walked in and said hello to everyone and greeted my ecuahermano's wife, because I had not seen her yet. At that my five-year old ecuasobrino told me to watch the laptop. I figured it was a youtube video or something and peeked my head over the top of the laptop to take a look and see what it was.
It was a sonogram.
I looked up slowly, and looked at all the smiling faces looking up at me. I turned slowly to look at my ecuahermano's wife who was standing next to me, and after a pause, asked if she pregnant. She was! It was quite a happy and celebratory evening!

A final note. My spanish is definitely improving. I'm quite pleased.

Kicked back in a hammock, beer in one hand, other hand resting on a panama hat, a canopy of interwoven branches of an avocado tree providing shade from the sun and a beautiful green glow. That was me yesterday. Quito rocks.

Yesterday we went to the the house my ecuafamilia owns in a little pueblo called Guayllabamba. The house itself was small but homey, and was surrounded by dozens of trees bearing avocados, tomates de arbol (a fruit that is here), and plants bearing other delicious foods. They have a large cage full of birds, a number of chickens, a rooster, a turtle, two dogs, and a goose, which my ecuapadre let roam around while we hung out. We ate lunch outside, and then went to some other little pueblos to get some dessert, and to shop for fruit at a market. At one market and I got out of the car and walked around with my ecuapadre and looked at all the food being sold. Now, I'm not a vegetarian. I'm never going to be a vegetarian. There's probably nothing short of a divine command that would make me a vegetarian. But when I was standing there in the street, with a row of kiosks to my right, which large pieces of raw meat hanging up on hooks, or resting on tables, many of them retaining the forms of the animal, or pieces of the animal, from which it came, whether it been a hoof, or a whole leg, or a head, I came the closest I ever have to switching to vegetarianism.

Later, I went to mass, which is a beautiful thing here. In the church, there is a giant wooden statue of Christ rising into the heavens that I can only describe as herculean, suspended over the altar. During the consecration, the lights all go out, save one that shines on the giant wooden Christ, and another which shines on the crucifix, while the priest raises the host to the heavens. The songs are beautiful as well, but unlike in the states, there's no songbook that I can use! Everyone just knows the songs! Maybe in five months I'll pick them up.

Today classes began. My first class, like many others, was at La Catolica at 9am. We all decided we'd meet thirty minutes early in front of the university and find the class together. But there was next to no organization. We looked for a master list of the class locations, but there was none. We asked people where we should go. No one had heard of the class we were going to, but everyone had advice as to where we should go--and they were almost always wrong. After fifty minutes, we found the class.

Many of the Americans in our group (including myself) were frustrated with the options for classes at the local university, not because they didn't like the classes offered, but they didn't like the times at which they were offered. And this brings me to another interesting cultural difference. In the United States, we organize our day more or less (although of late it has been less) around the dinner hour. In the United States, people go to work and eat a small breakfast (if they eat it at all) and bring lunch with them, which is usually something small as well. People go to work or school, and maybe a sports practice, and aim at getting home by anywhere from 5:30 to 7:30. The exact time differs, but the aim is for everyone to finish for the day and have a big dinner together before retiring to a nighttime activity and bed. It's different here. Here, people get up and have a small breakfast and go off to work or school, but then take a break at midday for a big lunch, and it's sometimes a big deal. Today, all of the kids, even the married ones, came to the apartment for lunch and we all ate together. This lunch hour is long, and in it, people can eat anywhere from noon till 2. It really disrupted some people in my program early on who had ecuapadres that asked them to return for lunch all the time. It also frustrated people in our group during orientation when we would go to IES for a few hours, then get a huge lunch break, and return late in the afternoon for more orientation, when they wanted to finish it all at once. The basic difference is, Americans try and get all their stuff done at during the day, and doing stuff at night seems strange. For Ecuadorians, they take a nice break halfway through. Not doing so is strange.

Today we went to Otavalo, a small pueblo about an hour and a half north of Quito, where we explored a huge indigenous market. It was fantastic! There were hundreds of vendors with different kiosks selling all sorts of jewelry, clothing, ornaments, instruments, food, and other things. Most of the indigenous speak both spanish and quichua, their native language, and some even speak english, or at least a little. It was the most natives I had seen in my time here. It was also the most gringos. Many foreign tourists go to Otavalo for good deals. The key to the market though is bartering. Because whenever you ask for a price, it will definitely be inflated. After bartering quite a bit today, I've learned a thing or two about it. First, you can't seem too interested in the item. Sometimes just standing their silently, thinking, lowers the price. Sometimes they will ask you what you want to pay. Even if they don't you have to offer your own price, and it has to be way lower than could actually happen. They will usually reject this price and offer you a different one that is lower. So now you and the vendor each have a choice. Either you can each both keep throwing out prices until you meet in the middle, or one of you can play hardball and basically set a final offer. This can be risky, but can yield some good results.

I bought many things, among them, a new hat! I bought a panama hat, which I wore for the rest of the day! Afterwards we had lunch at another little town, and then went to a final town, with a wonderful view of the mountains, to view a waterfall. All of us climbed up to the top of it and waded into the river to look down from the top of the waterfall. It was beautiful.

It was nice getting out of Quito and seeing some more of Ecuador, the part that isn't the big city, the part that you think of when you think of the country. The pueblo life of these people is enviable. It's very simple and beautiful. But accompanying it is a lot of hard work and poverty.

Last night a bunch of us went to a bar for another girl's birthday (a lot of us are having birthdays around the same time). We played some pool, and I tried amaretto. Straight amaretto. If you haven't, don't bother, it tastes like cough syrup. The bartender spoke english, surprisingly. He said he was happy when Americans came in because he rarely got a chance to practice it. Today we went to an indigenous museum, which was ironically at the same intersection as the bar we had been at the night before. It was pretty incredible to see all of the clothing, furniture, eating ware, weapons, musical instruments of the indigenous peoples.

I've been speaking at length with my ecuapadre about the economic situation in Ecuador. Apparently in the nineties Ecuador experienced horrible inflation of the sucre, their currency. So, the president at the time switched Ecuador over to the US dollar. At first, people were very hurt by this move. A dollar was worth many, many sucres. But soon things improved and the economic situation stabilized. But that is all. The dollar did not cause the economy to flourish, it only maintained it. The sacrifice for this economic stabilization, the central bank of Ecuador has been virtually stripped of its monetary policy, and Ecuador is now subject to the rules of the American Fed. But it's a small price to pay for the help it has brought them. So the Ecuadorians use the same currency as we do, but it is not the EXACT same. For one, much of their change is still Ecuadorian change. There is also American change present, and an Ecuadorian centavo is equal to an American cent. But something else that is curious, the Sacajawea dollar coin is very prevalent. If you had a taxi driver or vender a five, you are very likely to receive back at least one Sacajawea dollar coin. I have no idea why that is the case, but I have collected quite a few of them by now.

I'm getting to know my ecuafamilia much better. My ecuapadre is a very smart and aware man. About once a day we have a conversation, and we've had some very interesting ones. He is very unprejudiced, and while he understands how Ecuadorians think and opine, he also is able to see the world from other perspectives. He's very relaxed. He doesn't like to plan out his day. When I ask him what he's doing for the day he just shrugs and says he doesn't have a plan. At the end of the day when I ask him what he did, he always has something to talk about. He's very good about not feeling like every moment of every day must be geared towards some ultimate goal. And he is very tolerant of other people's mistakes. My ecuamadre is also very nice, and has a great time chasing the cat around the house. The cat gives her no end of enjoyment. She always dresses up in nice pantsuits, as if she's going to work, but I'm pretty sure they are both retired. Both of them are excellent cooks! My ecuahermanos are great as well. Two of them are married, and one of them has a five year old son. The third still lives her, and is very nice. She works for either the government, or an NGO, for conservation of the Amazonian animals. My ecuahermano's son is very fun and energetic. He likes to speak in his own made up language, and loves to play with toy cars, like I did when I was his age.

The food here is fantastic. I have fresh juice every morning, and usually for lunch as well. Rice, meat, and fruit are all staples of their diet here. But some of them have interesting dieting habits. I know one guy who is craving anything with protein because he usually just gets breads and fruits. Another girl has very little for dinner, because lunch is the most important meal here, and she has to find ways to compensate.

I have liked Quito from the beginning, but I'm really starting to become fond of it in an even deeper way. I feel like I've been here forever, though I've only been here a week, and I feel like I'm leaving soon, even though I'm leaving months from now. Some of us are already talking about coming back. Despite my deepening affection for this country, these people, and this culture, I can't help but feel homesick sometimes. At first I thought I was just tired, but after I awhile I realized it was homesickness. It's strange being in a place that's completely unfamiliar. I don't know, maybe it's just the altitude. It can do strange things to you.

A final note: back in the states, whenever people asked me what I wanted to do after college, or do with my life, or do in general, I always said I didn't know, but I'd figure it out in Ecuador. That was largely a joke, but I think it will turn out to be true. I think I will come out on the other side of this experience with a much more solid idea of what I want to do.

Thoughts on culture

Yesterday a bunch of us went to a street called "La Ronda" for one girl's birthday, where we drank a drink called canellazo, which is made from canella, a spice that comes from the trees, and hot water. Usually people drink it with alcohol, but I take it without alcohol because I think it's gross with the alcohol. The little restaurant was a small hole in the wall place on la ronda, which was literally a hole in the wall. Many of the shops and restaurants are side by side in the walls that line the streets. We sang "Feliz cumpleanos" to her, and upon realizing that it was our friend's birthday, the owner left and returned with two street singers with guitars. They sang her feliz cumpleanos, and then began playing music for everyone. Soon the ecuadorians got up and started dancing as Ecuadorians do. And then one of the Ecuadorian men went over and asked the birthday girl to dance. The people here are so nice and have so much fun. Today we returned to La Catolica where we registered for classes. After everything, we went to the university theater where the students put on a bit of a show for us. First, we saw some girls do some traditional ecuadorian dancing, and then we saw a group of students do a strange dance, which I think they saw was arabian, but my ecuapadre said was brasilian. But anyway, two men drummed great drums, while two other men played a strange instrument with strings that I have never seen before. Everyone else danced either one at a time, or two at a time, in a dance that seemed to be some hybrid gymnastics and dance in which the people acted as if they were fighting each other. All the while the other people would clap and chant. The culture here is pretty incredible. The are elements of both the Spanish culture that entered this land, and the indigenous culture that was already here, along with occasional reverberations of the Moorish culture that ruled Spain over five hundred years ago.

Eating together is also very important. My host family always tries to eat dinner together, and on sundays, the extended family comes over to eat. Many of my friends have host parents that ask them to return for lunch to eat with them. Another difference, the indigenous remain and thrive here, and their culture has either assimilated or lives distinctly from the rest of the culture, which is markedly different from the United States where the indigenous population has been so minimized that I have never personally encountered it. This post is probably pretty scattered but the tv is on and I'm kinda distracted. More to come...

Today we toured La Universidad Catolica, the university in which we can take a few classes alongside local Ecuadorians. We got a tour and took an exam, but the most memorable part was the presentation by the U.S. embassy about safety in Ecuador. Many people have talked to us about safety in this country, but this presentation was the most extensive and the most sobering. It's very unfortunate, but after my observations and the many warnings I have received I can say that Ecuador is as dangerous as it is beautiful. Crime is very prevalent. A huge part of the society revolved around safety. Almost every building has at least one security guard on duty at all times, day and night. All residences have bars on their doors and other means of safety. The police look like military, and I would think they were if not for the word "policia" that they have. There are a couple of reasons for this. Ecuador uses the dollar, which makes it attractive to criminals who covet the dollar's stability. Crackdowns on crime in Peru and Colombia have exported much crime to Ecuador. And finally, the collapse of the U.S. financial sector hurt the economies of many third world countries, especially one dependent on the dollar like Ecuador, driving many people into poverty and to crime out of desperation.

It's unfortunate that a place so beautiful, and so full of great things, may also be riddled with so many problems. Ecuador is stable economically because it is an oil-producing country, but I don't know what will happen to it when the oil runs out. They are certainly between a rock and a hard place. The best way for wealth to flow into the country is for the price of a barrel of oil to rise. However, if that happens, in the long run people will start to move about from oil, which will hurt this country. And no matter what, that shift is going to happen sooner or later. Whenever we speak of oil interests, we often think of ExxonMobil, or the Saudi kings, as being the losers of a shift to alternative energy, but there are significant ranks of people who stand to be impoverished when the world supply of oil runs out. Bolivia has extensive lithium deposits, which will certainly help them, but I don't know if that is true for here or the rest of Latin America.

But people have survived, and even flourished, in this part of the world for hundreds of years. This history of this part of the world has been about adaptation and growth, from the Amazon to the indigenous to the current population.

A final note: I don't think the cat here likes me. But then again, I'm not sure it likes anyone.

A weekend of firsts

What a weekend. Quite a few "firsts". First trip to the store by myself. First taxi hailed. First drink ordered (Gin and Tonic of course). First Ecuadorian club experience. First Ecuadorian mass. First time wearing a cowboy hat and Incan poncho while riding a horse through the mountains. I've become more or less comfortable traveling around the city. I can tell cab drivers where to go easily enough, and I live near a major intersection that they all know very well. Cabs are pretty cheap, unless they try to rip you off. Last night a bunch of us met up and went to a bar. It was one girl's birthday so it called for a celebration. After hanging out there for a while, we headed over to a club, where we met some Ecuadorian guys (Fernando and Joel). From there we went to another club, which was a pretty crazy experience. I'm talking strobe lights, loud music, the works. The only difference, everyone was Ecuadorian, and about half the music was in spanish.

But here's the interesting part, the other half, at the club and the bar, was in english. They played American music. At the bar I got the chance to embarrass myself by singing along to Rick Astley ("I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling...") It's funny how far-reaching American culture is. Today a friend and I took the teleforico, which is kinda like a ski lift, up to the top of the big volcano that lies to the west of the city. It was beautiful on the way up, but at the top we were surrounded by clouds. We went along the path until we came upon some indigenous looking people and a stable of horses. They asked us if we spoke spanish and we said yes and they said that for five dollars a piece we could ride horses through the mountains. Naturally, we agreed, and as a bonus they let us wear ponchos and hats! On the way back we made some more Ecuadorian friends. We had a nice conversation about sights in the city and the great fruits of Ecuador, and the city Cuenca which apparently I need to visit.

My confidence with my spanish is like a pendulum. Twice I have been told my locals that I speak spanish very well. And yet so many times I have to ask people to repeat what they said. And a big gathering, forget about it. I can sometimes get the gist, sometimes not. The whole language thing can be frustrating. Sometimes I feel like I'm advancing. Sometimes I feel like I'm just getting more comfortable saying what I already know. Sometimes I don't feel like I'm moving forward at all. Thankfully, everyone here is really really understanding about the language thing.

A final reflection. In the book on Ecuadorian culture I read before coming here the author discussed demographics, saying that natives and indigenous made up the majority, Afro-ecuadorians were a minority, whites a smaller minority, and if you were asian you would definitely stand out. But this hasn't been my experience. I haven't seen a lot of Asians, but I see some almost every day. But whites are incredibly hard to come by. I am truly a minority here. My physical features are different, my culture is different, my language is different. The only thing that is the same is my religion, which is refreshing, although counts for little outside of mass. This is really the first time that I have experienced being a minority, and it is certainly an eye-opening one.

Further reflections

I'm really coming to love the city. It's very interesting. We traveled to el parte antiguo de Ecuador, the part that was originally built hundreds of years ago, and walked all around with a very smart and sassy Ecuadorian tour guide. We saw three different churches, one of which we climbed to the roof of. This part of the city reminded me of the pictures of European cities that I have seen, but a little rougher and possibly more colorful. There is a huge statue of the Virgin Mary overlooking all of Quito, which reminds me of the statue of Christ that looks over Rio(?) in Brazil. Quito itself is built in a valley surrounded by mountains, which made the view from atop the basilica very beautiful!

However, that location comes with a drawback. The high altitude makes you very tired. Couple that with speaking a foreign language day in and day out and it is very VERY easy to get tired.

There is a real plurality of people here. The majority of the people are made up of "mestizos" or people who draw their origins from a Spanish-native mix. There are many indigenous people walking the streets, and they are easy to spot, some African-Ecuadorians, and a very very few whites. When our group of Americans walk by, we definitely draw eyes!

The streets are filled with people walking around, with vendors, with beggars, with children trying to sell you stuff. Poverty is evident. The lives of the Ecuadorians are not nearly as comfortable as those of Americans. The attitude of drivers to pedestrians and vice versa is very different. Yesterday my host dad and I went down to a store called Mega Maxi, which is akin to Wal-Mart, to purchase a cell phone, and if a car drove where we were walking when we had the right of way, he would hit the car with his hand! Can you imagine if someone hit a car in the U.S.? I have only begin to scratch the surface of the culture here, but for everything Ecuador doesn't have that the U.S. does, there is plenty they have retained that we have lost.

There is a connection to spirituality and religion, especially a Catholicism influenced by the polytheism and animism of the indigenous peoples, that does not exist in America. There is a connection to nature. Every in Ecuador people keep their windows open and many shops in the streets are open to the outdoors. By contrast in the United States there is a strict distinction between indoors and outdoors.

As a final note, there are so many more fruits here than in the United States. At the store yesterday my host dad took me around the produce section and we named fruits in english and spanish. A quick funny story: my host family speaks no english. Early on they asked me if there were any foods that I didn't like and I said that there was one, but I didn't know the name is spanish. In hopes that they might know it, I said that in english it was called squash. They didn't recognize the word (and I later found that squash in spanish is calabaza) but since then they have had great fun with the word squash. It sounds very funny to them. And whenever they tell me what's in a meal they tell me there isn't any squash, and have a good laugh at the word.

First Impressions

I landed in Quito yesterday and met my host family. The people here are all very nice and the city itself is beautiful! I can't wait to see more of it. I can already tell the standard of living in Ecuador is significantly lower than the United States, but the people all seem very happy. An observation I had always made traveling in the U.S. was that whenever my plane is landing, each city looks basically the same. There are a bunch of buildings, with roads, and cars driving around. People just going about their daily lives. Quito is no different. From the air, especially at night when I landed, the city looks like any other city. Like all other cities it was simply filled with people going about their daily lives.

Despite my inadequate spanish, I have already been able to scratch out a conversation about the political and economic situation in Ecuador with my host family. They are supporters of the president, Rafael Correa. I look forward to learning more about the prevailing political and philosophical opinions here.

The food situation is interesting. Their food is less extensive, and yet more natural. For breakfast I had a simple ham in bread that was warmed on a warmer, but the orange juice was delicious, as it had been made fresh from oranges (grown locally I think). My coffee was cafe con leche and was much stronger on the leche than the cafe.

Today I head over to the IES center for the first time. The adventure begins...