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.