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.