Most people from the US travel for only 10 days. I sure used to. We work too much, worry too much about money and don't give ourselves enough time to explore. Traveling has helped me see how much I appreciate the US and what the people try to do there. I like that we have services to help people. I like bragging about my country. If you had asked my 10 years ago I would have been ashamed of the US, but what did I know? I hadn't been anywhere. What I really love about Quito is that they seem to be stealing the best parts of the US. The government here imposes a fairly hefty tax on it's people, but the city uses that tax for stuff for the people. Parks. It takes money to build, and maintian a park and let me tell you that I won't move to another city without knowing if there are parks. I love the park by my house here and I've already claimed it as my own. I zipped around the park again today and even though it could have been 15 degrees warmer I loved it.
This I needed after my lessons today. Six hours of spanish. I am speaking and listening to spanish for at least 6 hours each day. There is literally no english spoken between my teacher and I. It is awesome and overwhelming. Totally I finally felt out of my league. Last week was a lot of review and a few new vocabulary, but this week I started ONE of the past tenses with irregular verbs. Apparently there are 4 past tenses in spanish? Not sure, and I have to say I'm not particularly looking forward to them!
Back to Quito... they are doing a good job with public transportation. They had that road race - very first world stuff. They are using the US dollar for their currency. Apparently they started using the US dollar 10 years ago. At the very end of the change over their money, called the Sucre, was worth hardly anything. They needed 25,000 sucres to get $1. Most people I talk to are happy with the situation now, but as with any change, they were frustrated when it first happened.
The city is CLEAN! It takes effort and money to be a clean city, because people still throw trash on the ground, they just have people to clean it up. After the road race yesterday there was trash everywhere, today, none.
They have museums. A botanic garden in my park, and a museum of natural history, oh and the vivarium - with the snakes.
I guess you get the picture... not sure what I'm up to tomorrow. The big task for today was to find a duffel bag, which I did, and to go to the park. Maybe Old Town, you want to see some more church photos?
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