As you can tell from the title, I have no photos to share with you today... sorry. Don't worry, I do have some thoughts to share...
I joined another student that lives at the Casa Vida Verde on the bus this morning. It is super easy... you just put in a quarter (it's $0.25 no matter how long you are on the bus) and wait inside a little shelter. The bus lanes are in the middle of the road and are completely separate from traffic lanes. It is a great design. Quito is surrounded on the east and west by volcanoes, so the city sprawls from north to south in a fairly thin line. The main roads run north-south as do the buses. Quito is a super modern city (more on that later), but as far as the traffic situation, the government has come up with a system that during rush hour only certain license plate numbers can drive on certain days. They do this using the last number of each plate. Are you worried about personalized plates? Not sure, but maybe they don't exist and therefore are not a problem. Maybe the personalized plates have a special day among themselves... I've thought about this, as you can tell.
So the city is doing things to progress forward and become cleaner in many ways including air. The bus is clean and easy, but guess what... CROWDED. There are not enough buses to accommodate the amount of people riding them and man it was uncomfortable. Once in a while you expect a crowded bus, but I took one at 3:45 this afternoon and was squished again. No me gusta. However, small price to pay for the growing pains of moving forward.
Let's see, what else? Oh, my morning session was ok. We did a lot of talking, which is nice, but I got the sense that my teacher was bored, or tired or both. For lunch I went to a little local place with typical food and one of the other students walked by and she saw me and came in to eat with me. She has been traveling for 7 months... those crazy Europeans... just traveling fools. She leaves on Saturday - to go back to Switzerland and mentioned that she wanted to see the reptile house before she leaves. I told her that my schedule was open and I would love to join her... so, we went today. I have 2 hours of afternoon lessons, so we just planned to meet back at the school and take the bus together.
My afternoon lessons were AWESOME! I talked, played more games and listened. I love my afternoon sessions. The only bummer is that my stomach has been grumbling all day. Not sure what happened, but there are some issues in my digestive system. I refuse to let it slow me down...
So after my lesson I met _______ (I am a pathetic human being for not remembering her name - I was introduced to her yesterday, but never used it) and we went to another big, clean, fantastic park in the city, where not only is there a large botanic garden, but a reptile museum. People were even exercising in the park! I know you are thinking, yeah, so what, but I haven't seen a single person exercise outside in 10 months...
During all this time I've forgotten my camera, and don't have my map. Oh crap. I'll have to go back to the reptile musuem and take a photo of the giant concrete boa. I had decided earlier in the day that I would walk home from the school. It's quite far, but what else do I have to do? Well the park is in between my house and the school, so I was part way home, but without my map I was unsure how far and I was nervous about not remembering the street name to turn on... On my way home I passed TWO, not one, but two huge malls!!!! Can I tell you how excited I am to go to the mall? AND inside one of the malls, as I walked by I spotted a Cinnebon! There was a Chiles, tons of KFC's, and when I neared my street I recognized the huge Dominos pizza! Familar signs are nice when you've been stuck in Santa Cruz wandering the dirt roads looking for anything to do!
I have homework to do... talk to you later.
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