First Impressions

Ecuador isn't so different from Alaska.  It seems to be missing some of my favorite things that can only be found at home (i.e. one 90-pound black Labrador named Arlo, the distinctive and nostalgic smell of Alaskan autumn, and pizza from an Anchorage restaurant whose name I can't mention without salivating).  Ecuador seems ready to recognize the absence of these beloved and now far-away pieces of my life and replace them (temporarily) with its own local representatives (i.e. charismatic highland llamas, the unfamiliar scents of the cloud forest, and little bits of deliciousness called humitas).  For the next ten months I will continue to appreciate the love I have for my home, acknowledge the opportunity I've been afforded here, relish the chance to be at once a student, researcher, teacher, and traveler, and work to better understand this country and my new place within it. 

I arrived in Quito on October 1.  This was one day later than expected.  A series of events that the news billed as an attempted coup d'etat (see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11457012) mandated a thirty-hour layover in Miami, Florida. 


For those who were not already made aware, this delay in travel brought about the happiest of surprises: a far-from-sold-out Widespread Panic show in South Beach.  This was perhaps the most perfect going away present I could have ever hoped to receive.  If you check the set list from this show (30 September 2010), be sure to note the closing tune.  You might imagine the confusion this caused me as wandered out of the venue and into the sweaty neon glow of Miami Beach.


My first days and nights in Ecuador have been filled with dinners with brilliant and inspiring Fulbright fellows, excellent program orientations and terrifying security briefings in Quito, hikes with a visiting friend to places where thin air makes it hard to breath, lunches with generous members of the university staff, and visits to places I'd previously known only through photos and stories. 


The people I've encountered so far - from the lawyer I met on the plane from Miami, to the taxi drivers whose creative driving styles won't be limited by the lines on the road, to the smiling administrative assistants at the Universidad Tecnica de Cotopaxi - are kind and helpful and proud.  There seems to be no one set of physical characteristics or linguistic patterns that typifies the Ecuadorian people.  The diversity in faces, voices, statures, and opinions is incredible.  It's fair to say, despite this fact, that people my own stature are not commonly encountered in a crowd.  It is absolutely impossible, I have quickly determined, that I somehow blend in or disappear in this place. 


A surprising (or not so surprising?) development since my arrival two weeks ago: both my English and my Spanish have suffered severely and now neither of the two languages sounds eloquent, cohesive, or otherwise intelligible.  This is traumatic, and I cannot wait until the problem resolves itself.


Quito and most of the other cities in the Andean Sierra rest at an elevation of just over 9000'.  Rapid acclimation has been encouraged by my need to escape the dirty city air.  The best way to retreat from the buzzing urban mess, it seems, is to go up. 

Rucu Pinchicha.  15,000'. 

Quilotoa crater lake.  12,000'.