First impressions

So, here we are in Quito. The journey was long but largely uneventful although we were bumped to an earlier flight so instead of a relaxing amble through the delights of the duty-free shops there was an unsightly scramble for the departure gate. Perhaps for the best as less time to dwell on the magnitude of the forthcoming plan. Spent large part of the trip scanning horizon for sight of land. The Atlantic Ocean turns out to be rather big- who knew? - and rather dull view-wise although I did spot at least 60 separate cloud formations masquerading as shoals of hammerhead sharks.

Flying into Quito is a pretty impressive sight as the city is in an Andean valley and the mountains sort of roll down from all sides. Despite my hypochondriac tendencies I couldn´t really notice the fabled thin air at altitude but then again walking from an airport to a waiting car is not exactly taxing exercise wise. The people who picked us up helpfully spoke to us in the slow, careful spanish reserved for small children and nervous looking gringos and I was pleasantly surprised to understand at least three quarters of the words. We drove through the new part of town and through the old quarter which has some nice looking colonial architecture and steep paved streets. I think our leg muscles are going to get a hefty work out. We are staying with a family in the south of town, about 30 minutes walk from the HQ of our volunteering offices. The family- a mum, dad and two girls aged 10 and 19, seem really lovely, although by this stage my spanish was running out so I was answering everything with a sort of inane smile and a newly acquired ridiculous 1980s gameshow host double thumbs up, much to my embarassment. With luck I´ll have gotten over this little gestural tic before too long as I couldn´t really look more of a twat doing it. There is a girl from Denver, Rachel, staying here too this week (a previous volunteer) who helped out as an informal translator as the family speak only spanish with a bit of spanglish thrown in. Ate a very nice dinner with something called mote- kind of big soaked corn husks fried in something and then I went to bed while Chris stayed around showing off his mastery of the subjunctive and endearing himself to everyone in his usual manner.
This morning we have been down to Volunteer HQ where we have met the other volunteers (mainly american) and been given some duties for the next week or so and this afternoon we have an orientation session. We will be having spanish lessons in the morning (thank God!) and then working in the afternoons. Everyone we have met so far has been really lovely and while everything feels VERY strange I am still very glad we came. Will update later in the week when we have started on our project.