Smelly Socks and Foreign Talks

Hola! I´m here in Ecuador, the country of my choice for J-term. I´m with 11 other Luther students and Professor Thompson, a Spanish prof from Luther, and his wife and 2 children. We are here for the majority of January to experience the ways that doctors and patients interact and increase our knowledge of the Spanish language.

I´ve been in Ecuador for a week now. Our first flight left from Minneapolis at 6am on Dec. 26 (talk about early!) That night we stayed in Quito, Ecuador, the capital, and then over the weekend drove to Cuenca, one of the bigger cities, where we are staying for the next 2.5 weeks with host families, having class, and visiting the hospitals/clinics.

The weather is a refreshing change from the cold and snow currently in Iowa. Here it has been in the 60s or 70s each day, often with a bit of rain in the afternoon. The scenery is gorgeous with the Andes Mountains looming in the distance and tropical plants all over the place. When I can, I will post pictures for all to see.

This past Monday we met our host families. My family has 3 children: 2 girls ages 19 and 22, and one boy, 27, that all live at home. Near my house is a river that has a path around it that I´ve been making use of and running on it each morning before class. Unfortunately, I didn´t bring all that many outfits to run in, so I´ve been wearing the same outfit for the past 4 or 5 days now. And let me tell you that my socks can basically stand up on their own now. No joke. They are beginning to make my whole room smell awful. So I am very much looking forward to doing laundry on Monday, which is the day of the week that my host family does their laundry. Oh, the things I take for granted at home!

It has been fun speaking Spanish, although it´s not all that easy when the natives are speaking super fast and slurring things together. But I´m sure I´ll improve over the next couple of weeks. I find myself thinking in Spanish and sometimes accidently using words from both English and Spanish in the same sentence! Oops!

Hope all is well and I´ll keep you up to date as I have more adventures in Ecuador!