Fully Oriented

I've realized that the Ecuadorian culture greatly embraces the spoken word. Four days of orientation could have been condensed into two, including the trip to downtown Quito. Included in today's orientation were two separate presentations about safety that covered very similar information, and a 45+ minute lecture on Ecuadorian anthropology, covering the first people to arrive to South America and their artifacts. I'm not sure why this was necessary for orientation to classes and student life at USFQ, but apparently USFQ thinks it is. The information was interesting, but I think it would have been better presented in the classroom because most of it was not relevant to being a student here. Ecuadorian culture doesn't really emphasize written word, or punctuality, and I am starting to feel mentally drained.

In one of the presentations, it was discussed how Ecuadorian culture is different from Western culture. Ecuador has a lot of homophobia and racism today. Some say it is like being in the US before the civil rights movement. Also, if you are already naked and say no to sex, it is probably too late. Ecuador definitely has a different worldview than in Tacoma.

At the end of orientation, we went on a short walk by the surrounding area of the university. We stopped in a boutique that was selling shirts from Forever 21, H&M, and Target for $40! Not everything is cheap here. Then our group figured out how to take the bus home without the assistance of our host families. Luckily the bus was not that crowded and we made it home safely.

For dinner, we had fried mashed potato cakes and a salad with avocados. The potato cakes were delicious, and I will definitely try to recreate them once I get back to the states. After dinner, Sabina and I played Kinect with our host family. I wasn't very good, but it was still really fun.

I'm really excited for class to start tomorrow. I'm taking tropical ecology for this first module. It will be interesting to see how they're going to cram a semester's worth of information into ~3 weeks, but since I'm only taking one class at a time it should be manageable.