Settling in...

So it has been about a week and a half since I arrived and everything is going very well, all my classes seem fine though it is a little more difficult to learn in another language. Ill get it eventually. So far I have only been traveling to and from school, besides some trips to different parts of Quito, but this weekend a group of us are going to Mindo which is just north west of Quito. The city here is on a random plateau int he middle of the country so once you you go five mins outside of Quito it is all mountains and vallies. One of the more shocking things is that it does not affect the bus drivers at all, imagine mass drivers x10! They pass on both sides around curved bridges, going 50 miles an hour going down a wicked steep incline. For some reason I feel safe on the bus too. Im still getting used to traveling around the city becuase there is no maps for public transportation, let a lone a sign at each stop telling you where you are; hence a failed trip to Old Town to see the colonial architechture. I have made it out to La Mariscal a few time which has also been deemed affecionatly "Gringolandia." I have come to accept my gringo-ness and the Ecuadorians do not use it as a negitive term, I know refer to other Americans as gringos. Though I never feel unsafe I can tell people veiw me as different becuase noone wants to sit with us on the bus and they are always looking at us. Ill try to add some pictures, there is a lot of graffiti here becuase of the upcoming election in March so I look forward to seeing how that plays out. I saw one tag that translated said "Jesus was born in Palistine" So that shows how Ecuador isnt a world away.