Quito, Ecuador - July 13, 2005
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Well it has now been about 3 days since my arrival in Quito, Ecuador and it has all been wonderful thus far. I am staying in the "Apartamentos Colon" with 3 other girls - Kylie (Nebraska), Megan(Vermont), and Erin(DC). They are all so much fun and we get along very well. All we do is laugh. Our apartment is very nice... 2 bedrooms with twin beds in each, a nice size living room, and a kitchen with a sink, stove, oven, and fridge. We still have to put our toilet paper in the waste basket, though, because the plumbing is not very efficient here. The apartments are only 1 1/2 blocks from our school building, which is called "Bipo y Toni". (www.bipo.net) It is an extremely nice building and a married doctor couple runs the program. The man is from Tampa, Florida and his wife Marta is from Colombia. They have an adopted 2 year old boy Eddy who is adorable and always around as well. There are 2 groups participating in this program. I am in the Advanced Beginners group with 6 other people and there is also a Beginners level that has 16 people who live with host families. Spanish classes are well underway and I already have learned/relearned so much by just being around people who only speak the language. They told us that by the time we leave the program we should be able to pretty much speak the language fluently in any Hispanic clinics back in the US.
The day after my late-night arrival I traveled a 40 minute bus ride with Megan and her sister to see "El Mitad del Mundo" - the middle of the world, AKA the equator. I was even awarded an official certificate (stamped 3 times for authenticity I guess) for balancing an egg on a nail at 0 degrees latitude! We haven’t really been able to do any touristy activities since then, but on Saturday the group leaves for Otovalo for a week. That town is famous for its markets, where you can cheaply purchase anything from rugs to wool sweaters to colorful jewelry. We have two weekends off from school and working in the clinics to do whatever we please... the four of us girls have decided to climb Volcan Cotopaxi for the first weekend, which rises to about 6000 m and travel to Banos for the next weekend, which has hot springs, $40 full body massages, and day long bike tours to the outskirts of the rainforest.
The scenery is beautiful here... when I woke up the first morning I looked outside the kitchen window to see mountains just miles away bordering the city. The economy is a different story. As I sit in this internet cafe, I have already had 5 different children enter to sell me "chiclet" AKA gum, begging for cincuenta centavos (50 cents). There is a large social division between the rich and poor, and it is reflected greatly in their healthcare system. The farmacias here sell many different medicines over the counter, including Demerol for pain and many antibiotics.
Allison Shenk, Med 2 (Class of 2008)
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