Okay, first post from South America! Hooray! We made it! The title from this post means "We have husbands" in Spanish. Apparently this phrase works better than any pepper spray one could ever find if trying to get rid of an unwanted gentleman. Such a man began following us and then talking to us today while we were exploring. He was really quite friendly and not threatening at all, but when asked if he could see us again, Ramsey kindly explained that we´re both married. This was the conversation.... Ramsey: "Tenemos esposos." Our new friend: "Adios!" That was it. Verbatim. Apparently he didn´t just want to be friends.
Well, that´s my first fun story for this trip. We´ve obviously made it to Quito, and we´re having a lot of fun so far. In case anyone was wondering, sleep did not win the other night. I decided it was more important that I finish my book in order to save room in my pack rather than sleep for two hours. I was a little bit tired yesterday, but I slept for the first two flights. We made it to Quito a little after six o´clock last night. Quito is in the same time zone as home, so we didn´t need to deal with jet lag.
Our host mother Pily (not a serial killer...yay!) picked us up after we made it through customs. We´d communicated with her through a booking website, but we never officially booked with her since she´s giving us a cheaper price than what´s listed on the website. The website wouldn´t let us give each other any personal information unless we had booked, though, so it was very lucky that Pily even found us! Ramsey had told her what color shirts we´d be wearing, and the website even deleted that! She knew the general time, though, and then she just spotted the two American girls with huge backpacks. And that´s how we met our ecuamama!
Pily´s apartment is located in Mariscal Sucre, which is also called Gringolandia due to all the tourism and tour agencies. It´s pretty busy, and it´s not at all safe after dark. It´s winter here, meaning it gets dark early. That´s no good for two women who want to explore. Anyway, we got to her apartment, grabbed some groceries, ate dinner, went out for ice cream, and then we both basically just passed out. We were exhausted.
Today we basically just explored with no sort of itinerary. We really wanted to get a feel for Quito. After meeting and leaving our friend, we ended up making our way to El Centro, which is the beautiful colonial district in Quito. We eventually stumbled upon Plaza Grande, which was gorgeous. Afterwards, we explored some more and eventually ate lunch at a tiny restaurant. We had soup, a plate of food, and a juice for $1.50 each. We were pretty sure something like that would go for closer to ten or twelve dollars in the US. We eventually wandered back to Mariscal Sucre, ate some fried plaintains filled with cheese (yum!), and came back to Pily´s apartment. Soon we´ll be eating dinner with Pily and Jonathan, a man from Texas who´s also staying with Pily (she calls him her niño even though he´s more than than ten years older than her..ha!).
This post is a bit long, but I´m just excited to be in Quito! So far, I love it. It´s a beautiful city with a wonderful energy, and again, El Centro is such a lovely area. Tomorrow morning Ramsey and I will both be attending a Spanish language school. Ramsey will have one-on-one time with a professor for three hours, and I´ll spend four hours with a group where I can review some Spanish. Afterwards, we´ve outlined some specific places we´d like to see in El Centro. It includes a bunch of museums and monasteries...should be fun!
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