Initially, we travel to lose ourselves; next, we travel to find ourselves. : USFQ, La Mariscal, Quito

Hola!

These past few days have been great! On Friday we had orientation at La Universidad San Francisco. It's a beautiful campus. It's pretty small, and that's because it is a private school. Orientation lasted from 9 am to 2 pm. So. Long. A man from the U.S. Embassy spoke about how dangerous and unsafe Quito is for over two hours. He told us about this drug called scopolamine, and people put it on paper or blow the powder in your face to make you black out so they can take all your money. This actually happened to my host dad on a bus once. Usually it's a person who just wants you to help them read a piece of paper, and then once you touch the paper, you're out in ten seconds. So scary. So this U.S. Embassy man freaked out all the international students. Afterwards, the Ecuadorians said Quito isn't that bad and this stuff hardly ever happens. Still, I'm not touching any paper. After that long tedious talk, we had a quick tour around campus. I didn't get any pictures because it was indeed a very short tour. But classes start tomorrow, and I'll have to learn everything quick!

Friday night some international students, Ecuadorians, and I went out. First we went to a very nice apartment and had a couple beers. The view was incredible.

Then we went to La Mariscal, the part of Quito were all the clubs and bars are. It only cost five dollars to get in. It was packed in there, but all of us had so much fun. I got an extremely strong vodka cran for only $2.50. Can you believe that? Everything is so cheap here! I'm definitely going there again.

Today, from 9 am to 4 pm, we toured Old Town Quito. It's beautiful. It was a gorgeous day also. Already got my first sunburn! We went to four different churches and saw a couple plazas. We went out to lunch also. I forgot to take pictures of my food but it was so good! I had potato soup, a chicken sandwich, this drink that had strawberries, pineapple and orange juice in it, and ice cream with a waffle cone! It was delicious. I'm so sorry I forgot to take a picture of the ice cream. But here are pictures of Quito. :)