Los Principios

Wow! Quito! This city is quite a mix of amazing things. Firstly, it is surrounded by mountains and volcanos, although the smog or clouds have stopped me from seeing the tallest point of the largest snow capped volcano. Secondly, the contrast between one building to the next is incredible. One store will look almost completly run down and then the next looks like it was built last year and is flurishing. There are stray dogs and cats roaming around and people trying to sell you fruit at almost every stop light. Thus far, I love it.

We got our introduction into our program today and, man, was it inspiring. All of the people on my trip have such great goals and motivation to acheive them, I cannot wait to get to know everyone better. The leaders of the program have great attitudes about what this program is all about as well. They gave us a little pep talk about how the world is in crisis right now so we need to figure how that happened and what we need to do to change it, and the means of doing this is through what one man called a spiritual potluck. They come at our education from a stance that we all have many important things to say and they want us to share them and they will share their expansive knowledge and together we shall all grow as people.They really want us to look at them as friends and as people not as powerful figures. It is a very non power relationships approach to education, how refreshing!

We then met our host families!!! I am in love with mine thus far. I have a wonderful mother named Monica who when we met came at me with a huge hug (that was a relief!), a little host sister who is 13 (and speaks 4 languages), and a father who is simply a prince (one of the nicest most inclusive people ever made I think). We live in a nice part of town with an incredible view of Quito. Tonight we stood on the balcony and looked at all the lights of the city and I thought I was in a dream.

So, moral of the story is things are going very well!! This weekend we are going on a retreat to a cloud forest, I think. Thanks for reading for those of you who are and I hope that things are going well for everyone at home! I miss everyone!