So far, mastered the art of sleeping on the floor of the airport, repaired my Spanish grammar, was half a block away a shooting

So to go over the first four days of my trip,

I got down to Seattle on the bus, and wound up trying to find a comfortable way of lying on my pack so my spine didn´t hurt too much from the tile floor of Seattle Airport. I ended up passing the time with Jerry, this guy from Georgia, who was going to Alaska to get his dog. That time was mostly spent discussing what is fucked up in America. After 8 hours on the floor, got on the plane to Houston, and from there to Quito. What got me was, when I got my pack off the carousel at Quito, the US folks had hand-searched my pack, and all my things were still there, but there was a pair of rubber boots and a bottle full of travel meds that weren´t mine...

YIKES!

So after the security guy checked them and they turned out to be safe, I feel sorry for some poor bloke who´s down here sin boots, bottle and medications. The pickup service found me, and whisked me off to the hostel, where I spent that night having trouble sleeping, mostly because my internal clock is whacked, not helped by the night club across the street blaring Bob Marley, and the some people in the next room making love.

Now about Quito, really, with the exception of the faster traffic, badly maintained infrastructure, and the ecletic architecture, it´s just like any big city, and I´m finding that I blend in a lot more than I thought I would. The doorman took me up to Equinox school, where I´m taking Spanish, and met my teacher, Juan, who spent the morning helpìng me fix my appalling grammar. My lessons end at 4 pm each day, and on the first day, I met Pia, the manager of the school, who is of all things, Danish, and the school´s director, rather aptly named, Cesar, and went to the school´s apartment to see if it would be suitable. The place is fabulous, I´ll post pictures when I figure out this computer business here. The price is a little high, at $250 US per month. I went back to the hostel to get the rest of my things, took a cab back, but the 'taxista' had problems finding it because it´s at the convergence of 3 roads.

Today has also been most interesting. Up this morning to find the woman upstairs, Rosa, who I share a kitchen with, made breakfast for me. I walked to the school this time, less nerve wracking than the bus, but the air is thick with car exhaust. I found the Canadian Embassy on my way there, easy to find, thankfully. Things got rather more interesting at lunchtime, I´d just left the school looking for somewhere to eat, when I heard the blast from the next street over. I came around, and found a guy on the sidewalk clutching a bullet wound in his left leg, it seems he was the victim of a drive-by shooting, but no one seems to have been a witness. Anyway, before I even realized it, the police showed up and quieted things down, there were around 20-30 people there by this time. In all this, I met an Irishman, Lee, who happened to having lunch just down the street from the shooting. I´m supposed to meet him this evening. The afternoon was spent talking with Juan in Spanish about human rights, politics, and war, which was awesome. Which brings us up to now

Not a bad start to a trip...