Quito, Ecuador, Day 2.

June 19, 2009
This is SUCH a beautiful place. I had no idea Ecuador would be this beautiful. We are engulfed by rolling jade green marbled lush (yes, so many adjectives) mountains, at an altitude of 10,000 feet above sea level, with a view that stretches for miles and miles. A view that is packed with multicolored houses strung up with multicolored clotheslines to match.

This morning we all met for breakfast in our hotel, then went to San Francisco-Quito University for a tour of the school and orientation for our program. Here are a few interesting facts that we learned from Carlos Mena, Ph.D, about Ecuador:
--The creation of modern cartography was inspired here (because of the equator, perhaps?)
--Ecuador has a population of 13.9 million people, 16% are in extreme poverty, 11% are illiterate, 8% are unemployed, 48% are sub-employed (sub-employment: a new word to add to my vocabulary, which I have not heard before; meaning they have jobs "below" what they should or could have and they get paid very minimally), and their GNI is .46.
--Ecuador has had 10 presidents in the last 12 years (we've had 3)
--90% of the churches are Catholic
--Ecuador is roughly the size of the state of Oregon

And some facts about the Galapagos:
--At an all-time high, the Galapagos attracted 170,000 tourists this year
--A handful of families/companies manage most all of the tourism groups (monopoly-ish)
--Income in the Galapagos is greater than the income in Ecuador. For example, tourism might bring a Galapaguenian $800/month, whereas the same would bring an Ecuadorian (continental worker) $600/month
--The Galapagos Islands are a super expensive place to travel to, and these high prices are keeping people out. Mena said that it is cheaper for continental Ecuadorians to go to Miami from Ecuador, than it is to go to the Galapagos from Ecuador (and crazily enough, the Galapagos are a province of Ecuador)
--When people think about the Galapagos, they think of Hammerhead sharks, Galapagos tortoises, Charles Darwin, Darwin's finches, and Evolution, but there is so much more that people do not know...(I myself am excited to learn more about what the Galapagos really is)

Carlos Mena proposed the rhetorical question, "What is the capacity of the Galapagos?"--pointed to make us think about how long it will be able to sustain, to thrive, to be preserved.

After our orientation, to our surprise, we sat down to an already set table for 30 people, triangle-folded napkins and all. We ate like kings and queens and topped the meal off with meringue for dessert, which was a pretty hilarious sight to see (cruncCHH).

The afternoon gave us free time for us to explore the city. We rode a bus from sight to sight, piling out like paparazzi at the Oscars to photograph historical landmarks and "moments" we saw throughout Quito. We looked like the ultimate tourists, every student armed with a super nice Canon DSLR camera.

We saw the famous cathedral, the Virgin Mary statue, and the square where everyone hangs out during the day. The rhythm of the city reminded me of Slumdog Millionaire. Two boys were rhythmically shining the coal black shoes of businessmen, kids ran and laughed throughout the streets, an old woman wrinkled with age like roads on a map peered out from the stone wall of a shop, couples held hands as they rescued their ice cream drips from plopping onto the perfectly plotted stonework sidewalk. Every person I came across had their own story.