Mantengan encendida una luz que siempre voy a volver..

My first day went really well.  My new mom took me to school which was at La Universidad de San Francisco de Quito.  This campus was absolutely gorgeous.  The building where we actually took the class looked like the capitol.  There were stained glass windows inside.  Honestly, it wasn't really a place where I wanted to study.  I just wanted to lay in the grass.  There were beach volleyball courts and gardens.  There was also a pirate ship in the middle of a pond.  I don't know the story behind that yet but I will find out!  Anyway, class was class.  There were some engaging conversations about MDGs (Millenium Developmental Goals).  What's shocking is that out of the 8 goals that we set out to accomplish by 2015 (set up in 1990), we have only accomplished one.  We talked about simple interventions we could make to improve the health of those people living on only $1/day (clean water, education, cheap drugs, etc.)  The professor is very engaging and she knows her stuff.  She was coughing the whole time and one of my classmates joked that she has TB.  I hope that's not the case!

After class was done, my new mom took me to the supermarket with my friend Debi.  We bought a few things. I needed a notebook so I went to the papeleria.  Then we went home and played with Polla, the dog and had lunch: chicken, rice, plantains, carrots with tomato, and red cabbage salad.  I'm not sure if I liked the red cabbage salad.  It was very sweet because she put raspberry jelly in it, yuck, but at least I tried it! 

After lunch we watched America's Next Top Model and Smallville in Spanish.  There were also these really ridiculous deodorant commercials.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tttmt9vOzgk  --You'll see why it's weird

At 2:45, we left for El Museo de Guayasamin.  Oswaldo Guayasimin (1919-1999) is the most famous painter in Ecuador's history.  His paintings were very compelling.  His work consisted of three collections.  The first one was called "Trail of Tears."  The Second focused on anger and the final one was called "Tenderness."  All of his paintings depicted the pain, sorrow, hope, love, and faith of the oppressed people (blacks, indigenous, mestizos).  The tour guide was OK.  It was pretty funny because our onsite coordinator for our trip kept correcting his information.  Overall, it was a beautiful museum.  We left the museum and saw Guayasamin's house.  Which was pretty cool.  He had a pool and two cars, one of them being a rolls royce...  There was also a gigantic canadian pine tree that Guayasamin called "The Tree of Life."

I topped the day off with an empanada de pollo.  It was delicious.  I hope I don't get sick from it... hehe

Also, I bought a poster for my parents and lost it within at hour... oops. At least it was only $8.