Soup on Plates

It's my fifth day here in Ecuador, where I arrived after an exciting few days of travelling that you can read about here. Basically, it involved a thunderstorm, free sandwiches, sleeping here:

(I didn't know it existed either)

and a total of about 8 hours spent here:

Anyway, now that I am here, I have some tidbits to share that, individually, are trivial, but as a whole, I think summarize my first impression of Ecuador.  I'm pretty sure I have way too many commas in that sentence.

• My host mom always matches the color of her watch, hair clip, shoes, and phone cover. 
• We have soup on plates.
• I got my uniform for school the other day and I am definitely looking forward to rocking the polo with green sweatpants all year long.
• The power goes out at least once daily (as far as I can tell, whenever I want to shower or watch TV)
• The record number of people I've seen riding a motorcycle is 4.
• I saw a herd of goats galloping alongside the road like a herd of wild stallions in movies like "Black Beauty" or "Flicka" except they're goats.
• Peach juice is the orange juice of Ecuador. Everyone has it and we drink it all the time.
• Nobody wears seatbelts or helmets.
• Often when I meet someone new they tell me they're Christian. 
• There's a Galapagos tortoise just chillin' in a schoolyard in my city. We went and fed him bananas.

Sorry the picture is blurry. He was moving to fast to get a clear picture. (that was a joke)

• They refrigerate cereal but not milk.
• Everyone wants me to teach them English but they are all so bad at pronouncing things. For example, I tried to teach my mom the word "gift" and she pronounced it "gorppppf." After lots of repeating back and forth we refined it down to "giffff." Also, she continues to insist it's my "happy birthday" tomorrow.
• Everyone has Blackberries.
• I've seen a person with a machine gun twice in my life. First, when leaving the Guayaquil airport. Second, today in a shopping mall (it was a security guard, though. Not someone shooting up the mall).
• The nicest house I've seen so far belongs to a shrimp farmer. 
• As far as vegetables go, I've eaten one salad while I've been here, and that's all.
• If you actually followed and read the link above, you'd know that there are 10-foot high walls or fences around everyone's house.  What you don't know, though, is that many of the walls have barbed wire or electric fences on top. In one case I even saw a wall that had broken glass bottles cemented into the top.

So, that's a broad description through specifics. I will return sometime in the future with a more straightforward approach to describing my time here. 

Until then, ciao!