Bienvenidos a Ecuador

Attempting to complete the full stereotype of an American College student studying abroad, I have decided to create a travel blog. If you're reading this, you're probably an immediate member of my family and I appreciate the page views. There will likely be stretches of time without posts because the internet's apparently shoddy out on the Galápagos. But for now, I have a strong WiFi connection in my home, which I'll speak more about in subsequent posts.

So after an extremely long night of camp gatherings and driving to JFK, I boarded my non-stop plane for Quito courtesy of tame airlines. I quickly discovered that the average height of the Ecuadorian people is well below my frame of 6'2", which made for a rather cramped plane flight:

in seat tv also didn't work for the record

The terrain of the Quito area is absolutely breathtaking with full panoramas of mountains (specifically volcanoes--more to come on that) and during the drive from the airport to my new home, there was a spectacular full rainbow across the sky so here's a really below average iPhone photo of it taken from a moving car:

someone forward this to Nat Geo

In the days since my arrival (that is to say Monday and Tuesday) we have had many meetings with IES and USFQ to discuss various logistics. I think the entire enrollment for the USFQ (Universidad San Francisco de Quito) Galápagos program is 55 students, 23 of which are through IES, and 4 of those 23 are males. My host family has already suggested that I should find a girlfriend, if not a wife, as most Ecuadorians marry at 18 or 19. At 21, I'm over the hill.

Most of our meetings have been about the rather exciting developments of Cotopaxi, the largest active volcano in the world. It is currently erupting, although not in an explosive manner yet, and this marks the first time it has erupted in 138 years. I'll never be in any real danger because it is well to the South beyond the city limits of Quito and our area of Cumbayá is north of Quito. The only concern for us would be air quality from ash. Don't worry they've given us masks should that happen.

Today was a particularly clear day in terms of air quality and thus visibility, making Cotopaxi highly visible in the southern skyline. It was smoking today and in the morning it looked like this:

See how it's totally snow-covered? This is characteristic. You can kind of see some low-key smoke bubbling out of the top, but not much. By the evening it looked like this:

Check out how much smoke there is and see how the ash has settled around the summit, erasing the normal white coloring of the snow. Pretty cool stuff even from a phone camera. I highly encourage you search for images of Cotopaxi; there are many spectacular shots out there. So the main point of this post was to acknowledge that yes I am here in Quito and yes I am safe and yes I will be safe even if Cotopaxi decides to really blow its top. Stay tuned for blogs in the next couple days about the culture of Quito, my host family, and a comprehensive food review!