"Hola, Soy Gringo" - Quito

If you would have told me earlier this year - say, in April - that I would spend three months of 2015 gallivanting around South America, I probably would have laughed in your face.

Yet here I am: Backpack stuffed, Spanish rusty, and water purification tablets on-hand, wrapping up my first Ecuador Week in Quito's Community Hostel and trying in vain not to fall asleep on their guest computer.  

I still don't quite know what happened in the meantime.  First, this "whole gap year thing" was an idea; then, it was a possibility; and now I'm looking back at the last hundred-some-odd hours and trying to figure out where they went and what's going on. It's been a jam-packed rush of acculturation and altitude sickness, empanadas and morocho, meditation and malaria medicine.  I've eaten traditionally-prepared cow intestines, futbolled with guayachos, saluted the sun at 10,000 feet, explored cathedrals and wandered the urban sprawl within these five or six outrageously full days. 

I might be the happiest kid in the Western Hemisphere.

Until early December I'll be living and learning with Carpe Diem Education, an accredited international volunteering organization out of Portland.  My 12 American compatriots and I are spending these 12-or-so weeks wending our way across Ecuador and Peru, volunteering in capacities as diverse as construction, conservation, and elementary education.  

That starts tomorrow, though.  This past week in the Ecuadorian capital has been our "orientation," our brief opportunity to get comfortable with this radically different part of the world.  One major objective: Practice acting just a little less American than we are. 

This is actually pretty difficult. The flagrant whiteness of our skin is enough to turn heads wherever we go, and the naturally loud demeanor of our homeland sets us well apart from the more reserved culture of the locals.  We've been stopped more than once to pose for pictures, asked all kinds of intriguing questions, and given more dead-panned stares than anybody could hope to receive in a lifetime. "Soy gringo" (literally, "I'm a white dude") has become the de facto catchphrase and conversation-starter of our group, and the earnest transparency of the statement is generally pretty well-received by locals. 

Quito's been good to us, and there's definitely a lot more to report, but I'm just too wiped-out to stay up any later. En la mañana we're heading out of the city to Las Delicias, a small family-owned banana farm on the coast. There, we're supposed to be studying some Spanish on top of helping out with the business.  They won't have internet.  I can't wait.