1st day in Quito

Hola! Today was my first full day in Quito, Ecuador and it was a very fun, relaxing day at that. I woke up at 8:45 (a nice, long rest after my day of plane rides yesterday) and had breakfast at the hostal, which included toast with butter and jam, hot tea and scrambled eggs. I met two other travelers in the hostal who ate breakfast with me: a girl from France who is staying in Quito for the next 6 months for an internship and a guy from Australia who is here for almost a year backpacking around South America. We sat and chatted for a bit in English and then decided to go get ready (for me that meant just brushing my teeth! Keeping it simple here...as usual). We were going to get a cup of coffee/tea but the girl ended up meeting with a friend of a friend to go look for an apartment. Me and the other guy went to a cute cafe where they specialize in chocolate and coffee, locally and organically grown. I was going to get a brownie but instead went for a cup of hot cocoa, but I was able to try my new friend´s brownie. We sat there for quite a while just talking about our different backgrounds and stuff, which was fun. I learned that the area we are staying in in Quito is termed ¨gringoland¨ pretty much, which explains why the cafe menu was in English. After our chocolate (at 11:15AM mind you) I went with him to the hospita where I sat and waited as he got his 4th rabiis shot, he got bit by a dog on one of his journeys so he was playing it safe. After that we went to a little restaurant and got lunch. Our lunch dish, which is a sort of set menu, only cost $1.75, which was 10 cents cheaper than my hot chocolate and included a really tasty vegetable soup that came with a banana, popcorn and an orange-colored juice, then a plate of lentils, rice, cabbage salad and a piece of fried fish. I was very pleasantly surprised by how tasty all parts of that lunch were; I didn´t drink the juice because I´m afraid it might have been made with local water, didn´t eat the popcorn because I wasn´t feeling it with the meal and didn´t eat the cabbage salad because I didn´t know if the veggies had been washed thoroughly to get rid of all the pesticides. While we sat and ate and chatted, an older man came in and played this very unique looking harp for a bit and we clapped for his great performance (random performance too: Wednesday afternoon at like 2PM). Later my friend went to skype his brother for his birthday, I guess there are like skype-cafes around here, who knew?! I went back to the hostal for a bit and read my guide book of South America. I was hoping to meet up with some other tourists staying in the hostal but it´s pretty quite here with only like 5 people or so, so no such luck. Later my friend returned and we made some tea, talked about how he is a DJ back at home and then decided to make some dinner. It had started to rain around 3PM and there was even a bit of lightening and thunder. We walked through the rain to a little vegetable store that was literally a small room with vegetables on the walls. We picked out a bag of veggies: onion, 2 carrots, red bell pepper, zuchinni, several green beans, and it only cost $1! Luckily our hostal has a kitchen, spices and pans so we made some rice and he sauteed a sauce of peanut butter, cumin, terriyaki sauce, brown sugar together with the veggies. I made sure my veggies were cooked extra long and then we ate it with some brown rice. It was FANTASTIC and probably the cheapest dinner I´ve ever had ($0.50!). I hope I was safe enough about cooking the veggies for long enough because I really don´t want to get sick. Now I´m reading while waiting for my new friend to arrive, the 60 year old American woman who is going to go with me tomorrow to the market before heading to the school. It is still raining and it is pretty chilly, like I wish I´d brought another jacket right now! I´m looking forward to climbing into my nice warm sleeping back I spent so long picking out :) I´m a bit nervous about how we´re going to get from Quito to Latacunga and Sasquil tomorrow (that´s not exactly how you spell it, but what do you guys know? it´s the town where the big market is, and I don´t even know if it will go on in the rain...so many unknowns here!), but I figure whatever happens will be great because it´s part of my adventure. So I was a bit surprised how my first day in Ecuador turned out because it was so chill, but I enjoyed it nevertheess: I made a few new friends, practiced a bit of Spanish, saw a bit of ¨gringoland¨ and had some tasty Ecuadorian food. I wish that all the meals I eat here are as delicious and healthy as the dinner we made tonight was, but I have a feeling a lot of fried meats are in my future, we shall see though! OK I´m going to go back to reading Wuthering Heights now. Talk later! Besos