First let me expresses my sincere thanks to Dad and Randy as they keep up the message postings.  I makes for entertaining reading and reminds me of home.  If someone could please help my husband figure out how to access the webpage and add his comments, my life would be complete!  Looking forward to more reading later in the week.

Update:

We (Katherine and I) made it safe and sound.  Our flight arrived around 11:30 Sunday night.  I was exhausted.  There are over 1 million people in Quito and none of them speak english and all of them were at the airport.  We are staying with a retired teacher (Miryam Davila).  She lives in an apartment in town.   Her maid (empleada) also lives there but is on vacacion for the next two weeks (just my luck!).  Anyway, she is very nice and helpful but does not speak any english.  We are able to communiate for the most part and she corrects my grammatical mistakes.  I am happy in her home and feel very comfortable there.  She has 3 grown daughters.  2 are married, she has 1 granddaughter and 1 of her daughters lives in Texas.  The apartment is modest, but clean and functunal.  Katherine and I share a bathroom, but have our own private rooms.

The first day of school was a challenge.  We have a short walk (8 or so blocks) to the bus, then a 20 minute bus ride to the central station, then a 5 minute (briskly) walk to school.  The school will be moving to a different part of town, so we will have to re-learn the bus route next week - but that should not be too big of a problem.  We took a test first thing in the morning to evaluate our knowledge of the language.  There are 9 levels, I tested at 5 and should be able to reach the top by the end of my stay.  I most likely could have done better, but I was really tired (it was 8:30am - Monday morning), had a headache (this is common due to the altitude adjustment) and didnīt really want to try and figure out how to conjugate any more verbs. 

Later we took a tour of the city.  We took a bus to the old (colonial) part of town.  WOW - there are many churches and they are incedible. (Dad you would go crazy!)  We took a different bus back to the school.  There are 3 types of buses here (1 kids is not advisable to take) and taxis (2 types).  We have pretty much figured out how to get to and from school on our own.

In the afternoon, we had an orientation at the school.  We went over the basic progam and rules, etc.  Our teacher, Dr. Norton is here now and met with us for a bit.  Later that night we met him in the old part of town and had dinner with him.  The food is great.  I have tried everything offered and not had any problems.  We made it back to the house aound 9:00pm and hit the beds.  It was a long day and I was tired.

Tuesday:  School classes started today.  So far so good.  Not too difficult.  This afternoon we will start our volunteer work.  We will be working in an orphanage part of the time and tutoring children the other part of the time.  Our schedule is up at 6:30am, breakfast at 7:30am then off to the bus, classes each morning 8:30am - 1:00 pm, lunch and then off to work 3:00pm - 6:00pm, then home and dinner at 7:30pm.  We do have homework eack night, but are hoping to squeeze in some ecuadorian cooking  classes and salsa dance lessons in the evenings.

There are NO ecuadorians with blond hair so everyone continually stares at me.  It is difficult to not be noticed when you stick out like a sore thumb.  Things I miss the most...family and a hot shower!

That is it for now.  I need to go to work.  Talk to all of you soon.  Let me know what is going on via e-mail or post to my webpage.  I look forward to hearing from all of you.  If you have any questions, post them and I will answer.

Hugs and kisses to all,
Amy

PS - To the men in my life who are enjoying harassing me while I am several thousand miles from home via comments to my web postings- donīt think that for a minute I believe any of the bull yaīll are shoveling about making changes to the house.  Glad to know that some things donīt change, even when I am sooo far away!  Until my next posting...miss you all.