ECUADOR!!!!!

Wow - here I am again, in a foreign country struggling to type because have to get adjusted to the new keyboard.

Anyway, I can´t believe i´m here! it felt like ages to get here - three planes in 17hours - it wears you down. I probably won´t write much because i´m feeling pretty light headed. could be because i´m really tired or because of that altitude sickness thing that i´ve heard about. i think i just need to sleep. man this place is so amazing already. flying in was something else just because of the view. it´s so high up and in amongst all these mountains, it´s awesome! i seriously can´t believe i´m here.... in ecuador - it´s crazy. i did take photos, but will add later after i´ve adjusted a bit more.

the homestay guy was there to pick me up - gabriel, or gabo for short. it was really nice, he was there with my name written on a balloon and some flowers, and it was nice to be welcomed in this strange place and not just try to struggle to get to some random hostel all by myself. so he drove me around teh place to get a bit of an idea of what the city is like. the traffic is pretty bad and a lot of crazy cutting and swerving around by trucks, buses and cars and pedestrians everwhere - but it´s not as bad as i´ve seen elsewhere. i showed him the address of the children international organistion where i will be going on friday, and we actually found it, so now i have an idea of where to go. it looks pretty good - the office is pretty much in the city - but not sure if that´s where the medical clinic will be. will find that out later.

so we drove around a bit, and he was telling me about the good places to go and told me about his family - he´s got an older brother, danilo, who i´ll meet later on tonight, if i´m not sleeping. gabo actually told me that he´s actually leaving for LA in 10 days, so he won´t be here for the time that i´ll be here, but i´m sure that will be ok.

i´m now in their home, which is really nice. it´s totally clean thanks to the mum and my room is really nice - will send pics soon. the mum doesn´t speak any english, and me with my below rudimentary spanish, will have an interesting time communicating, but she´s really nice and we´ve got this translation website open so that we can translate what we want to say to each other. gabo and the dad have gone out, so it´s just me and her in the house now - am looking forward to learning spanish from this whole thing. i think i don´t have much choice in the matter, unlike france, so should be good. they´re all really nice about it and very patient. the mum told me just to call her mama, and she said i´m her ´nueva hijita´which is new daughter, so that was pretty cool.

anyway, am getting kind of dizzy, so will go and lie down. i think the key to this thing is just sleeping it off and drinking a lot of water, which i intend to do.

yay! ecuador!

oh, just one more thing - it was really funny when we landed because as soon as the plane hit the tarmac, rapturous applause broke out and i heard someone shout ´viva ecuador!´ very loudly from somewhere in the cabin. so bizarre - made me wonder if a successful landing was a rare thing? it was pretty funny.