Today, the world is watching....

Out of everything that I’ve done and experienced since landing in Quito a week and a half ago, maybe one of the coolest was my class of 6 convincing our Ecuadorian teacher to take us to a bar during class to watch the presidential inauguration of President Barack Obama. We sat at Mulligan’s from 10:30 to 2:30 (yes, talking in Spanish) with a crowd of other gringos to take in history. Of course, Obama’s speech was incredible, but the words that really stuck with me from the whole event was the prelude to the ceremony when that one woman politician (someone got a name for me?) said, “Today, the world is watching.” I don’t know that you can fully understand the truth of that statement unless you were watching from outside the United States. The world truly was watching. There’s a tangible hope here in Ecuador for relations between the two countries to improve under Obama, and although the inauguration was not the most important political event to Ecuadorians for the day (violent indigenous protests about a new mining law took first place), people certainly paid attention. I feel like that feeling is constant throughout the world, with every country seeing Obama as a new chance to improve relations with the U.S. and thus better their country. I mentioned to my teacher that in the U.S., it’s more common politically to view South America as one lump region and not as individual countries, and asked what would make Ecuador stand out as a country that Obama would reach out to personally. Despite having no real reason, she was still very hopeful. It’s kind of cool to see the effect Obama is having on the rest of the world.

In other news, my first midterm last week came back at 95%, and my second midterm is tomorrow. The final for Spanish 250 is next Thursday. I’m not sure I like this “test every week” thing.

Also, Omar told me the other night that there will be two big-name concerts in Quito while I’m here. I need everyone who reads this to comment with their pick of who would win in a rock-off and thus which concert I should attend: Iron Maiden’s Worldwide Farewell Tour or Carlos Santana. I know “Carlos Santana” and “rockoff” don’t generally go together, but don’t underestimate him. “Black Magic Woman” could be an ace up the sleeve.

Interesting notes on the culture of the automobile here in Ecuador (if that doesn’t interest you, skip this paragraph). Semi trucks don’t exist, and the cars are generally either sub-compacts (think Toyota Yaris) or small SUVs (think Hyundai Santa Fe). Chevrolet dominates this country, to the tune of about 40% of the cars. Part of that is that they sell the entire Suzuki line of cars, as well as the Isuzu Trooper, here as Chevys, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a few other GM brand vehicles sold as Chevys here too (I have not seen any other GM brand cars under their proper brand). Hyundai is second at about 20%, Renault probably has about 10%, and the rest is split between Mitsubishi, Cintroen, Peugeot, Mazda and Volkswagen. Toyota is a minor player here, as well as Nissan and Daewoo. I’ve seen only a small handful of Hondas and Fords, a few Fiats, a few Skoda, a few Chery, maybe 3 BMW, 2 Porsche, 1 Jeep and 1 Dodge. I also saw one car from Tata Motors, the relatively new Indian company. It's kind of sad that there are as many Tatas here as there are Dodge and Jeep. The dominance of Chevrolet and the cross-branding was something that I noticed pretty quickly and thought was kind of interesting.

I finally got some pictures up from this weekend. Sorry for the delay, but you have no idea how long it takes to upload pictures on the internet connections I get down here….


The fountain in the middle of the Palacio de Gobierno complex.



The Palacio del Gobierno

La Catedral (the national cathedral)



This was the contraband picture from the inside of the cathedral (different from the one in the previous picture). Not a great shot, but it WAS from the belt, and you can see how ornate this place was.



The statue of La Virgen sits atop Panecillo, overlooking Quito.


From Panecillo, looking north (downtown Quito)

Looking south

Looking towards the northeast (downtown Quito visible in the sunny area to the left)


Looking north-northwest. Mt. Pichincha is on the left.

South downtown. La Basilica is visible at the top of the picture, and the smallish silver dome at the bottom left marks the general area of the Plaza de la Independencia with the Palacia de Gobierno and La Catedral.


That should keep you busy for a while.

SHOUT-OUTS GO TO: Travis Hafner (please find your swing). And Horse.

From Ecuador,
Andy