Second week

So I'm still alive and avoided getting mugged for the first two weeks
in Ecuador. I was bitten by a stray dog on my first day of class
though, so that was exciting. It lives on my street and just jumped
up and bit me after I walked past. It didn't break skin though, so I
was told that I don't need a rabies shot.

I like my classes for the most part. As I've already told some of
you, I'm taking a class called andinismo, which is mountain climbing.
It's going to be awesome. It meets once a week on Fridays where we
learn to tie different knots, and then there are field trips every
weekend. Its convenient because I won't have to make any plans and I
get to climb various peaks in the Andes. Another cool class I'm
taking is Volcanology. Its a geology course, but there are going to
be two field trips I get to go on. They go to various volcanoes and a
thermal spring in a town called Banos. A cab driver told me that its
a beautiful place and that I should go, so that's cool. There's also
a trip to the coast where we get to go paragliding. The professor is
the coolest guy ever. He's Greek but grew up in Germany and speaks 7
languages fluently. I'm also taking two history classes, one of which
seems like it will be good and the other seems like a lot of work.
I'm also taking an international relations course which could be
interesting. The problem with my classes is that they're full of
Americans and I don't really get to know any Ecuadorians.

Last weekend I went to a little town called Mindo with a bunch of
Boston University students. It was really cool. The town is tiny but
the bus ride there was amazing. Mindo is part of a cloud forest so we
spent the first day zipining across which was awesome. We stayed in a
five dollar hostel which was pretty comfortable. There was a
butterfly place where you could walk around and they had lots of huge
butterflies. We also went water tubing down rapids, so it was a
really fun weekend. I also liked it because since we were in the
country you could really tell that Ecuador is a third world country.
We're really pampered in this program because we live with fairly high
class families and the university is much more like a miniature
paradise than anything else.

Ecuador is very interesting because while at Bucknell I look just like
everyone else, I'm pretty much the most distinctive person on campus.
People here don't care about staring and continue staring at me even
if I see them doing it. Sticking out like this causes a big divide
between the gringos and Ecuadorians, since all the gringos pretty much
hang out with each other. It seemed like all the Ecuadorians already
knew each other so it's hard meeting them, especially since I'm not
really that social anyway.

An annoying thing is that the bus system is impossible to figure out.
They don't have any maps besides main three lines, but they all go
north to south so I don't know how to get anywhere east to west.
Besides not having maps, the buses are loads of fun. There are sorta
stops but not really. Pretty much if you walk along a bus route you
can flag down a bus, and they'll slow down just enough for you to jump
in while its moving. You can exit at any time too and they usually
drive with their doors open. That's mostly all that's going on here.
Sorry about the novel. I'm thinking of maybe starting a blog, so I
don't have to fill up your inboxes, so if you would prefer that or the
emails let me know.