School Orientation and Settling in With My Host Family

Yesterday I moved in with my Ecuadorian host family! I will be living with this host family until my study abroad program ends on August 19^th. My family consists of a mom named Katyhuska and a 20 year old daughter named Dianita. My mom is extremely sweet and kind. She is also a great cook! She own a little store where she makes sweaters and scarfs and gives people knitting lessons. Her store is right across the street from out apartment. My sister is studying at a college here in Quito. We live in a cute little apartment that is about a 25 minute walk away from my school. I will probably take the city bus to school most days. Today, my sister and I took the bus to the market and she showed me around Quito a little bit. Since I have been here in Quito for about a week now, I am started to become a little bit familiar with the city….well, kind of. Quito is a huge city but I at least feel like I am getting to know it a little bit!

My mom and sister eating lunch in our apartment

My sister and I in front of the shop where my mom works

My Ecuadorian mom and sister!

Yesterday I also had my school orientation. My school is called CIMAS and it is a school just for students in the CIMAS study abroad program. For the summer program that I am in, there are 8 students total. We all got to meet each other yesterday and everyone seems nice. The orientation went well. I am excited to start classes and improve on my Spanish grammar! From living in Mexico and learning Spanish through speaking it, I can speak pretty well, but my grammar needs a lot of improving. Since I learned it through speaking it, I don’t know the formal rules to the language well and my grammar just needs a lot of improving overall. It seems like I am the best Spanish speaker out of all the students in my program, but I am sure that they all have better grammar than I do and that they know the formal rules to the language much better. I am really hoping to improve learning proper Spanish grammar through this program!

The view from the window of my room

Another view from my room.

The apartment where I live with my host family