tres gringas y una mami

I'd forgotten about the sounds of places like ecuador. it is
     so noisy at all times of the day and night, but it is
     particularly noisy when the neighborhood rooster, who I'm
     pretty certain is cagged outside my window, begins his
     morning wake up call at a time most people would still
     consider night. the lovely (this is not sarcastic) part is
     that oddly enough I enjoy the rooster, unlike lo, who might
     need to have her pocket knife confiscated in the interest of
     keeping said rooster alive and crowing. the morning rooster
     alarm makes me think of our tiny apt in the philippines,
     where the roosters (plural!!) would make me smile each
     morning at how foreign it was to wake up to this noisy
     animal.
  
     breakfast of huevos, pan y cafe (eggs, toast & coffee -
     the instant kind that reminds me of tanzania and zanzibar,
     and that I actually prefer to the filtered kind), prepared by
     mami gloria, gracias to her. mami walked us to the school for
     our orientation day; we followed like ducklings. the rain had
     finally let up enough for me to appreciate the smells. I
     think the outside smells remind me of se asia, but inside her
     home it smells of mariana's home in mexico. we made it to the
     school while drawing only minimal attention (with gloria
     shooting death glares in the direction of anyone calling at
     us). It was refreshing to walk around without every other
     person hollering 'muzungu' at us, which happened daily in
     africa (yes, thank you, im aware I'm a white person).
  
     today was mostly classroom time where I may have fallen asleep
     shortly after the slide where dr. w (the program director)
     covered the topic of jet lag during his intro powerpoint. we
     also had this terribly embarrassing and comical session where
     we had to speak spanish (argh!? even if you have never taken a
     spanish class, i.e. me!!) in front of the group (which, by the
     way, consists of 15 people, 2 dudes and the rest, well, i´m sure you
     can deduce). my speaking included a lot of
     spanglish along with some franish and quite a bit of what I
     thought to be meaningful gesturing, all intermixed with
     arguably too much laughter, and if you know me, some crying
     toward the end (which I think our prof might have
     misconstrued as tears of saddness at my failure). oh well,
     we're here to learn, right? and they have us set up for total
     spanish immersion. our host family won't speak english to us,
     the program faculty speaks in spanish only, and anne, lo and
     I are trying to always practice our spanish skills. as a
     result I spend a lot of time quiet and smiling with
     occasional nodding - again, if you know me, very out of
     character, at least the quiet part :)