New Friends

My first full day in Ecuador, two people offered to be my friend. I had gone back to my hostel for dinner around 8:00 pm, not wanting to be out wandering around Quito any later. The hostel restaurant was busy, and it took about an hour to get my food and another hour to get the check, but I had my guidebook and took the time to plan out my must-sees for Ecuador. From time to time, the waiter stopped by, briefly, to chat. He had lived in the US - partially in Washington DC - and spoke English.

After I had finished my meal and was waiting for the check, an Ecuadorian woman in her early twenties sat down as though I'd known her forever and started talking as though she wanted to be my new best friend. She peppered me with questions and lamented about her life. Where was I from? She lives here. She's sorry, but her heart hearts. Why? "Mi vida." Her best friend is from Holland, do I have any other Ecuadorian friends? Oh, she's the first? Here's a picture of her best friend from Holland. She's from the coast - I should call her sometime and she'll take me there. I should teach her English, and she'll help me with my Spanish.

This was all covered mostly in Spanish, with her occasionally attempting to speak in broken English and me continuously begging her to repeat what she said, again, and slower. Finally, she ran out of things to say, and gave me her phone number. I gave her my email address, and she left, saying she would be waiting for my call.

After my new best friend left, the waiter came by to see what I was doing later that evening, after he got off work. I told him I couldn't make it out that night, but we met the next day for lunch. He looked like a young, Latino version of Dr. Dreamy, but he turned out to be one of the most annoying people I've had to spend an afternoon with. He quizzed me about religion, bragged about the times he'd been arrested in the United States, and every so often he would break out with some radio-announcer type catch phrase in the middle of a sentence or conversation. I won't be calling him anytime soon, and I decided not to call my other new best friend either - I don't think she was quite all there.

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Lest it be thought that I'm too negative, whiney, or simply incapable of keeping friends, let me reassure you that you will soon find several posts about the fantastic friends I've made at school and the adventures we've taken in the last several weeks. In addition, I apologize for the long delays between posts lately (hey, if I just hang out in the internet cafe all day, I won't have anything to write about) and I promise several new updates this week and next.