Hola! ¿Como estan? After one bus ride and four flights, we are finally in Quito. Let´s start from Saturday. Thank you to everyone for the wonderful goodbyes...we are so glad so many of you could come to the open house (especially Braden´s dad from the island). It was a mad dash on Sunday to get to the bus depot on time, but we made it. Thank you to Erin and Kristen for the puzzle set, it kept us occupied for 15 minutes until we realized that we couldn´t actually solve any of the puzzles.

The bus ride was uneventful...except that we had to get off the bus to go through customs, which took forever, and we arrived in Seattle almost 2 hours late. Already exhausted from two 4 hour nights´sleeps, we found a cabbie who drove us to a few hotels to find the best deal. We stayed at the travel lodge for another restful 4 hours of sleep and were at the airport for 4:30 am.

We flew to Los Angeles (arrived at 8:30 am) and wondered what to do with our 15 hour layover. After discovering that it only cost $0.75 each for a half hour bus ride to Santa Monica, we grabbed our bag and headed to the beach for some lovely 30 degree December weather. We headed to Santa Monica pier, where we found a war exhibit on the beach. It had one cross for each American soldier who has been killed in Iraq and some posters dedicated to civilians in Iraq who had been injured or killed. A very moving exhibit (they only put it up on Sundays and holidays).

After exploring the pier and nearby "Muscle Beach" (where Braden showed off his muscles to many astonished passers by), we headed up to the 3rd Street Promenade to see downtown Santa Monica. Maya has now found her new love, as the main street contains Sephora, Abercrombie and Fitch, Forever 21, etc... needless to say, our return home has now been delayed a few days as when we arrive back in LA, Maya plans to use our leftover money for a shopping spree. (We will see what actually happens.)

Back to the airport... through a very intensive security check... and on our 11:45pm New Years Eve flight to El Salvador. After two transfers and 10 hours, we arrived in Quito and were very surprised that our checked bag had arrived to meet us. Mercedes, the young woman who runs Casa Vida Verde where we are presently staying, met us at the airport. (We should add that the airport is built in the middle of Quito, and coming in, our plane almost clipped the tops and sides of several buildings and a few cars.) We took a short cab ride to Casa Vida Verde - it is located just a few blocks from the New Town, and one block away from a main bus route. The house is nice - there is not much to it, but it is clean. We are actually the only students staying in the house right now (we are told some more will come next week) but this means that for now we have our own bathroom and the run of the house. We took yesterday afternoon to explore our neighbourhood and found that because it was a holiday, nothing was open. We found a corner store where we enjoyed a beer, a fanta, and a 2L bottle of water for $1.50. Shortly after, Maya made friends with a stray dog, who proceeded to follow us for about half an hour (including 10 minutes where she waited outside of the pizza place). Don´t worry Mom and Dad, she didn´t look rabid. (We didn´t actually touch or feed the dog - don´t worry). After vetoing several fast food places we settled on Empanadas for a snack and also picked up a loaf of stale bread and some cheese for later on and breakfast this morning.

Up at 7 this morning, on the main bus for 15 minutes, to our first spanish lesson. This began at 8:30 and lasted until 1:30 with a short break in the middle. Our teacher is good.... his teaching is effective. We have made it through about 10 verbs, 75 nouns and 50 adjectives already. Maya is much better at Spanish than Braden, so hopefully Braden will catch up quick and not slow her down. We are now writing this from a computer at the Spanish School. Off now to find some food as the stale bread and cheese is gone.

As a side note, the weather here is surprisingly cool - only about 15 degrees during mid day, and in the evening, it drops to about 10. As we are here in the rainy season, there was a steady downpour from 7-10 last night.

Hope you all had a wonderful new years. Thinking of you lots.

Love Braden and Maya

P.S. We will take pictures of our lodging and our school and post them tomorrow.