welcome!

welcome to my blog! i have set it up in hopes that i will update it relatively often, and that i will be able to easily share with you what has been going on in my life in ecuador! i don't leave until august 21, so don't expect posts very often until then. i have also set up a flickr account where i will be posting pictures that i take. the URL is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/estoyenecuador

on monday, my mother and i made our way down to the Ecuadorian Consulate in Houston. we had talked to someone who had gotten a visa there before, and had told us that it didn't take long at all, so we were pretty optimistic. we finally ended up getting my visa on tuesday afternoon, after THREE visits to the consulate. needless to say, it was not an incredibly enjoyable experience. we did, however, get a firsthand look at the differences between american and south american concepts of time. 'come back tomorrow at ten o'clock' in ecuador-english actually means 'come back tomorrow at ten o'clock and then i will start getting your visa and you will probably have to make another trip anyway'.




here's a picture of the ecuadorian embassy. it's in a really random shopping center, above a spa and next to a bank. it's not quite what i expected. :)

testing 123

let's see how this works...