FTJ: 8/22/08

I´m wondering about pens. I´ve gone through two pens already, and I had to hunt around for another pen. I managed to snag two pens from the AFS people, which I deftly slipped into my man-bag. This one looks like it´s running out of ink, though, so I´m gonna see if I can snag another pen or two before I leave for the airport. So, I brought the application my host family sent in to AFS, which turned out to be a good thing. I needed to write the address on these yellow tags that I then put on everything I own, even my Man-Bag. The AFS people said that it helps with getting through security, because the people at the airport know the AFS program. It helps grease the wheels, apparently. I´ve met a bunch of people here, most of whom I´m sure I´ll never see again. A couple of people from Alaska, which I though was pretty funny, going from Alaska to Panama. We had more orientation discussion, which talked about how men are very, very dominant in South America, and we also had an ice breaker. In this ice breaker, we spent a half-hour talking with another exchange student, Victoria, in my case.

She´s a girl from Minnesota (as you can probably tell from the picture) and she´s going to Southern Ecuador. She´s got six brothers and sisters, and two of them have gone overseas with AFS. There´s a real family bond that exists with AFS, in that lots of people, having a child that goes, will send their other children too.

I´m sitting in the meeting room in the hotel, waiting until it´s time to go to the airpot. I tried getting into other people´s conversations, but it didn´t really happen. I should probably try harder to do that, but I don´t really care that much (::emohand::). I took out my 4x4 Rubik´s Cube and started solving it. People were interested in that, so I´m glad I brought it. Good ice breaker. I figuring that I´m going to be snatching quick moments here and there writing stuff down in this notebook.

So, after waiting for a while, we got on a bus and went to the Miami airport. It was fairly uneventful, and I realized halfway through that this was the last time I would see America for 251 days (Approx.). The thought wasn´t an unhappy one, or an exciting one, or a scary one. I had no feeling on the subject at all.

We made it through security in a fairly uneventful manner. We had our own line, which expedited the process somewhat.



That's Jacobi, on the right.

When we got to the gate, there was some confusion and we had to go to another gate. We sat down to wait (our plane was delayed 1.2 hours) and I began to teach Victoria how to solve a Rubik´s Cube. Right now, it is 10:20PM, and we will be shortly getting into Quito. David Letterman´s on TV doing some crazy thing with animals, I dunno. I learned that we´re going to be having a 2-4 day orientation meeting when we get to Quito, for which I am totally stoked. (NOTE: I found the apostrophe key!) It'll be like having a vacation! Where we can't leave the hotel. And we have to listen to boring orientation stuff. But hey, a couple more days in a swanky Ecuadorian Hotel with my friends is a pretty sweet deal to me. I wonder if they'll have internet. (Hindsight: HAHAHAHAHA! You fool!)

251 Days to go: (Approx.) (Including today)