DISCLAIMER

My father just wrote me an email, basically stating that I need to be careful at what I write because not everyone will understand my sense of humor.

He had in mind ecuadorian officials, future employers, and possibly Jesus as well...

So, to any who are reading this in order to find out more information about me who do not know me: I HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR. I AM VERY SARCASTIC. I ENJOY MAKING FUN OF EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE.

Thanks dad...

In other news, I have moved in with my host family in Quito, and again I have been blessed with an incredible house and family. Father and mother, 3 kids, one of whom is married and has a kid, all of whom live in the house, as well as a cousin who is going to school here. The family has a great sense of humor, loves to laugh and cook and make fun of everyone, and one of their sons has literally over 500 movies here....basically I´m in heaven. I´m living here with two other volunteers, Jon who´s going to Machala with me, and Craig, an ex-lawyer from Atlanta, both of whom I get along with. I´m currently sleeping in one of the rooms on the top floor, with a gigantic window through which I can see the whole city of Quito on the mountain. The views here are absolutely amazing, and due to the extreme altitude, I don´t think I´m that off in calling them breathtaking.

We played soccer today with my host father and brother (20) today, and a couple other worldteach volunteers who were at the picnic that Worldteach had for all of us. It was a lot of fun, but being out of shape in the states is made even worse when the air has about half the amount of oxygen in it. Then, as a sidethought, we all took a trip to the equator. Thats right, the middle of the earth. ¨Ho, hum, lets go see something thats going to blow your mind." It was awesome, beautiful, and allowed me to get my first experience on the buses, which werent bad at all.

I made this quick because I´m on a computer in my host family´s house and I think we may be doing something soon. I´ll go more into detail soon, but thank you for the emails that you´ve sent so far, and I´ll be sure to begin responding to them as soon as I can. This is probably going to get more preference, because I want to write as much as I can down before I forget it all, but I will get to personal emails, I promise.

Te vayas bien

-BRYCE

In Ecuador!

Well, I have survived the trip down and am currently writing from an Internet Cafe in Quito, Ecuador! The trip down to Miami was nice, fairly uneventful, and we stayed at a hotel with everyone else. Since all of us from the DC area got down there early, we had a decent amount of time to hang out, which was really good, because we got to meet a lot of the other volunteers in a very informal setting (hotel pool+a case of beer). The night was filled with meeting everyone there, and unfortunately NOT watching the wake game, we didnt get FSN in Miami. Then, the next morning, we woke up at 430 and left for the airport. This flight was also pretty uneventful, I watched ¨In Bruge¨ and part of Iron man, and talked with this native girl who had lived in Salamanca for a year and was now travelling to visit her family in Guayaquil. I´m pretty sure she wanted me, and she was holding back tears when she found out that I was going to be in Machala.

We got into Quito and immediately went to the hotel we´d be staying at, where we had a Pizza Hut lunch, and started our orientation process. Everyday here will be incredibly busy, but the activities and lessons they have will be a lot of fun. What also makes it easy to deal with a full schedule are the people I´m here with. This group is pretty sweet, full of people that are easy to interact with and, more importantly, can take my smart ass sarcastic ways and throw them right back at me. There´s been a lot of laughter and good times already, and I´m looking forward to this upcoming month. The only negative to my stay in Quito is that I´ll be staying with a host family that lives an hour outside the city...and since we have activities starting at 7 almost everyday, I´ll be waking up at the ungodly hour of 530 to get to our center. I think, however, when we all go out during the weekends, I may look into getting a hotel room, because I´m not trying to ride the bus an hour back to the house at 3 in the morning....

Last night we went to a Mongolian barbeque in a hot spot of Quito, and this afternoon we´ve walked around the city a bit and hung out at a cafe. It´s pretty amazing how quick my Spanish is coming back, especially since I havent had a class since fall of senior year, but yesterday I was able to successfully hold a conversation with my cab driver about finding an Ecuadorian wife and staying in Quito for the rest of my life...No worries, that was his suggestion not mine. Tonight we have a host family meeting and we´ll be moving from the hotel to our host houses, and tomorrow we have a picnic with all the volunteers and their host families. At the end of this upcoming week I´ll actually be travelling the 12 hours to Machala to meet with my host family there and my director at the school, so that should be pretty interesting.

Anyways, I´m here, safe, and pretty happy, and for the current time, things are going pretty well. Keep sending me emails to tell me how its going back home and I´ll make sure to update as much as possible.

Oh, and I´ve let everyone in on my plan to breed a soccer team, and now people are going to be calling me Papa Chadwick....I´d appreciate it if that caught on back home...

Ciao!

-BRYCE

T minus one day

So I have a blog...

Mom says this is a good idea because it'll help her stay more connected to what I'm doing and she'll be able to answer questions when other people ask her what it is that I'm up to. I figure that it is very possible that after the first week or so, the only people reading this will be her and my grandma, but in any case I've created this, there's no turning back, and so I will be documenting my long and hopefully rewarding trip to Ecuador via this very website. My ambitious goal is to write an entry at least every week. However, I had a similar goal in Salamanca, and at the end of the four months I had written a grand total of 2 entries, and didn't post either of them online....so we'll see how realistic this thought is.

For those of you who don't know, I'm going to Ecuador through a program called WorldTeach in order to teach English. I will be leaving the DC area in approximately 28 hours, staying in Miami overnight, and going down to Quito on the 29th, where I will be for the next month. During that time, I will be experiencing an intense orientation that includes 20 hours of language classes, 37 hours of cultural transitioning, and 60 hours of TEFL training, which I'm assuming will help me figure out how exactly I'm going to go about teaching the wonderfully simple language that I use everyday...More intimidating than all of this, the orientation will also include a salsa class, which, as those of you who have seen me dance will know, could result in me getting deported back to the states for desecrating such an important cultural aspect of Latin America. If I successfully avoid the dancing police for this first month, I will then move to the city of Machala, where I will begin my stint as a professor of English at the University of Machala. The city itself is on the coast in the south of the country, very close to Peru. It's the fourth largest city in Ecuador, 280,000 people strong, and is also known as the banana capital of the world, which is nice, because I now know what I'll be getting everyone as a gift for when I return to the US. Speaking of returning, I still don't know the exact day I'll be getting back, but it will be sometime between July 15th and August 15th, so mark your calenders and be ready to drop everything at a moment's notice to welcome me back.

I have a couple of goals that I'm hoping to accomplish in this next year. First and foremost: I want to learn how to surf. I know what some of you are thinking (mom), I'm down here to teach English, my first goal should be to be successful in that. Whatever, that's important too, but do you realize how much more of a badass I'll be as I'm standing on one leg, riding 50-foot waves, a banana in each hand, on a glow-in-the-dark surfboard at night??? I get chills even thinking about it. Second, I want to be able to finally become completely fluent in a foreign language. I have yet to decide between Spanish and Urdu, but as long as its one of them, I'll be satisfied. Third, I want to start thinking of the specific things I want to be doing with my life after this break from the real world ends. And finally, I'm thinking about breeding my own soccer team.

Things that I will be missing from the US: The Redskins, Valentino's, Mugzy, Foursquare (we had a goodbye thing tonight where a bunch of people came out and we played for a good amount of time, thank you everyone who came out, I couldn't ask for a better way to go out. The only negative part was that one of my selfish friends decided to steal some of my thunder by getting proposed to in the middle of it...only kidding of course, congrats Jenna and our second President!)

Things I will not be missing: Drew calling me a Geed, Wake's final's week.

And of course, I will be thinking of everyone back here, missing both friends and family alike, and wishing that the vast majority of you could be going through this with me. I also realize that I am not the only one that will be experiencing new and exciting things in this upcoming year, and so I have one request. As I will try to keep everyone updated with the going-ons of my life, please please do the same as much as possible for my benefit. Updates from back home will make my transitioning into this new part of my life much easier, and I know that reading emails, facebook posts, and other types of communication from you guys will make my days in Ecuador that much better. Also, in the very unlikely chance that you happen to travel to South America, my policy is that if you stop by Machala, I'll pay for your hotel room...quite the incentive I know.

Ok I lied, I have one more request. DO NOT CALL OR TEXT MY PHONE AFTER TOMORROW. My wonderful high-tech fancy phone with one ringtone will be passed down to my sister, and I'd really like to keep her from knowing how many of my friends are dirtbags. I will be getting a cellphone down in Ecuador, and as soon as I get that info I will pass it along.

I hope to hear from you all regularly, and I'll see you in a year!

~BRYCE