March 2, 2015

The beginning of our study abroad adventure would begin bright and early Monday March 2, 2015. We were to meet at as group from the Santa Fe Police Station in Gainesville, FL. After stuffing as much into two rental vans as we could by 10am. Our advisors would then drive us to Orlando. Arriving in Orlando, FL right on time at noon we unpacked the vans and headed to check our baggage and make it to the terminal. Luckily, we had some spare time to kill before boarding our plane and decided to grab some lunch. Most of us decided to get pizza and sat together before heading back to the terminal. This was a great way for us to get to know each other before the trip officially started. The plane started boarding at 3pm, and we quickly found our sits. I sat next to our anthropology club’s secretary, Kailey and on the other side Melody. Melody and I realized we had gone to the same middle school! As anthropology majors, we found plenty to discuss on the plane. Our biggest topic was centered around language and generational differences in popular words. For example, today’s younger generation uses words such as thot, twerk, and ratchet that is much different than the terms we grew up using. While reminiscing on our middle school days, Melody and I remember a song our Spanish teacher taught us called Ratoncito Miguel and we discussed the significance of the rat (people of Cuba) and the cat (Castro) in the song that was taught to school children during the Cuban Revolution. As Kailey and I discussed matters related to the Anthropology Club, we realized we had an open position within the Anthropology Club and asked Melody if she would be interested in it. She was very interested and gladly accepted a position as club treasurer. We landed in Bogota, Colombia just after 7pm but immediately hurried toward our next terminal. Finally, we arrived in Quito, Ecuador around 10pm and sluggishly made our way through customs and on to the tour bus. Taking in the atmosphere around us we noticed that there were not many vehicles on the road at all and it only just after 10:30pm. Thankfully there were no time change issues since Ecuador is on the same time zone as Florida! As we dropped off one of our tour guides I took note of how elaborate some of the houses front gates were, and I deducted that you could tell depending on how tall the gates were the dwellers social status. There were several familiar brands such as Toyota, Chevy, Kentucky Fried Chicken and even McDonalds.