First Impressions

Quito:

This is a city whose skies wake up clear and turn ominous after lunch. It is a city where airplanes look bigger than you remember, and everything seems to be urgently lazy. Simplicity means less rules, and traffic is kept extremely simple. It is bachelor city, where every street has tiny crowded food shops, every corner has a dog and every sign has a stain. It is loud; honking is the beat to every other incessant sound of accelerating engines, barking dogs and screeching breaks.
But it is also a hidden city. The house I live in is a jewel in an ugly metal box--though I can look out my window to the METROCAR: Servicio Autorizado garage that squats just in front of a tall mass of offices, apartments and Mussolini-type architecture, all tangled together in thick power lines, I can easily forget it and feast my eyes instead on the deep blue walls and ornately carved mohagoney furniture that graces my room. The house is very classy, on the inside, so that I am almost out of place--perhaps I am glad for METROCAR.
The same goes for the ACLAS building, which is disguised as another grubby gate on a chaotic street. Inside the gate it is white and dark blue with balconies and and a garden, a charming old Ecuadorian villa with hints of summers in Greece. Besides these, there is Pichincha, the enormous volcano that pops in and out of view when you least expect it. It seems to be the grandfather of the city. It has a presence that is felt like the ocean is felt in California--an anchor and a disciplinarian and a map and also the prettiest thing around.
I hope this paints a picture of Quito similar to what I have seen so far.
Hope all is well in the states!!
And today,