New Friends and Party

Justin and I now have two other medical students living in Sra. Anita’s house.

Meet Ilse and Vickie. Ilse is from Holland and is working on learning her fifth (that’s right, 5^th) language. Pretty dadgum impressive. In Holland, as in Ecuador, students enter medical straight from high school without going to university first, which means that even though their med school’s six years they could still technically get done two years sooner than us. Ilse is in her fourth of six years of medical school and came here for about three months do learn Spanish and do a rotation (kind of like me and Justin). Vickie is from West Virginia and is in her final yr of med school like we are. She’s matched into a psych rotation in Pittsburg (I think). Mauricio’s sister Susana had a birthday party Thursday night, which all four med students attended. It was located on the roof of Sra. Anita’s House. We were definitely the only gringos (non-Latinos) there, but it was fun. We danced…

Here’s Ilsa dancing with Diego Espinel (yet another sibling of Mauricio – our medical sponsor dude).

Then Justin and I tried our hand at it :)

And, of course, we ate…

the food. And then we turned in early (at 11pm) because Diego was going to take us to some falls nearby the next day. (I say early because the party continued until about two or three in the morning). Little did we know what adventure awaited us… (to be continued).