DAY 3: Yigal managed to leave for his 3am flight in the middle of the night without waking me or Judy. The only thing that woke us up was the sun blaring through our window around 8am.

Judy and I had breakfast at the Magic Bean Cafe downstairs. It didn't occur to me until then that "Magic Bean" was a reference to the fact that it's a coffeehouse as well, and I mean that in the coffee way, not the Amsterdam way, so there was no waking and baking. I introduced Judy to Josh and Gordana, who were at the next table. We all ate our free jugos, café con lechés y "toasted bagels."

KNOWING THAT I WAS SPENDING $160 ON CLASSES, I tried to figure a way to cut my day-to-day costs. I went looking for a cheaper housing in the area (close to school). There were tons of hostels in the gringo district, but none of them really shouted out at me, and in the end, I decided to stay at the Magic Bean because their price factored in breakfast which some others didn't. Besides I already had three friends there. But when I went to extend my stay, they told me they were booked, and I had to check out, at least for the night. Later I found I was replaced by a Swedish girl.

I wandered across the street to Crossroads (picture above), built out of an old Spanish colonial house. It's fairly nice, and all for $5/bed/night. They have kitchen facilities for visitors, a TV lounge, and a rental library with fairly recent video releases for only 50 cents.

I bumped into Judy on the street who admittedly was looking like a total gringo tourist with her beach hat, stripped shirt, neck pouch hanging around her neck and a big map of Quito stretched between her arms. I was expecting Chandler Bing to pop out of the bushes and say, "Could you BE anymore of a tourist?" I told her I was moving, so we exchanged e-mail addresss. She went off to shop for a Spanish school that suit her.

It was a beautiful day in Quito, the sun shining, sky blue, temperatures in the 80s F. Funny, unlike America, no one was wearing shorts.

I wandered around looking for an eyeglass case since I forgot one, and managed to use my broken Spanish at an optician's store. The guy there was also surprised I didn't know Spanish, but I told him I was going to learn. Or rather, I figured he was asking me, "Are you studying Spanish?" and I simply said, "Sí." I pretty much say that word to answer any question. If someone asked me in Spanish if I wanted to be locked in a closet with 100 rabid monkeys, I'd most likely say, "Sí."

I wandered around the city to kill time, stopping by the Iglesia de Sainta Theresa where I sat inside for a while. I had lunch at some place with almuerzas, the "lunch of the day," which many restaurants have. Basically, for a buck fifty, you get a two course meal that they made for the day, no matter how random the combination. I had oxtail soup, followed by a spaghetti dish with a sort of tuna casserole sauce on top, with a side of rice. Random? Sure is. But cheap and filling.

I went back to my new dorm and met two new (German?) roommates: Lars, who was outside the room smoking a cigarette, and Matt, who came in and started talking to me in Spanish.

"Uh, no entiendo," I told him.

"Damn, I was hoping I could practice my Spanish." He told me that Spanish classes are great, but you really need to live with someone for total immersion. Hostels are full of backpackers who more or less speak English, French or German, and there is no practice.

The rest of the afternoon, I went to the Beraca school for my first four-hour class. It's not so much a class; it's a one-on-one tutoring session. My teacher was Carmen, the woman I had booked with the day before.

Each session is held in a little closet-of-a-room with plexiglass windows to help combat the inevitable claustrophobia. Basically, it was a police interrogation room, and the interrogation began with the basics, ¿Como te llamas? and ¿De dónde eres?

The one-on-one tutoring was great. It more or less was structured like any old class -- first salutations, then verbs -- but it was very loosely structured, and Carmen and I went off in tangents. Casual conversation spawned more vocabulary and more nouns, and it was a great way to learn. In the end, I came out a lot more confident with the language, and just after the first day. Another couple of classes, and I'll be ready to call Erika (aka "the hottie") and wow her with my Spanish.

During our fifteen minute break, I met another guy from another interrogation room, Sean, a Canadian from Ottawa. He told me about his experience with his live-in setup by the school. He said that if and when I decide to do a live-in, I'll get to shop around for a family, interview them, and get to either deny or accept one depending on whether or not I like them. (Having said that, I'm sure every 14-year-old in America with teen angst is looking up flights to Ecuador right now.)

I went back to my usual internet cafe, yard@net, where I bumped into Judy, who gave me unfortunate news: Rerun from What's Happening? died! I chatted online with Scott, my traveling IM buddy who had been traveling through South America for the past three months, and he broke his unfortunate news: he was back in Wisconsin. He was envious of me being back in Quito and told me about all the cool bars to hang out in.

And so, the internal debate from years ago arose in my head again: go out partying or do homework? Yup, I'm back in college.

I decided on the latter because Scott also told me the importance of knowing Spanish at the border crossings -- and messing around with immigration isn't something I want to fuck up since I look Latino anyway. I went back to my hostel to study -- but ended up vegging out in the TV lounge with my roommates, watching Loco por Mary (There's Something About Mary) on CineFOX.

Yup. It's just like college.