What Are The Chances? (Pretty Good Apparently)

Quito is huge.  And when I say huge, I mean it in an M.C. Escher kind of way.  It goes on and on and you would swear you are going in a straight line, but then you end up right back where you started.  Quito is sandwiched in a rather narrow valley, and as such, has extended down the valley to the point that driving the city lengthwise from one side to the other (w/ good traffic) STILL takes 2-3 hours. (While going width wise would be maybe 20 min)  It's gotten to the point that I have stopped trying to figure out how it appears to mess with the time-space continuum, and simply accept that once we enter Quito, it's still an hour drive to our destination.  (Even though you can see the destination from the where you are)  So in a city like this, it's kind of increadible how you can run into people from the stangest places.  Example:  I would always run into Daniel, a Spanish teacher I know, along one specific road, at different times, on different days, usually because of a spur-of-the-moment trek to someplace.  Or Gen, another volunteer, who I ran into consecutivly in different places on different days, as she was exploring the town.  But my favorite has to be the American family I ran into on the Teleferico, who were only visiting for a few days.
                                          

     The Teleferico is a cable car that will take you from the valley (at roughly 10,000 feet) to the top of  the mountain range that cradles Quito (13,400 feet).  From there, you can view the city, take horse rides, or trek up a volcano.  I happened to run into these folks as they were talking about things to do in Quito.  They had just arrived from (Tennesse? or Texas?) and had decided to get the Teleferico out of the way (poor brave fools) ((don't do this, the altitude will kick your butt)).  After talking about things to do and places to shop in Quito and beyond, we parted ways.  The next day I had school, and as soon as it was finished, I went to Centro Historico to do some work at the Public Library.  Who should I run into in the Library building, but that same American family.  Seriously, nearly 2 million people living in an M. C. Escher painting, and I keep running into the same people.  I decided that it was too much of a coincidince and I needed a picture (see above).  Maybe it's just me, but I run into people in the strangest places, in other cities, in other states, even in other countries.  It's like I have a homing beacon on people I have met, and then I will find them.  They could be trekking through the middle of the Amazon rainforest, miles from human settlement,cutting through brush with machetes to make a path, and I would run into them.  Considering how often the odds tilt in my favor, I should try Vegas one of these days.

A Frank Assessment of Quito: Part 2
Quito is difficult to describe accurately, even if you have visited.  The best way to describe it is to take a large city in America, (like Chicago) and imagine cutting it up into itty bitty pieces, then sticking it all back together with no regard to order or place; that is Quito.  Small pieces of middle-class or upper middle class sandwiched between a slum building or an underground nightclub or a hole in the wall shop.  And then often buildings will have a business in them, say a gym or health clinic, and will also have apartments or a full house squirreled away somewhere within their hallways.  Houses are built on top of other houses, jenga-ed together in very inventive ways.  Also, you can't tell by looking if a house is poor or well off.  There is a law that when you finish building a house or building, you have to pay a tax.  For this reason, many people live in houses that are half finished.  The bottom one or two levels may be complete, but the upper levels may be nothing more than concrete, open to the air without windows or doors.  My house has rebar sticking out on the roof, as do the majority of buildings in Quito.  This way, people can say that they're not done building a house, they still need to add a floor or two. (Even if they have no intention of doing so)  It makes it very hard to know if a house is being built, falling apart, old, new, or even inhabited. 

A three level house that also utilizes the roof of a store off to the side; notice that the stairs are outside.

Across the street from my house.  The back is a house, the blue part is a nightclub, and the front (other street) is several shops for mechanical parts.

     The North of Quito is a little different.  It looks more like America, with space between buildings (When I saw that all the buildings had space let between them, my first though was, "How wasteful."  Shows how long I've been here.) and fences that go up to the sidewalk.  As a result, everything behind the gates is green grass and very modern (and expensive looking) buildings and products, while in the street beyond it is graffiti and street stalls and sellers hawking merchandise to passing cars.  It's a completely different world behind those walls, and if you drive everywhere, you never need leave that world.