Who know only half the elevators went to the first floor?

Classes are officially in session. And let me tell you, it is difficult to be a foreign exchange student in a school of 10,000.

Here's how day one went: We arrived at 8:30 and met our friend Gabriel. They don't post classes until the first day of classes here, so we were directed to piso 9 of one of the main buildings. And guess what? Our class wasn't listed... so we went to the international studies building (10th floor) to get help. To our dismay, our class was canceled due to a personal problem with our profe. So we decided to just sit in on a random class and had to climb back up 9 flights of stairs in the other building (climbing stairs at 9,300 feet is far more difficult that one would imagine). We were hoping to sit in on a sustainable development class but no one showed up to that classroom. We ended up walking into a random room, asking the professor what the class was and siting in. It was a history/philosophy of the mind class... not my cup of tea.

Our second class looks promising -- it's a class about social issues in Ecuador for example children workers, afroecuatonrianos and the environment. Plus it's only 6 weeks!

Here's how our second day went: Again, we got there at 8:30 for a 9:00 class that we wanted to sit in on. We went to the 9th floor, the class wasn't listed, we went to the 10th floor floor to the international department and again, the class was canceled. This time for good. So we went back to the 9th floor of the other building and decided to sit in on a fauna class which was supposedly in Aula 101 (room 101). One would assume this means aula 101 in the same building, since that's how it is for ALL the rest of the classes listed. Back in the elevator we went but there was no floor one! Here planta baja is the main floor so I thought maybe floor 2 was really floor 1. Not the case. We discovered that half of the elevators don't stop at floor 1.... Anyway, we finally found floor one but aula 101 was the secretary's office. Back to floor 9 we went to talk to someone in the offices on floor 9 and she informed us that aula 101 was the correct room, but it was in in engineering building across campus. The class started at 9. Nobody here actually gets to class until 9:10. But at this point it was already 9:20ish. EPIC FAIL. We didn't go to class. Instead we went and got our ID cards and became official PUCE students. And we had to get fingerprinted! I found out later from a friend that they didn't... Guess this means that we have to behave ourselves : )

-- Amanda