Expectations

View of Quito

  

When I arrived, I had no idea what to expect, but I did have this idea of a small country with a lot of farmland and very spread out houses.  I couldn't have been more wrong. As you can see from this picture of Quito, the capital is probably as big as Washington D.C., if not bigger.  The houses are packed in as close as they can get.  Many of the residents actually live on top of stores or in buildings that are connected.  You might ask then, how do people get any privacy?  The privacy they do have is guarded very carefully. For example, if you have a small yard just big enough to fit a car into, you would build a stonewall around that area to protect it.  Not with barbed wire, but with shards of glass cemented on top of the wall. I believe this is to ensure that there is no question of who owns what.  I’m sure that being close to so many people creates problems at times.  At least it definitely would for Americans. Here in Ecuador, the government is not as stable as it is back at home. The walls could be for protection again riots. Also, it seemed as though they biggest houses have the most security. With a police force that not many people trust, they take things into their own hands to protect themselves. This is different from the united states, because we have a lot of trust in our police force.  I’m not sure if we are naive for this trust of if it is just a cultural difference.