August 16, 2015: How to Arrive in Quito

If you ever decide to pick up and move to another country, I strongly recommend doing it this way:

What you want to do is, station a really good friend of yours down there a couple of years beforehand. Go and visit them once or twice, get the lay of the land, do some sightseeing.

Then, once this friend has had time to settle in, pave the way, find all the best spots for fresh juice, ceviche, plantain pizza etc. etc., give them a ring and have them hook you up with a job interview for a sweet position in your target country. Once all the paperwork is sorted out, this friend can pick you up at the airport, bring you to her home, feed you a welcome dinner of fondue and champagne, introduce you to her dog, show you the neighborhood, and help you find an apartment, all within 24 hours of arriving in the country.

Not only should your friend be fully bilingual, it would also be helpful if she has already gone through the cultural transition a couple times and knows how to translate for you and intervene on your behalf and provide safety and city-navigation tips in a way that is helpful and funny and not condescending. She will also have a good sense of when it is time to go back to her house, post up on the couch and chill out with some home renovation reality shows (in English.)

As an added advantage, make sure your friend is married to a local. Then, they can bring you over to the family’s house some Saturday afternoon to meet the cousins and friends and aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews, and you can have a beautiful home-cooked meal with them. (The family will be totally cool with the fact that, although you can indicate your general understanding of what is said in Spanish through appropriately timed smiles and nods, for all practical purposes, you are essentially a mute, other than to say hola, si, no, gracias, and ciao. And even though you’ll still feel much too timid to actually try to converse in any meaningful way, the family will still be super duper nice to you and make you feel welcome, and not make you feel as if you are intellectually challenged.)

Ideally, your good friends/hosts/native guides could also take you to the Sunday soccer game and teach you how to cheer like a local (hint: it involves a lot of profanity). And then maybe they can finish out the weekend for you with an outdoor world music concert with a view of Quito’s many mountainsides all lit up at night, and top it all off with consumption of a delicious fried dough product dipped in honey.

Anyway, I’m not saying you have to do it this way if you decide to move to another country. I’m just saying that so far, this way is working well.