Three cultural lessons

My failed interview yesterday was in a city adjoining Quito, Colocoton, about an hour from where I live. Though the internship was a flop, I learned a few things along the way.

1. City people are aggressive drivers
In the heavy morning traffic, we attempted to merge onto a different highway three lanes away. Quitenos never pay attention to directional signals. Honking is a frequiently used signal, which can mean "get going", "Hi!", or "Watch out or I´m going to run you down." In this instance, neither signal was enough to convince people to let us across three lanes of standing traffic. The next step? Stick your arm out the window so no one can go past without swiping it off, and wave it around so other drivers know you are moving over NOW.

2. Ecaudoreans don´t know their way around their cities
After our hour-long journey, we spend another 20 minutes searching for the location of the interview. We drove around for a few minutes, stopped for directions, drove again. Quite a few people, including the taxi driver, had no idea where to direct us, and the rest could only give a vague "a couple blocks mas o menos, and go left." As confirmation of these findings, yesterday afternoon, our guide told us that our barrio was 2 or 3 blocks away. It turned out to be 20 minutes and a massive hill away.

3. The pace of life is slower
20 miutes wandering around, lost in a city would make your average American explode. Also, if this were America, I would have been buckling down at my internship within the first 3 days of my arrival. Here I am, a week and a half in, and I´m still exploring options!