I know our brains are not as young... as they once were.

James: But, that's what I love about it. It's because learning a foreign language actually stimulates so many parts of the brain that normally we don't stimulate. It increases the agility of your brain. It's the neurons firing, the synapses going. It improves your IQ, I mean, that's what a lot of the studies say. And we look for ways to keep our minds agile, to keep our minds sharp, and learning a foreign language is a great way to do it.

Now, to answer your question. I am here at a foreign language school. I intend to do four hours a day. It's one on one instruction. So, we start off at the beginning, just figuring out where I am and what things I need to work on.

I pretty much have two books that I've been using. And so I've been asking my professors to tailor my instructions to match the books that I am using so I can really work independently as well as having that guided instruction in the class room.

It's a great, great experience. Because for one, I'm having the classes so I'm getting the formal grammar. But, for two, once I leave, and I go and want to have lunch, well I need to speak Spanish. Once I leave lunch and I want to go and do some traveling, well I need to speak Spanish.

Once I come back home, because I'm staying with the host family right now. If I want to communicate with the host family I need to speak Spanish. And so constantly I'm practicing what I've been learning in my classes.

Well, I live in a house with the windows facing towards the east where the sun rises. So, the sun generally wakes me up around six o'clock. I, you know, shower and shave, and by around seven thirty, if I'm not reading or watching a little TV, at seven thirty breakfast is ready.

Now, every day, every day that I eat in my host family's house, every meal whether it's breakfast or dinner there's always some different type of fruit juice that in reality I've never tried in my life. I think, I recognized one of the juices that we tried. And that was, you know, orange juice.

But, apart from that, you know, we don't drink passion fruit juice all the time. We definitely don't drink mora or blackberry juice. They have tomatoes that grow on trees. Literally tomatoes, Mrs. Arnold, that grow on trees. They call it tomato del arbol. You know, tomato of the tree, and we'll have the juice from that.

I think, they gave us all the cornucopias fruits that they have here. We'll have some sort of fresh juice, some sort of croissants, or bread, with butter and they're homemade marmalade, some tea or a coffee ? Just a basic breakfast, to start you off.

I feel like a big kid because the mom says, "Oh, you can't leave without taking these fruits," or "You can't leave without taking this bread," or "You can't leave without taking this to eat or this to drink." I almost feel like a kid who has a mom packing their lunch for school.

Go off and right around 8:30, I need to be in school. It takes about 15 minutes for me to walk from where I live to the school. Once I get in, I say hello to everybody, and then go up to my classroom, go to my area where I have this one-on-one instruction. We work for about two hours and then we take a 30 minute break.

I go out. I get a chance to relax and talk English with all the other students that are there that are just like me, English speakers who are trying to work on their Spanish, decide what we're going to do afterwards - if we're going to lunch somewhere, if we're going to go on this trip here, or this trip there. After those 30 minutes, I go back to class for another hour or hour and a half.

During that time, just like in regular school, we're sitting there and the conversation can go from politics, events that are happening in the city, to where we're having Thanksgiving, to events that happened to other countries, to some of the celebrations that they have had here in this country that are a little bit different than what we celebrate in the States.

By the time it's all over, we've gone through grammar, I've done some exercises, we've had a lot of conversation, and I'm pretty much set to go home and do what ever homework that I might need to do for that night. Twelve?thirty rolls around, I break off. Generally, we go to eat with either some of the teachers or some of the other students.

Every day has been different, I can't really say I've had a routine in the afternoons. Sometimes we'll go to what we call the teleferico, it's a skylift or a chairlift, that's actually here in the city that will take you up one of the mountains that are close to us. We'll go up there and walk around, and just look at the beautiful views of the city.

Some days we are running and hiding from the rain because, my God, it rains almost every day here. That's something that I'm not used to. Some days we'll go in Shirley Ritt's coffee shop.

Some days we'll go to the Central Historical, or the historic center of Quito, old town, and tour some of the churches, tour some of the museums. This is the Capital, and there's just a ton of culture here. Some days we'll just pack it up and go and play some games, shoot some pool, or go to the park. We go to the park and play some basketball.

Generally, I'll make it home by around six or seven, and that's when we'll have dinner. Dinner is always some sort of rice with some sort of vegetables. Me, I do eat fish, but I don't eat other types of meat, so she'll generally cook some fish for me, or make some sort of egg dish, or just some other vegetables with beans, or they call it minestra, a bean dish. After that, it just depends on what's going on in the night.

I'm a traveler, so there's a lot of night life here. I'll check my bags and head on out the door, and go to a club, go to a bar, relax, talk more English, talk more Spanish. Come back home and start over the next day.

James: ... Currently, I don't have a wife, I don't have children, and so I have the freedom to actually pull myself away from an institution. Ecuador is not a very expensive country to live in, so the U.S. dollar goes a long way here.

I decided that this was just the perfect time for me to pull away for a year, to really make some decisions about my life, and definitely, while I'm out here, to work on one skill for sure, that I know is going to be essential for the future of the United States, anybody working in the United States, and that's the ability to speak Spanish.

The reality is, unless you are living in a small town in the Midwest or in the West, you are going to come in contact with a lot of Spanish speakers...

[audio breaks up]

James: ... to have the opportunity to learn it, I have the opportunity to gain the skill that will be of some service to me and to the people that I work with, for the rest of my life. Why not take this opportunity right now, to go down that road.

I chose Ecuador for quite a few reasons. One, I know.

[audio breaks up]

James: ...for a while and do some traveling, and that's due to our active nerve sense and the climate, wherever. I could go down, I'm not far from the coast, where I can go and enjoy the beaches, and where I can go into the tropical rainforest and see some of the most geographically diverse places that exist in the world.

Ecuador is one of those countries that definitely fits that mold, but beyond that, beyond just the sheer beauty of the country, beyond the beauty of the rainforests, the amazons, beyond the beauty of the mountains, the Andes, the Galapagos Islands - that's off the coast of Ecuador.

Beyond that, this place has one of the most clearest, more of a slow speaking dialects. The grain isn't as heavy here as it would be if I went to Argentina, if I went to Chile, if I stayed in Mexico, a little closer to California. The language is a lot, I don't want to say pure, because every region you can call it pure, but it's a lot clearer, and it's a lot easier to understand.

If I'm going to get started, why not start in a place that has the clarity of language, a pace that's a little bit slower for people like me who are learning the language, a place where the dollar really would go a long way, a place that is just amazingly beautiful, and there's surprises around every single corner.

Why not go into a place that just has this rich cultural legacy, right here in Quito, Ecuador, the capital, one of the capitals of ancient Indian Empires, is also now the Capital of the country.

Now, let's hear some more about study abroad in Ecuador.