OM - Day 23

Today is the last day in Ecuador. I fly out to Santiago, Chile via Lima, Peru tonight at 6:35.

My experience here in Ecuador has been quite different. Definitely more American than Mexico, but much more tighter security. Since I stayed in an apartment instead of with a family, I didn't get as involved in the Ecuadorian culture. I did have a couple classic meals, though, so at least I got a taste of the food. (Yesterday for lunch I had McDonald's...I had a McFlurry and it was GOOD! I plan on eating lots of ice cream when I get home.)

In my time here I built two computers for the Ecuador office. They are dual-core Pentiums with 1GB DDR2 RAM, 160GB hard drive. Yesterday was extremely long. In addition to building the second computer, I stayed until 9 or 10 waiting for their IT guy to come and show me what's wrong with backups. Apparently, he tried making backups of their server onto DVDs, but the DVDs would not write...only CDs. A quick glance at the front of the case told me the problem: the DVD drive is a DVD-ROM (i.e., it can't write DVDs). Backups would take about 10 DVDs or 50 CDs, so I said, it would be better just to back everything up onto another hard drive. So we waited 1-2 hours (I lost track of time) for 65GB of information to copy over USB. I was about ready to leave it for the night when I noticed that it was almost finished, so I stayed a couple more minutes. I guess this is their first backup in years (maybe forever?). Perhaps I'll install an extra hard drive and back up everything once more just to be safe. They can then have two copies of their data from the time the strange American was there.

Anyways, my flight isn't all day this time (thankfully!) but I arrive in Chile after 2:00am. That's...not pleasant. But then again, it could be nicer since the airport won't be as crowded. Pray for safe travels and easy customs! Time to continue my adventures in the southern hemisphere. (Oh, plus, it's going to be colder in Chile! weather.com says 50-60 degree weather! Yay winter!)