he Spanish school is the size of a two-story house, with classrooms upstairs and the downstairs always bustling with people sputtering around in Spanish and then giving up and collapsing into loud English. Before today's group excursion to climb Pichincha, an inactive volcano in Quito, I didn't know anyone. I would check my email silently and pour myself a cup of absurdly strong coffee and sort of mill about the different, boisterous conversations, trying to find a way in. Everyone seemed too young, too beautiful, too whatever. I'd only been there two days, but I had already begun to despair of never meeting anyone.
That changed as I trudged up Pichincha, which just might be Spanish for "goddamn, that hurt my knees." Mark is a music teacher in Las Vegas with an 18-year-old son. Ellen works for the Texas Department of Health in Austin -- she'd even read a story I wrote about teaching high school. The young-and-restless impression came from a group of 20 first-year medical students, who all happen to look like Real World cast members. One of them is Jason, handsome in a J.Crew kind of way, who immediately rubbed me the wrong way because he looks like every macho, preppy guy who went to my high school. There is a reason for that. Jason actually did go to my high school; his cousin was my best friend in third grade. Today, the world is feeling small.
The climb up Pichincha is harder than I expected. It's 4700 meters, and while I don't really know if that's so high, our route was straight up. This was climbing, not hiking, which seems to be second nature to all but a handful of us, who lag behind and commiserate about our legs, our sides, our breath. Anytime one of the others offers some sunny encouragement to hurry up, one girl among us yells, "Fock off, you muthahfuckahs!" That's how I know she's from England.
But the view is amazing. Nothing I can describe. When the path levels off, we walk alongside fat black pigs and cows and sheep and wild dogs, all wet and nappy. For encouragement, my Spanish teacher Zulma keeps telling me that the view at the top is the best. But soon, the clouds roll in, making our clothes wet and the temperature drop. This milky white mist hangs over everything, and you can't see the person in front of you, far less all of sprawling Quito. At the top, one student is complaining that he came all this way and there is no view. All I can think is holy Christ, I am walking in the clouds.