Student: Romel Torres and Ricardo Ponce Date: 05/02/2014

Living in small town or a large city.The city where we live could be the funniest place of this earth, or could be the most

boring, it all depends on what side of the story you are. Actually, my friend and I just had a conversation about whether his hometown, Quito, or my hometown, Loja, is the best place to live in. The main aspects of our conversation were mainly centered on three aspects related to the lifestyle in our hometowns.

First of all, we started arguing about life style. Quito is the second biggest city of Ecuador, it is located of the center of the country, in the Ecuadorian highland. Quito is lively and its population has increased quickly in the last ten years. As a result, the streets are always crowded and the traffic at peak hours is insufferable. People on the streets are always in a hurry, and the noisy and the stress is the typical day by day especially at modern Quito, which is located in the north of the city. Loja, on the other hand, is located in the south of the country, in the Ecuadorian highland. Loja is quite and in spite of its population has increased, it is still one of the smallest city of Ecuador. Its streets are mostly free and the traffic is not a problem because a lot of people use bicycles. Loja citizens are not exposed to the noise and stress of traffic so they live their life in harmony.

We also talked about important issues like air pollution in both cities. As we stated before, Quito has increased its population in a great manner, and nowadays a lot of Quito citizens drive their own cars. The growing number of cars on the streets as well as the public transportation is causing air pollution. But the most worrying issue is forest fires especially on summer. Forest fires are also polluting the air in Quito, they are provoked by the irresponsible behavior of some bad citizens. In contrast, Loja is still a small city and the number of cars is not considerably big. The air in the city is consider as the best, because Loja is surrounded by a forest of pine and laurel. Besides, more a more people in Loja in now using their bicycles to go to their schools or works.

Eventually, our hometowns have different leisure activities. Quito is the center of the world physically speaking and it is considered as a “World Cultural Heritage”. There are all kind of things to do there. Great shows are preformed all the time, especially music festivals, rock concerts, and performing arts like theater, poetry, dancing and cine. Quito is also the official city for soccer matches and people from all the country go there to support our soccer team. The nightlife in Quito is a special time for stressed people to have fun and relaxation. While Quito’s nightlife is lively and funny, Loja’s nightlife is quite and boring. Instead of big concerts and great artistic shows people in Loja prefer to celebrate and have fun at home parties. They also attend to performing arts, and most of them are related with culture and tradition. At weekends, people in Loja go to some parks, to the zoo, or visit touristic places like Vilcabamba’s hot springs.

At the end, my friend and I understood that each of our cities is special for us, and we won’t change them for any other city in the world. Quito is in the center of the country while Loja is the border so that they could not be more different. Besides, Quito struggles with streets crowed by people and cars. On the other hand Loja enjoys walking and driving their bicycles. My friend and I live in different places and in spite of all the differences of each city we are

proud to live there, it is not important if it is polluted or clean, noisy or peaceful, our hometown is our home.