Keys

I was talking with a friend of mine, who lives in the States, the other day and I realized how funny my key chain would have looked to me, when I got here the first time, several years ago.  I was trying to describe how many keys I had and it's a lot and I actually need to add at least one more!!  I open the door to my apartment and have to open a gate, kinda like a screen door, but without the screen.  So that's one door I need to lock and we need to get a padlock for the gate (the at least one more key that I need to add).  Then, because I live on the second floor, I go down the stairs and unlock the door at the bottom.  After that door is the gate in the wall around the house, which has a padlock.  Then I either walk or take a taxi to the preschool (depends on how tired I am and how early I leave the house!)  At the preschool, I have to unlock the padlock at the gate, then unlock the front door.  I also have the key to the back door, which leads out to the patio for recess time.  When I'm done at the preschool, I walk the few blocks over to the main building.  At the main building I have to unlock the gate and then the rest of the doors are unlocked by the time I get there, but I have the keys for them.  The front door to the school, the gate leading to the stairs, the door to the office floor (off the stairs) and the door to my office/teacher's room.  I also have the key to my bedroom door and the filing cabinet at school, on my key chain.  All in all, I have 13 keys (I think) on my key chain!!!  Actually, I also have another key, but nobody can figure out what it goes to, we've tried it in all the doors and cabinets that we can, both at the apartment and at school, but it doesn't fit anything.  Of course, that doesn't mean that it doesn't go to a door that we have somewhere, but it could be that it's just a really bad copy. :)  Oh, I also have the key to the library, but that's kept separate from the rest, although I'm not really sure why. :)  I really don't have all that many, compared to many people that I know, but it sure seems a lot compared to what I had in the States!!  There I had my apartment door key, my car key, the key to my classroom, the key to my parents' house and the key to my grandparents' house, nothing else!
Before I ever came down here, to Ecuador, I never really thought about something as simple as keys being a cultural difference, but it truly is, or at least appears that way to me.  Every single door has a separate key, and different kinds of doors use different kinds of keys.  Metal doors have a long key, with a rounded head, while wooden doors have a long key too, but the head is more like part of an octagon or some other multi-sided shape and the padlock keys have a rounded head, but are really short.  Apparently random little details fascinate me. :)  I'd be silly and take a picture to put up, but my memory card for my camera is being a stinker and not downloading to my computer so I can't transfer any pictures over, till I figure out what the problem is. :(