Two things to note. First, I am talking about the week of September 14-18, so don’t get confused. I’m still catching up. Second, I am counting the week as week two since it is the second week I have been with my host family, even though I have been in country for just under three weeks (scary thought. I know). And, warning, this is a long one. No one is forcing you to read it, but it has some good background information.
The second week can be best described as the slow week of frustration. You have started to make a routine for yourself, but things seemed to slow down big time (it varies from family to family, obviously, but a lot of the students would agree with this assessment). At the same time, a good number of people started to become frustrated with their Spanish. Think about it. We have been making fools of ourselves now for over a week. For the first week it is easy to laugh it off when you cannot communicate to well with the people around you. However, the second week you just start to get frustrated. The people here don’t see you as a person with a personality or anything else. It definitely started to eat away at me. The good news is that the 2 co-directors of our program have done this for years and have a pretty good feel for how the average student is going to feel each week.
So, during the week we had an afternoon session where we talked about ‘language learning’. During the session they talked about how, in general, people learn a foreign language in a foreign country. Picture yourself as a dot and the knowledge begins to accumulate around you in the shape of a circle. However, you don’t feel like anything has changed what-so-ever. During this time you have some fantastic conversations with people and you have some conversations where you wonder if you have ever learned Spanish before in your life. Eventually you make a leap up to the next level and the process repeats itself (although your starting skills are at a slightly higher level). I definitely came out of this talk feeling a little better, but that only lasted for a little while until the frustration overpower the logic.
Also, during this week I started to become extremely tired. I would get home from class and need to talk a 1-2 hour nap just to be able to make it through to bed time. Some might disagree with me, but I firmly believe that learning a new language and being surround by it 24-7 definitely wears you out. Your brain is like a sponge, but it can only absorb so much before it needs a break.
However, the week did also include a couple of interesting moments…
Monday night I found myself talking to my mom about the machista culture in Ecuador. So, what is the machista culture. Basically, there is a train of thought in Ecuador with a very defined role for the woman in a house. Women are there to look after the children, prepare the meals, keep the house clean and cater to the men in the family. Under this train of thought the men do not help in the kitchen (not even clear their plates from the table), essentially keep the women from going out (after all their role is IN the house) and are the authority in the house. Not all men follow this train of thought, but I’ve noticed it is present to at least a small degree in most men. During our conversation on Monday night my mom tells me that the reason she divorced her husband is because he was extremely machista and it was passed onto the kids. All I can say is that THIS EXPLAINS A LOT. After dinner my 2 brothers don’t even make an attempt to clear their places. They just watch as I clear mine. And, there is a weird power struggle going on since my mom is the authority figure, but deep down inside my brothers are hardwired against having a female authority figure. Hard to explain, I know, but it is noticeable.
Tuesday night I went to parent’s night with my mom at Martin’s school. I sat down at one of the desks and looked around… As I am sure you could guess I was the only white skinned, blond haired person in the room. However, the teacher still came over to me, gave me a piece of paper asking which students parent I was and wholeheartedly expected me to fill it out. I don’t know what she was thinking, but I think she would have known if she had a gringo kid in her class!!!!
And, the fun wasn’t over yet. Raul and Martin’s dad (ex-husband to my mom) was in town and wanted to take us (his two children and me) out to dinner. When he stopped by the first time (earlier in the night) I learned that my mom and him aren’t too good at talking face-to-face (at least one wall separated them at each time), but were still hindered while they shouted at each other. Anyways, the second time he came by my mom was out of the house and we went out with him to Pizza Hut for dinner. What ensued was probably one of the most awkward dinners of my life (but, at least I had been craving pizza!). Raul got up to go to the bathroom shortly after we sat down and the crosshairs of my father were turned to me… Two things I learned quickly. One, when he gets upset he talks really fast. Two, gets upset when he talks about his ex-wife in general and her new boyfriend in particular. So, there I am sitting at the table while he starts to grill me about the new boyfriend. Where does he live? What’s he like? Have you seen him? However, all of this was in extremely rapid Spanish and I looked like a complete fool as I attempted to answer his questions (mostly just telling him I didn’t know anything) and repeatedly asked him to slow down. Anyways, Raul came back to the table and I returned to the tactic of only making eye contact with the food on my plate. I made it through dinner, but not before my brother dragged me into the argument on his side and in the telling of a lie… His dad especially doesn’t like the point that his ex-wife ever goes out with her friends or her boyfriend in the evening. After all, her job is to stay at home and watch Martin. I don’t know which side of this argument you would fall on, but it was awkward non-the-less.
Thursday I went to a museum in Quito with my Spanish class. However, getting there was not as easy as I would have expected… I have been repeatedly encountering a problem with directions. I stop in the street and ask someone for directions to a location and am sent in the ‘correct’ direction by an ever-so-helpful Ecuadorian… However, two blocks later I stop and ask someone else and am sent right back in the direction I just came from. Some people might think that this has to do with my lack of ability to speak Spanish. However, that’s not the case (at least 99% of the time). So, I have been trying to find another explanation. Although my mom here tells me that I must be asking ignorant people and should ask people who are dressed in nicer clothing (there really is a strong classist attitude here), I think it has to do with how helpful the Ecuadorians want to be. After all, you can’t be helpful if you do not know the answer to the question. So, instead, I think that they take their best guess and present it as fact. I guess that is nice, but it has led to me getting quite lost on a couple of occasions.
So, there I am in Quito on Thursday morning at 9:20 AM. I got off the bus coming from Los Chillos and knew I was within a couple of blocks of my destination (the group was meeting at 9:30 and we were entering the museum at 10 AM). I ask a man where the ‘Museo Nacional: Banco Nacional del Ecuador ‘ is and am sent on my way. But, today I am smarter than I have been in the past. I have learned from my mistakes. So, I stop every couple of blocks as I walk along and ask for directions again and again. Time is ticking (it’s 9:45) and I am walking at a brisk pace down the street. At 9:55 I show up in front of my destination… And I realize I am at the actual National Bank, not the museum I was aiming for. There I am, looking dazed and confused, when I make my new – unwanted – friend. An older, homeless lady comes up to me and asks what the time is. Before I know it I am in a conversation with her and she invites me over to her house for lunch… ‘Bad idea’ I tell myself, so I say thank you and walk away. She follows. ‘Can she come to my house for lunch then?’. ‘No’ I say again. She starts grabbing me by the arm (it wasn’t forceful, but it is still making me nervous). My hands shoot to my pockets just in case this was a distraction for a pickpocket. With her in tow telling me she can be mi companera on my journey (and me telling her I don’t want help, none-the-less a companera), I walk up to the bank and ask a gentleman for directions. He points me in the right direction (I really mean it this time) and I cross the street still trying to lose my new friend and looking for a cab (I was petrified she was going to get in the cab with me). I turn around… And realized I had lost her! I flag down a cab right as she reappears grabbing at my arm again, frantically climb in (hitting my head in the process) and slam the door behind me. I was glad to be in a cab, away from mi companera, even though we drove back the way I came to a building I had passed 30 minutes earlier, was charged double the amount I should have been (because of ‘traffic’) and didn’t meet up with my group until 10:15 AM.
When I got home on Thursday I stopped by the little corner shop down the street. By the time I left I was determined to have made a new friend. I had been scouting out my target for the previous couple of days. The store owner is an elderly gentleman who spends a lot of his time simply sitting in the shop watching tv (it’s not that busy of a store). So, I figured I could go in, buy a Coke and talk to him for a while. What ensued beat all of my wildest expectations. First, this guy must be pretty bored. Second, he likes to talk. I ended up staying in the store for about an hour talking to him about different events. Most importantly, though, I was talking in Spanish. This gives me a place I can go in the afternoons to talk even more Spanish when most of my family is either busy or out of the house.
By Friday I was overcome by frustration with Spanish. It’s hard to explain, but it was pretty bad. I was just happy that we would be going to INTAG, a canopy rainforest north of Quito, with my group of gringos for 4 days of relaxation and ENGLISH!!!
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Ambato: Voting, Sightseeing and a Lunch to Remember
Sorry I’ve dropped the ball this past week and a bit. Expect a flurry of posts in the next couple of days while I get caught up.
Saturday morning (September 12) we left to go visit the grandparents and my mom’s brother’s family in the city of Ambato. Ambato is the capital of the province of Tungurahua, is referred to as the ‘Cradle of the Three Juans’ since it was the birthplace of three notable Ecuadorians and is overlooked by the active Tungurahua volcano which destroyed a good portion of the valley when it last erupted in the mid-twentieth century. It is also the home of my mom and her family.
After lunch I walked to the nearby school (colegio) with Raul and his grandfather so that his grandfather could vote (for his wife) in a local election. I am not entirely sure what the local election was for. They were explaining to me what is essentially a local credit union, but I could not figure out why there were elections for it. I get the feeling that at least in Ambato the credit union is essentially a government entity. But, the coolest part was seeing the electoral process in action in another country. We always read about ballot stuffing and all of the things that go wrong in the newspapers. But, I feel like we don’t hear enough about the successes of the democratic processes in other countries. In the school there were over 25 voting stations, each one dealing with a different range in the alphabet. At each voting station the voter had to show their ID, which was checked against a list of names, before they were given a paper ballot and the voter could circle their choices (up to 3 for this election). And, even more interesting, voting is required of all Ecuadorian citizens (there are exceptions for age, travelling, disability, etc.). If you do not vote (you can prove that you voted since everyone receives a paper ‘receipt’) you cannot get a passport (which allows you to leave the country), get an identity card (which is necessary to get a job) and get a driver’s license, among other things. Basically, if you don’t vote the vast majority of your civil rights are suspended… But, as a result, the voter turnout is close to 100% (if you subtract those who are not required to vote).
Saturday night we ended up at my mom’s brother’s house for la merienda. For those of you who have never heard of merienda before… A brief explanation.
In Ecuador almuerzo is by far the largest meal of the day. Dinner, which is called merienda (unless you are having a formal dinner in which case it is called cena) is typically much smaller. At its most basic it consists of bread and coffee/tea/hot chocolate, but can vary a lot from family to family. Tonight, for example, I had two small ham and cheese sandwiches and a cup of coffee. And sometimes it can consist of some more carbs (rice, potatoes, etc.) with meat. However, regardless of the meal, Ecuadorians LOVE, LOVE, LOVE carbs. It is not uncommon for every portion on your plate with the exception of one to be carbohydrates. The best example I have so far… One day I was having pasta with chicken for lunch. However, just in case that was not enough, they gave me a side plate of rice. I was shocked, but… I still ate the rice.
Back to the main story… We were at my mom’s brother’s house for merienda and I was talking to them in Spanish trying to explain what my dad does (some of you should know how hard that can be… Even in English). However, I was amazed by how supportive the family (and everyone else I have spoken to) has been while I butcher their language. I can’t figure out why the people here are so supportive. In Spain I have been outright laughed at in the past, but here everyone is extremely nice while I learn Spanish. I think part of it is the fact that very few adults I have met can speak English. However, even the kids who can speak English well (there are a decent number) never say anything negative. For lack of another reason, I’ll just write it off with the general kindness and helpfulness of every Ecuadorian I have met so far.
The following morning we set out on our tour of the surrounding area. We started off driving through an indigenous village and then people in the car started to mention banos. Now, for those of you who know Spanish banos means bathrooms. So, there I was, sitting in the car waiting to stop somewhere so that people could use the bathroom. However, we kept on driving. Obviously I was missing something, but I couldn’t figure out what. So we continued on our tour. We drove to a bridge from where you could look down several hundred feet and see a raging river below (I was later told that it was a favorite spot for suicides... It’s probably better that they tell me all of these things only after we leave) and then to a lookout with a cable car (open air with room for about say 4 people) across the river (we did not take the cable car, but it did look pretty cool). From there we drove through a couple of tunnels and we were suddenly in the Amazon (el oriente). In el oriente we stopped at a water fall before we piled back into the car. I had personally been hoping to walk around some more and see the sights on foot, but the my preferred being a ‘car’ tourist.
And then we had lunch… Some more background.
Some of the real treats about studying abroad in a developing country are the health concerns that there are. During orientation we were essentially told that we should expect to get sick while we are here. And, when I say sick, I mean sick. We were all given rehydration salts (the Spanish saying here goes that you can’t die if you drink lots of water and consume the salts) to use when we get sick (and the ‘good news’ is that there is only one stomach sickness we can get here where you actually dehydrate faster than you can physically rehydrate) and were told of what foods to avoid (fruits and vegetables without thick outer skins, street food and water). These sicknesses normally only last 24 hours (of both vomiting and the runs), but for at least a couple of those hours you feel like you are going to die and if you don’t keep drinking water you run the risk of passing out (sounds fun. doesn’t it?). So, we all have this little piece of not so comforting information while we go about our daily lives here.
So, we stop at a restaurant in the town of Banos for lunch and order our meals. My first warning sign was seeing heads of lettuce being stored on the ground in one of the rooms off to the side. Before the food arrived I was already feeling a little iffy about the food. Then, the soup came out. There I am looking at my soup with little pieces of vegetables floating around (another thing that caught my attention). Looking for an excuse to get out of eating this first course I ask what kind of soup it is… I am told, “oh, it’s chicken soup.” Where’s the chicken, I ask myself. I proceed to push my spoon to the bottom of the soup and drag up a piece of ‘chicken’. Now, I am hardly a chicken expert, but looking at this meat I knew this chicken had NOT lead a good OR healthy life (you probably think I am over reacting, but you should have seen this meat!!!). For the next couple of minutes I play with my soup, just hoping it would go away. Finally, I fill up my spoon, put it to my lips and take a taste. Before anything even registers I am putting the spoon back in the bowl and telling everyone I don’t like the soup. Next, the fish I ordered comes out and I happily note that the fish was well cooked with its skin still on (by this point I am completely paranoid, but when you eat well cooked fish with its skin still on it is relatively safe. Normally skin, fried, cooked until crispy = good). Using my rice as a buffer zone between my fish and the vegetables (including that lettuce I had seen earlier) I ate the fish and the fried potatoes. The fish was surprisingly good and at least the lunch filled me up, but I spent the rest of the afternoon knowing for sure I was about to get deathly ill.
We got home in time for dinner on Sunday night and… MY MOM EVEN ASKED ME HOW MY STOMACH WAS FEELING (I probably would have started feeling ill in the evening)!!! In my mind that just supported everything I ‘knew’ about what I had eaten for lunch. I went to bed expecting to be woken up by my stomach in the middle of the night. However, Monday morning rolled around and I was still feeling fine. I had made it through another weekend and, even better, I had not gotten sick.
Saturday morning (September 12) we left to go visit the grandparents and my mom’s brother’s family in the city of Ambato. Ambato is the capital of the province of Tungurahua, is referred to as the ‘Cradle of the Three Juans’ since it was the birthplace of three notable Ecuadorians and is overlooked by the active Tungurahua volcano which destroyed a good portion of the valley when it last erupted in the mid-twentieth century. It is also the home of my mom and her family.
After lunch I walked to the nearby school (colegio) with Raul and his grandfather so that his grandfather could vote (for his wife) in a local election. I am not entirely sure what the local election was for. They were explaining to me what is essentially a local credit union, but I could not figure out why there were elections for it. I get the feeling that at least in Ambato the credit union is essentially a government entity. But, the coolest part was seeing the electoral process in action in another country. We always read about ballot stuffing and all of the things that go wrong in the newspapers. But, I feel like we don’t hear enough about the successes of the democratic processes in other countries. In the school there were over 25 voting stations, each one dealing with a different range in the alphabet. At each voting station the voter had to show their ID, which was checked against a list of names, before they were given a paper ballot and the voter could circle their choices (up to 3 for this election). And, even more interesting, voting is required of all Ecuadorian citizens (there are exceptions for age, travelling, disability, etc.). If you do not vote (you can prove that you voted since everyone receives a paper ‘receipt’) you cannot get a passport (which allows you to leave the country), get an identity card (which is necessary to get a job) and get a driver’s license, among other things. Basically, if you don’t vote the vast majority of your civil rights are suspended… But, as a result, the voter turnout is close to 100% (if you subtract those who are not required to vote).
Saturday night we ended up at my mom’s brother’s house for la merienda. For those of you who have never heard of merienda before… A brief explanation.
In Ecuador almuerzo is by far the largest meal of the day. Dinner, which is called merienda (unless you are having a formal dinner in which case it is called cena) is typically much smaller. At its most basic it consists of bread and coffee/tea/hot chocolate, but can vary a lot from family to family. Tonight, for example, I had two small ham and cheese sandwiches and a cup of coffee. And sometimes it can consist of some more carbs (rice, potatoes, etc.) with meat. However, regardless of the meal, Ecuadorians LOVE, LOVE, LOVE carbs. It is not uncommon for every portion on your plate with the exception of one to be carbohydrates. The best example I have so far… One day I was having pasta with chicken for lunch. However, just in case that was not enough, they gave me a side plate of rice. I was shocked, but… I still ate the rice.
Back to the main story… We were at my mom’s brother’s house for merienda and I was talking to them in Spanish trying to explain what my dad does (some of you should know how hard that can be… Even in English). However, I was amazed by how supportive the family (and everyone else I have spoken to) has been while I butcher their language. I can’t figure out why the people here are so supportive. In Spain I have been outright laughed at in the past, but here everyone is extremely nice while I learn Spanish. I think part of it is the fact that very few adults I have met can speak English. However, even the kids who can speak English well (there are a decent number) never say anything negative. For lack of another reason, I’ll just write it off with the general kindness and helpfulness of every Ecuadorian I have met so far.
The following morning we set out on our tour of the surrounding area. We started off driving through an indigenous village and then people in the car started to mention banos. Now, for those of you who know Spanish banos means bathrooms. So, there I was, sitting in the car waiting to stop somewhere so that people could use the bathroom. However, we kept on driving. Obviously I was missing something, but I couldn’t figure out what. So we continued on our tour. We drove to a bridge from where you could look down several hundred feet and see a raging river below (I was later told that it was a favorite spot for suicides... It’s probably better that they tell me all of these things only after we leave) and then to a lookout with a cable car (open air with room for about say 4 people) across the river (we did not take the cable car, but it did look pretty cool). From there we drove through a couple of tunnels and we were suddenly in the Amazon (el oriente). In el oriente we stopped at a water fall before we piled back into the car. I had personally been hoping to walk around some more and see the sights on foot, but the my preferred being a ‘car’ tourist.
And then we had lunch… Some more background.
Some of the real treats about studying abroad in a developing country are the health concerns that there are. During orientation we were essentially told that we should expect to get sick while we are here. And, when I say sick, I mean sick. We were all given rehydration salts (the Spanish saying here goes that you can’t die if you drink lots of water and consume the salts) to use when we get sick (and the ‘good news’ is that there is only one stomach sickness we can get here where you actually dehydrate faster than you can physically rehydrate) and were told of what foods to avoid (fruits and vegetables without thick outer skins, street food and water). These sicknesses normally only last 24 hours (of both vomiting and the runs), but for at least a couple of those hours you feel like you are going to die and if you don’t keep drinking water you run the risk of passing out (sounds fun. doesn’t it?). So, we all have this little piece of not so comforting information while we go about our daily lives here.
So, we stop at a restaurant in the town of Banos for lunch and order our meals. My first warning sign was seeing heads of lettuce being stored on the ground in one of the rooms off to the side. Before the food arrived I was already feeling a little iffy about the food. Then, the soup came out. There I am looking at my soup with little pieces of vegetables floating around (another thing that caught my attention). Looking for an excuse to get out of eating this first course I ask what kind of soup it is… I am told, “oh, it’s chicken soup.” Where’s the chicken, I ask myself. I proceed to push my spoon to the bottom of the soup and drag up a piece of ‘chicken’. Now, I am hardly a chicken expert, but looking at this meat I knew this chicken had NOT lead a good OR healthy life (you probably think I am over reacting, but you should have seen this meat!!!). For the next couple of minutes I play with my soup, just hoping it would go away. Finally, I fill up my spoon, put it to my lips and take a taste. Before anything even registers I am putting the spoon back in the bowl and telling everyone I don’t like the soup. Next, the fish I ordered comes out and I happily note that the fish was well cooked with its skin still on (by this point I am completely paranoid, but when you eat well cooked fish with its skin still on it is relatively safe. Normally skin, fried, cooked until crispy = good). Using my rice as a buffer zone between my fish and the vegetables (including that lettuce I had seen earlier) I ate the fish and the fried potatoes. The fish was surprisingly good and at least the lunch filled me up, but I spent the rest of the afternoon knowing for sure I was about to get deathly ill.
We got home in time for dinner on Sunday night and… MY MOM EVEN ASKED ME HOW MY STOMACH WAS FEELING (I probably would have started feeling ill in the evening)!!! In my mind that just supported everything I ‘knew’ about what I had eaten for lunch. I went to bed expecting to be woken up by my stomach in the middle of the night. However, Monday morning rolled around and I was still feeling fine. I had made it through another weekend and, even better, I had not gotten sick.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
One week down?! Classes, soccer, casinos and my younger brother
Time got away on me this weekend, but this was supposed to go up on Friday… So I am just going to pretend that it is Friday in this post.
By Friday afternoon I had officially been with my home stay family in Los Chillos for one week – although it felt like ages – and had made it through my first week of classes.
Monday morning we were taken to class by a member of our host family so we could get acquainted with the route. My trip entails a 90 second bus ride – in which I only have enough time to pay my $0.20, awkwardly fall on some random Ecuadorian as I pay my $0.20 and get off the bus – and a 2 or 3 kilometer walk. Luckily there are 4 other students that live in my development, so we are all able to make the commute to school and home again together. Come Monday afternoon us gringos were on our own to get home. Me and my friends in the same development were fine, but one of the other girls in the group deserves a special mention… She successfully got on the first of two busses she needed to take to get home. However, confused by the fact that the buses do not stop unless you ask them to (and you can ask to get off anywhere along the route) she missed her stop. She eventually managed to get off the bus in an indigenous village on one of the nearby mountains. She boarded a second bus to go back down the mountain. On the ride down, however, her nerves acted up and she vomited on the bus. On a positive note… She did eventually make it home.
So, what do classes entail? It is way too easy to forget that I am actually here for an ACADEMIC semester abroad since I come home and the national past time is watching tv (I swear I have seen more tv in the last week than I see during an entire normal semester). Every morning during the week we have Spanish classes that start at 8 AM (and for class I am in a group with only 4 other people). The first 2 hours normally focus on grammar/verb tenses (all that fun stuff) and then at 10 AM we get our 20 minute break. Next we have a Taller (workshop) class where we study different aspects of Ecuador (last week it was a basic overview of Ecuador’s history) until 11:50 AM. The last hour (12 PM – 1 PM)… Well, we haven’t been able to figure that out yet. Some days it includes grammar and verbs, other days it includes games. Regardless of the emphasis of the class, however, they all focus on the students’ ability to speak the language. Everything else is secondary since they realize that speaking the language is the most important part. But, all told (including breaks) we have 5 hours of Spanish class every day. To put this in perspective, the intensive Spanish classes at Richmond include about 6 hours of class time each week. So, every day we practically do an entire week of Richmond’s intensive Spanish. However, it really does not feel that bad. As me and a lot of my friends have commented, it is the least painful 5 hours of Spanish we have ever had.
And, a couple times each week (2 last week and 2 more times this coming week) we have afternoon sessions (we have lunch before these sessions start and the highlight of that hour is comparing what our host moms packed for us and, sometimes, pawning our food off on other people so that is looks like we ate, and liked, our entire meal). These afternoon sessions are conducted in English and include everything ranging from the differences between the North (USA) and the South (South America) to culture shock.
Basically 90% of the homework we are given requires us to talk to/interview an Ecuadorian. This has been a little weird getting used to since we are only using these people as the sources for everything we write rather than academic sources which are held so highly in university. It also leads to so very interesting conversations with our host families… On Monday night, after asking my mom about important dates in Ecuador’s history, our conversation found its way to the topic of racism and I found myself trying to explain to my mom, in Spanish, Equal Opportunity Laws and the fact that Native Americans are not restricted to their reservations (my mom thought they were required to live there and there were laws prohibiting people from hiring them).
Tuesday night turned into movie night. Ecuador is proudly ranked second on the list of countries with piracy problems. You can get everything from books to DVDs for a greatly reduced price. As a result, people here do not rent videos; they simply drive to the movie store and purchase the movie they want to see for $1.50. And, the stores here have turned it into a respectable business. Once you choose your movie they put it into a DVD player in the store and you can watch parts of it to make sure that it is a quality pirated movie. So, we purchased our movie (State of Play – La Sombra del Poder) and went home to watch it. We watched it in Spanish (just in case you were wondering) and without subtitles (the Spanish subtitles were horrifically wrong and I eventually had my brother turn them off) and I was actually surprised by how much I understood. Although I did not understand the movie word for word, I definitely understood everything that was going on. And, not only did I understand what was going on, at one point I was even able to explain to my brother what was going on... Movie night definitely fell on the list of small victories.
On Wednesday we watched the world cup qualifier matches (and Ecuador had a much needed victory over Bolivia). But, I learned that when you are with true soccer fans you do not simply watch one qualifier match… We were in front of the tv for 3 ninety minute games!!!
Later than night my brother and I went over to a friend’s house to play soccer. It was not until we got there that I realized that I was about to experience street soccer at its finest – a barbed wired fence marked one side of the pitch and the spectators stood on the roof of a nearby shed. That night I quickly learned two lessons. First, do NOT be over zealous in the balls you chase after in street soccer. In the first 3 minutes I managed to fall and cut my right palm and top of my left foot (I’m still not sure how I cut my foot without first cutting my knee…). Second, altitude sucks. Since oxygen concentrations are lower at higher altitudes (and we are at about 1,800 meters) you have a tendency to outrun your lungs when you exercise. This means that you hardly exercise your muscles, but are still exhausted and unable to continue after you have run (and I’m only talking about distance of 50 or 100 yards). Everyone in the SIT group jokingly (only sort of jokingly) agrees that the image from the semester should be a gringo standing, with a hand on each knee, panting and feeling like they’re about to vomit (and a lot of these students are athletes back at their schools). My recommendation to everyone… Stay at sea level.
Thursday night we found our way to a casino in Quito with several of my brother’s friends (my brother was planning a lot of things with his friends last week since his university started on September 14). I was just lucky they let me in!!! I only had my Richmond student ID – an ID that is not accepted anywhere in the states for anything that really matters. Soy gringo!
Friday night my mom went to a fiesta (when she first told me I thought we were all going… I felt just a little awkward when I asked what time WE were leaving for the fiesta) and my older brother and I were left to watch after Martin. I have been quick to learn that my younger brother is a professional whiner. And, Friday night he managed to take it to an entirely new level. Several of my brothers friends came over to hang out (one of them studied English in England for a year and when he does speak in English he speaks with a British accent. Talk about a surprise) and when we asked Martin to go watch tv since he has annoying the heck (to put it nicely) out of us, he started to cry. This on and off crying (for no apparent reason – honestly) continued until he went to bed. So, by the end of Friday night I was definitely NOT a fan of my younger brother...
Saturday we were leaving for Ambato, a small city 2 hours south of Los Chillos, where we were going to visit family and spend Saturday night.
By Friday afternoon I had officially been with my home stay family in Los Chillos for one week – although it felt like ages – and had made it through my first week of classes.
Monday morning we were taken to class by a member of our host family so we could get acquainted with the route. My trip entails a 90 second bus ride – in which I only have enough time to pay my $0.20, awkwardly fall on some random Ecuadorian as I pay my $0.20 and get off the bus – and a 2 or 3 kilometer walk. Luckily there are 4 other students that live in my development, so we are all able to make the commute to school and home again together. Come Monday afternoon us gringos were on our own to get home. Me and my friends in the same development were fine, but one of the other girls in the group deserves a special mention… She successfully got on the first of two busses she needed to take to get home. However, confused by the fact that the buses do not stop unless you ask them to (and you can ask to get off anywhere along the route) she missed her stop. She eventually managed to get off the bus in an indigenous village on one of the nearby mountains. She boarded a second bus to go back down the mountain. On the ride down, however, her nerves acted up and she vomited on the bus. On a positive note… She did eventually make it home.
So, what do classes entail? It is way too easy to forget that I am actually here for an ACADEMIC semester abroad since I come home and the national past time is watching tv (I swear I have seen more tv in the last week than I see during an entire normal semester). Every morning during the week we have Spanish classes that start at 8 AM (and for class I am in a group with only 4 other people). The first 2 hours normally focus on grammar/verb tenses (all that fun stuff) and then at 10 AM we get our 20 minute break. Next we have a Taller (workshop) class where we study different aspects of Ecuador (last week it was a basic overview of Ecuador’s history) until 11:50 AM. The last hour (12 PM – 1 PM)… Well, we haven’t been able to figure that out yet. Some days it includes grammar and verbs, other days it includes games. Regardless of the emphasis of the class, however, they all focus on the students’ ability to speak the language. Everything else is secondary since they realize that speaking the language is the most important part. But, all told (including breaks) we have 5 hours of Spanish class every day. To put this in perspective, the intensive Spanish classes at Richmond include about 6 hours of class time each week. So, every day we practically do an entire week of Richmond’s intensive Spanish. However, it really does not feel that bad. As me and a lot of my friends have commented, it is the least painful 5 hours of Spanish we have ever had.
And, a couple times each week (2 last week and 2 more times this coming week) we have afternoon sessions (we have lunch before these sessions start and the highlight of that hour is comparing what our host moms packed for us and, sometimes, pawning our food off on other people so that is looks like we ate, and liked, our entire meal). These afternoon sessions are conducted in English and include everything ranging from the differences between the North (USA) and the South (South America) to culture shock.
Basically 90% of the homework we are given requires us to talk to/interview an Ecuadorian. This has been a little weird getting used to since we are only using these people as the sources for everything we write rather than academic sources which are held so highly in university. It also leads to so very interesting conversations with our host families… On Monday night, after asking my mom about important dates in Ecuador’s history, our conversation found its way to the topic of racism and I found myself trying to explain to my mom, in Spanish, Equal Opportunity Laws and the fact that Native Americans are not restricted to their reservations (my mom thought they were required to live there and there were laws prohibiting people from hiring them).
Tuesday night turned into movie night. Ecuador is proudly ranked second on the list of countries with piracy problems. You can get everything from books to DVDs for a greatly reduced price. As a result, people here do not rent videos; they simply drive to the movie store and purchase the movie they want to see for $1.50. And, the stores here have turned it into a respectable business. Once you choose your movie they put it into a DVD player in the store and you can watch parts of it to make sure that it is a quality pirated movie. So, we purchased our movie (State of Play – La Sombra del Poder) and went home to watch it. We watched it in Spanish (just in case you were wondering) and without subtitles (the Spanish subtitles were horrifically wrong and I eventually had my brother turn them off) and I was actually surprised by how much I understood. Although I did not understand the movie word for word, I definitely understood everything that was going on. And, not only did I understand what was going on, at one point I was even able to explain to my brother what was going on... Movie night definitely fell on the list of small victories.
On Wednesday we watched the world cup qualifier matches (and Ecuador had a much needed victory over Bolivia). But, I learned that when you are with true soccer fans you do not simply watch one qualifier match… We were in front of the tv for 3 ninety minute games!!!
Later than night my brother and I went over to a friend’s house to play soccer. It was not until we got there that I realized that I was about to experience street soccer at its finest – a barbed wired fence marked one side of the pitch and the spectators stood on the roof of a nearby shed. That night I quickly learned two lessons. First, do NOT be over zealous in the balls you chase after in street soccer. In the first 3 minutes I managed to fall and cut my right palm and top of my left foot (I’m still not sure how I cut my foot without first cutting my knee…). Second, altitude sucks. Since oxygen concentrations are lower at higher altitudes (and we are at about 1,800 meters) you have a tendency to outrun your lungs when you exercise. This means that you hardly exercise your muscles, but are still exhausted and unable to continue after you have run (and I’m only talking about distance of 50 or 100 yards). Everyone in the SIT group jokingly (only sort of jokingly) agrees that the image from the semester should be a gringo standing, with a hand on each knee, panting and feeling like they’re about to vomit (and a lot of these students are athletes back at their schools). My recommendation to everyone… Stay at sea level.
Thursday night we found our way to a casino in Quito with several of my brother’s friends (my brother was planning a lot of things with his friends last week since his university started on September 14). I was just lucky they let me in!!! I only had my Richmond student ID – an ID that is not accepted anywhere in the states for anything that really matters. Soy gringo!
Friday night my mom went to a fiesta (when she first told me I thought we were all going… I felt just a little awkward when I asked what time WE were leaving for the fiesta) and my older brother and I were left to watch after Martin. I have been quick to learn that my younger brother is a professional whiner. And, Friday night he managed to take it to an entirely new level. Several of my brothers friends came over to hang out (one of them studied English in England for a year and when he does speak in English he speaks with a British accent. Talk about a surprise) and when we asked Martin to go watch tv since he has annoying the heck (to put it nicely) out of us, he started to cry. This on and off crying (for no apparent reason – honestly) continued until he went to bed. So, by the end of Friday night I was definitely NOT a fan of my younger brother...
Saturday we were leaving for Ambato, a small city 2 hours south of Los Chillos, where we were going to visit family and spend Saturday night.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Un Fin de Semana con Mi Familia (well, sort of…)
At 4 PM on Friday afternoon we pulled into a parking lot in front of a church in Los Chillos, un loaded our luggage and waited for our host families to come ‘claim’ us (at least that is how it felt). 15 minutes later I was in a car with mi mama y mis dos hermanos (mother and two brothers) and headed to my new home. A home where Spanish is the only language (99.9% is in Spanish) in a country I had only been in for 5 days (those 5 days had seemed like weeks). I would not reunite with anyone in my group until Monday morning when classes began. This was the real thing.
So this thought doesn’t cloud everything else I write, I need to get my rant about the way Spanish is taught in the US out of my system. Think about it… When a baby is born they cannot talk, read or write. At first their brains only hear the language. Only after that do they start to repeat words and then sentences that people say. Last, they go to school where they increase their vocabulary and learn to read and write. Now think about a Spanish class in the US… Very early on the teachers have their students writing and reading, but to a large extent listening to and speaking the language are glossed over (maybe I have just been in the wrong classes. I’ll let you be the judge). As a result, you get students who are really good at reading articles (the newspaper, etc.) and writing essays.
As a result, my first weekend was a VERY LONG and VERY TIRING weekend. My brain had to be on all day, every day. Think about how you feel when your studying for an exam – learning, reviewing, whatever all that material. That was every moment of every day of that weekend. There were many times when my family probably thought I was completely retarded, but I became proactive. Every time I come across a word in conversation, reading, etc. that I do not know, I confess my ignorance. I have them explain the word to me and I write it down. If I still need to, I look it up in the dictionary I brought with me. I’ve come up with an acronym to describe my attitude towards some of the words – the words I am shocked not to know after studying Spanish for 5 years in middle and high school and 2 semesters in college. It is HTFDINKTWB. I can’t spell it out on the internet, but maybe some of you can figure it out. Sometimes I words down even if I already know their meaning (I learned very quickly that it is one thing to know a word when you hear or write it, but completely another thing to be able to recall it quick enough to use in conversation). Also, every night before I go to bed I review verb tenses. If you think conjugating verbs in an essay is hard, try conjugating verbs in a spoken sentence in 1 second or less while you have a forkful of rice in your mouth (yes… they REALLY like rice down here). Just to give you a rough idea, I had already written down approximately 120 words by Sunday night (and it’s grown even more since then). Now, let’s put this in perspective. Although some sources disagree, it is thought that the average vocabulary of a 16 year-old is 10,000-12,000 words. If I only learn 10 new words a day I will have learned over 1,000 new words by the time I leave. Combine that with the words I already know and the words I learn but don’t write down and maybe I’ll just be… an Ecuadorian 13 year old? I’d be happy with that!!!!
Some more about my family. My mom’s name is Yolanda and divorced her husband 2 years ago (the divorce rate is around 50% in Ecuador). She works for her brother’s wife in Quito, but is trying to get a new job. At home she is always running around doing things and talking a mile a minute. I don’t know how she makes it through the day without collapsing.
My older brother is Raul and is 18 years old. He has completed one semester at university and has 8 to go (the vast majority of university students here begin school in January). The two of us get along extremely well and he is great at putting up with my Spanish and helping me along. I basically go everywhere he goes.
My younger brother is Martin and is 8 years old. He begins school sometime later this week (although he doesn’t know when…. ), is a professional whiner and is quite large (when his mom introduced me to him she literally said, “Martin is the fat one.” She then walked over to him, rubbed his belly and said, “You’re fat. You need to lose weight” There is no social stigmatism here around telling someone they are fat or even using it as their nickname…). He also seems to go out of his way not to talk to me. Not exactly what I was looking for in my younger brother, but I have vowed to become friends with him. He doesn’t know it yet, but it is going to happen.
Friday night Raul and I ended up going to a birthday party for a 17 year old (the friend of a friend…). Two things I learned… First, birthday parties for 17 year olds are a little different in Ecuador than any 17 year olds birthday I have ever been to before. Although the drinking age is 18, a lot of kids drink (especially the Ecuadorian males. I’ll go into that in another blog). The alcohol was flowing, there was a DJ and these kids would put ‘good’ dancers in the US to shame… Second, a lot of the Ecuadorians have much lighter skin than you might suspect (because of the Spanish influence). I saw a lot of people that to me looked like Americans or Europeans. But, no - I was the only Gringo there…
Saturday morning I made my first big mistake in my new home. I rolled out of bed and immediately walked out of my room into the kitchen. Immediately my mom bombarded me with Spanish, sat me down and put a full breakfast in front of me. I would have had a hard enough time speaking English 5 minutes after I had woken up. Spanish was brutal. Also, breakfast turned into one of those meals that I had to take one bite at a time (I had no appetite, but had been told that if you did not eat the food it could be taken personally). I only thought one bite into the future and eventually finished my eggs with ham and cheese, fruit, bread with cheese, juice and coffee (although, the coffee is made with instant coffee mix and milk and is the best coffee I have ever had. It should be called leche con café and not café con leche). From then on I have always showered and made sure I am fully awake before I venture out of my room.
That afternoon, after cooking in the sun for two hours while we watched a parade (the sun really is that strong in Ecuador), having a cookout and watching the World Cup qualifier between Ecuador and Colombia (Ecuador lost 3-1) Raul and I went to la plaza de los torros with some of Raul’s friends. That was by far the craziest experience I have had so far. The plaza (sort of like a stadium – only in purpose, not construction) is temporary and is built every year. However, when it is built it is built using logs, 2-by-4’s, rope and nails. It is truly one of the most incredible sights I have ever seen. As we approached la plaza an ambulance sped away with its lights and sirens on (I wasn’t quite piecing things together yet). At the plaza it quickly became apparent that I didn’t always understand exactly what was being said in Spanish (when people actually went out of their way to slow down for me. I knew I had no hope in conversations between Spanish speakers – regardless of the context). One of Raul’s friends had asked me earlier if ‘I wanted to go to the bulls’. I said ‘Yes, that would be really cool. I’ve never seen the bulls before’. However, at the plaza he immediately told me to follow him and he approached the entrance to the ring where the bull was running around. I quickly realized that earlier he had asked me ‘if I wanted to go into the ring with the bulls’. I quickly walked back to Raul. I had no desire to have an encounter with an upset bull and I was wearing a RED shirt. Instead, we climbed a ladder to the second story of the stadium (this ‘structure’ was 4 stories tall) and watched from a safe distance. In the brief time we were there I saw the bull maul (that’s the most fitting word I can think of) 3 people (each time this was greeted by cheers and applause from the crowd…). Two were able to get up and run once the bull left them, one had to be carried away. The ambulance that I saw earlier made a lot more sense now. And, this whole time I kept thinking to myself how unsafe the wooden structure probably was. As if on cue, the railing a lady was sitting on snapped and she fell to the wooden floor. As we drove home in the back of one of the friend’s pickup truck another one of the friends proudly told me that la plaza de los torros has only collapsed (only a section collapsed) once in the last 7 years… I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that new piece of information.
When we got home we politely turned down the offer to go with some of the friends to a casino in Quito (they really are a spontaneous group) and I went to bed. I was both physically and mentally drained.
Sunday was a much quieter day. I was able to take a mid-afternoon siesta (my mind was numb from all of the Spanish) before we went into Quito to see Martin and Raul’s dad and some other family members. Again, I got to feel like a 5 year old idiot around the extended family, but I was getting used to that feeling by then. On the way home we stopped for dinner and I had my first success of the weekend – I got them to laugh at a joke (and to laugh at a joke one has to understand the joke… I had said some earlier in the weekend, but they had only been met by blank stares as a result of my poor Spanish). On that positive note, I went to bed. I had made it through the weekend.
It’s late here, I’m tired and I am sure you are all sick of reading, so I’ll save this week’s adventures for my next post. Here is a picture of my two brothers, though.
So this thought doesn’t cloud everything else I write, I need to get my rant about the way Spanish is taught in the US out of my system. Think about it… When a baby is born they cannot talk, read or write. At first their brains only hear the language. Only after that do they start to repeat words and then sentences that people say. Last, they go to school where they increase their vocabulary and learn to read and write. Now think about a Spanish class in the US… Very early on the teachers have their students writing and reading, but to a large extent listening to and speaking the language are glossed over (maybe I have just been in the wrong classes. I’ll let you be the judge). As a result, you get students who are really good at reading articles (the newspaper, etc.) and writing essays.
As a result, my first weekend was a VERY LONG and VERY TIRING weekend. My brain had to be on all day, every day. Think about how you feel when your studying for an exam – learning, reviewing, whatever all that material. That was every moment of every day of that weekend. There were many times when my family probably thought I was completely retarded, but I became proactive. Every time I come across a word in conversation, reading, etc. that I do not know, I confess my ignorance. I have them explain the word to me and I write it down. If I still need to, I look it up in the dictionary I brought with me. I’ve come up with an acronym to describe my attitude towards some of the words – the words I am shocked not to know after studying Spanish for 5 years in middle and high school and 2 semesters in college. It is HTFDINKTWB. I can’t spell it out on the internet, but maybe some of you can figure it out. Sometimes I words down even if I already know their meaning (I learned very quickly that it is one thing to know a word when you hear or write it, but completely another thing to be able to recall it quick enough to use in conversation). Also, every night before I go to bed I review verb tenses. If you think conjugating verbs in an essay is hard, try conjugating verbs in a spoken sentence in 1 second or less while you have a forkful of rice in your mouth (yes… they REALLY like rice down here). Just to give you a rough idea, I had already written down approximately 120 words by Sunday night (and it’s grown even more since then). Now, let’s put this in perspective. Although some sources disagree, it is thought that the average vocabulary of a 16 year-old is 10,000-12,000 words. If I only learn 10 new words a day I will have learned over 1,000 new words by the time I leave. Combine that with the words I already know and the words I learn but don’t write down and maybe I’ll just be… an Ecuadorian 13 year old? I’d be happy with that!!!!
Some more about my family. My mom’s name is Yolanda and divorced her husband 2 years ago (the divorce rate is around 50% in Ecuador). She works for her brother’s wife in Quito, but is trying to get a new job. At home she is always running around doing things and talking a mile a minute. I don’t know how she makes it through the day without collapsing.
My older brother is Raul and is 18 years old. He has completed one semester at university and has 8 to go (the vast majority of university students here begin school in January). The two of us get along extremely well and he is great at putting up with my Spanish and helping me along. I basically go everywhere he goes.
My younger brother is Martin and is 8 years old. He begins school sometime later this week (although he doesn’t know when…. ), is a professional whiner and is quite large (when his mom introduced me to him she literally said, “Martin is the fat one.” She then walked over to him, rubbed his belly and said, “You’re fat. You need to lose weight” There is no social stigmatism here around telling someone they are fat or even using it as their nickname…). He also seems to go out of his way not to talk to me. Not exactly what I was looking for in my younger brother, but I have vowed to become friends with him. He doesn’t know it yet, but it is going to happen.
Friday night Raul and I ended up going to a birthday party for a 17 year old (the friend of a friend…). Two things I learned… First, birthday parties for 17 year olds are a little different in Ecuador than any 17 year olds birthday I have ever been to before. Although the drinking age is 18, a lot of kids drink (especially the Ecuadorian males. I’ll go into that in another blog). The alcohol was flowing, there was a DJ and these kids would put ‘good’ dancers in the US to shame… Second, a lot of the Ecuadorians have much lighter skin than you might suspect (because of the Spanish influence). I saw a lot of people that to me looked like Americans or Europeans. But, no - I was the only Gringo there…
Saturday morning I made my first big mistake in my new home. I rolled out of bed and immediately walked out of my room into the kitchen. Immediately my mom bombarded me with Spanish, sat me down and put a full breakfast in front of me. I would have had a hard enough time speaking English 5 minutes after I had woken up. Spanish was brutal. Also, breakfast turned into one of those meals that I had to take one bite at a time (I had no appetite, but had been told that if you did not eat the food it could be taken personally). I only thought one bite into the future and eventually finished my eggs with ham and cheese, fruit, bread with cheese, juice and coffee (although, the coffee is made with instant coffee mix and milk and is the best coffee I have ever had. It should be called leche con café and not café con leche). From then on I have always showered and made sure I am fully awake before I venture out of my room.
That afternoon, after cooking in the sun for two hours while we watched a parade (the sun really is that strong in Ecuador), having a cookout and watching the World Cup qualifier between Ecuador and Colombia (Ecuador lost 3-1) Raul and I went to la plaza de los torros with some of Raul’s friends. That was by far the craziest experience I have had so far. The plaza (sort of like a stadium – only in purpose, not construction) is temporary and is built every year. However, when it is built it is built using logs, 2-by-4’s, rope and nails. It is truly one of the most incredible sights I have ever seen. As we approached la plaza an ambulance sped away with its lights and sirens on (I wasn’t quite piecing things together yet). At the plaza it quickly became apparent that I didn’t always understand exactly what was being said in Spanish (when people actually went out of their way to slow down for me. I knew I had no hope in conversations between Spanish speakers – regardless of the context). One of Raul’s friends had asked me earlier if ‘I wanted to go to the bulls’. I said ‘Yes, that would be really cool. I’ve never seen the bulls before’. However, at the plaza he immediately told me to follow him and he approached the entrance to the ring where the bull was running around. I quickly realized that earlier he had asked me ‘if I wanted to go into the ring with the bulls’. I quickly walked back to Raul. I had no desire to have an encounter with an upset bull and I was wearing a RED shirt. Instead, we climbed a ladder to the second story of the stadium (this ‘structure’ was 4 stories tall) and watched from a safe distance. In the brief time we were there I saw the bull maul (that’s the most fitting word I can think of) 3 people (each time this was greeted by cheers and applause from the crowd…). Two were able to get up and run once the bull left them, one had to be carried away. The ambulance that I saw earlier made a lot more sense now. And, this whole time I kept thinking to myself how unsafe the wooden structure probably was. As if on cue, the railing a lady was sitting on snapped and she fell to the wooden floor. As we drove home in the back of one of the friend’s pickup truck another one of the friends proudly told me that la plaza de los torros has only collapsed (only a section collapsed) once in the last 7 years… I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that new piece of information.
When we got home we politely turned down the offer to go with some of the friends to a casino in Quito (they really are a spontaneous group) and I went to bed. I was both physically and mentally drained.
Sunday was a much quieter day. I was able to take a mid-afternoon siesta (my mind was numb from all of the Spanish) before we went into Quito to see Martin and Raul’s dad and some other family members. Again, I got to feel like a 5 year old idiot around the extended family, but I was getting used to that feeling by then. On the way home we stopped for dinner and I had my first success of the weekend – I got them to laugh at a joke (and to laugh at a joke one has to understand the joke… I had said some earlier in the weekend, but they had only been met by blank stares as a result of my poor Spanish). On that positive note, I went to bed. I had made it through the weekend.
It’s late here, I’m tired and I am sure you are all sick of reading, so I’ll save this week’s adventures for my next post. Here is a picture of my two brothers, though.
Friday, September 4, 2009
San Antonio, el Mitad Del Mundo, la Salsa, las Adventuras del Quinche y mis Cumpleanos
Sorry for the hurried blog last time. I was at a net café and time was extremely limited. Hopefully they will be a little more polished from here on out.
We have now left San Antonio, the town where we went through our orientation and have returned to our base hotel in Quito, el hotel Alston, in la districta Mariscal (the district known for tourists, and coincidently one of the highest petty crime rates in Quito).
San Antonio is a town north of Quito, from which many people travel into the city on a daily basis for work. However, from a tourist perspective it is known for mostly one thing, el mitad del mundo (0 degrees latitude). Wednesday afternoon three other students from the group and I went over to el mitad de mundo to see what it was all about. As we walked up the main street in the town, the monument marking el mitad seemed to tower over us. When we got to the end of the road and the top of the hill, however, we turned right and started walking away from el mitad. Some tourists might have seen us and been confused. However, we wanted to go to the real mitad. The monument at the top of the hill was built before the development of GPS and for some reason unknown to me they ended up building the monument a couple of seconds off of the real mitad. Some think that this was an honest mistake. However, I think otherwise. The monument is built on the uphill side of the main street. Regardless of where you are on the street the monument towers over you. I personally have trouble believing that the ‘mistake’ was not politically motivated. I mean, who wouldn’t want large, impressive monument at the top of their main street?
But anyways, we walked a hundred meters or so down a side road and then up a hill on a dirt path in order to reach the real mitad, actually measured by “GPS” (the GPS part was really in quotes instilling even more confidence in all of us). At the mitad we took a tour in Spanish (which became a little tricky when we started the tour of the old houses where we were learning words for which I don’t even know their equivalent in English except for ‘large spoon’, etc.) and learned about the strange effects of el mitad. 8 feet north of el mitad the water drained in a counter-clockwise fashion, on el mitad the water drained straight down and 8 feet south of el mitad the water drained in a clockwise fashion. If you close your eyes, put your arms out sideways and parallel to the ground it is almost impossible to walk a straight line. An egg can be easily balanced on a head of a nail (I mean to try this out when I get home). And, your strength is greatly diminished when you stand on el mitad. We had to form a circle with our thumb and pointer finger and resist as they were pulled apart. I tried this one of the people with me to test it myself and there was noticeably diminished strength on el mitad.
Wednesday night we had a group Salsa lesson after dinner. We learned three basic steps and a twirl (una vuelta) in just under an hour and a half. Although I don’t consider myself a big dancer (as some of you know…) I loved salsa (it took a little while for mi companera y mi to figure out la vuelta, but we got it in the end) and a bunch of us are definitely planning on going to salsa clubs in the future.
Thursday morning we had to say good-bye to el Rancho Alegre, the hostel (but nice hostel) where we had been staying in San Antonio. El Rancho Alegre is a family run hostel and the atmosphere definitely helped everyone adjust to their new environment. It seemed like we were being feed constantly (we would have breakfast, a snack, lunch, a snack, dinner and sometimes another snack after dinner). And, our football games with Jose, Roberto and Diego at 10,000 feet will definitely be remembered (if only for nauseas feeling I got after playing for only 10 minutes. The altitude definitely does make a difference).
Three other students and I left el Rancho at 9 AM, setting out on our mission to go to El Quinche, buy a never seen before object, have lunch and get to el hotel Alston by 3 PM. Sounds easy, but we didn’t even know what El Quinche was! We confidently got on the bus headed to Quito. All was good. However, while we were talking to some of the Ecuadorians on the bus and telling them where were going, they immediately started to tell us to get off the bus. We were going the wrong way!! We immediately got off the bus, but that was our first mistake. Before we knew it, we were walking along the side of a major highway through Quito (there was a sidewalk though, just no stores or any other people). One of the other groups flagged down a cab and sped away, leaving us and one other group determined to find our way only using the busses. That is when we met Emerson. I have no idea where he came from. The sidewalk ended up ahead and I didn’t see him until he was on top of us, but we told him where we were going and signaled us to follow him. So, we turned around and started walking the other direction with our new friend in the lead. As we walked I talked to him and found out that he lives in Los Chillos (the town in which we are doing our first homestay), but works for a missionary group in Quito and travels to el oriente (the Amazon) on a regular basis (eager to see if I could use him as a resource for my ISP – which I want to do en el oriente – I asked for details, but found out he travels to the region that borders Colombia en el oriente – the one region en el oriente that the State Department has a travel restriction on and SIT students are not allowed to travel to…). Emerson, though, was our savior. He took us to a nearby bus stop where we all got on a bus, proceeded to switch onto the trolley car with us and walked us to la estaction de transferencia (bus transfer station) where we could hop a bus to El Quinche. The last leg of the trip took 75 minutes (but only cost $0.95) and we finally arrived in el Quinche just after 12 PM… The entire journey had taken a little over 3 hours!!! As a result our late arrival in town we ate a quick seafood lunch, purchased sugar cane for our never seen before object (when we first saw it we thought it was cheese), talked to a man in the market and then got back on the bus to get home. Although we spent less than an hour in the town, the day was still an adventure to be remembered. Who said turning 20 in Ecuador wouldn’t be memorable?
Later that night we found our way to a club and let me tell you… 21 gringros walking down the street at night stands out... A LOT. But, the excuse, “soy gringo” (I am a gringo) gets us off the hook for basically anything we do. And, our orientation paid off – meaning none of the girls sent a wrong message to one of the Latina guys (this ranges from how much they drink in public to the amount of eye contact they make and how they dance). I’m just glad to be a guy!
Just to prove the point even more, one of my roommates just returned from the market. As he walked in the door the first thing he said was, “I’m such a gringo!!” He had just bought a random assortment of alpaca shirts and an alpaca bag at the market. But, we can do that since we’re gringos.
I’ve now written more than 1,400 words… So I should probably bring this to a close. This afternoon we take a bus to Los Chillos and I meet my host family. I’m sure I’ll have a lot of good stories soon!!!
We have now left San Antonio, the town where we went through our orientation and have returned to our base hotel in Quito, el hotel Alston, in la districta Mariscal (the district known for tourists, and coincidently one of the highest petty crime rates in Quito).
San Antonio is a town north of Quito, from which many people travel into the city on a daily basis for work. However, from a tourist perspective it is known for mostly one thing, el mitad del mundo (0 degrees latitude). Wednesday afternoon three other students from the group and I went over to el mitad de mundo to see what it was all about. As we walked up the main street in the town, the monument marking el mitad seemed to tower over us. When we got to the end of the road and the top of the hill, however, we turned right and started walking away from el mitad. Some tourists might have seen us and been confused. However, we wanted to go to the real mitad. The monument at the top of the hill was built before the development of GPS and for some reason unknown to me they ended up building the monument a couple of seconds off of the real mitad. Some think that this was an honest mistake. However, I think otherwise. The monument is built on the uphill side of the main street. Regardless of where you are on the street the monument towers over you. I personally have trouble believing that the ‘mistake’ was not politically motivated. I mean, who wouldn’t want large, impressive monument at the top of their main street?
But anyways, we walked a hundred meters or so down a side road and then up a hill on a dirt path in order to reach the real mitad, actually measured by “GPS” (the GPS part was really in quotes instilling even more confidence in all of us). At the mitad we took a tour in Spanish (which became a little tricky when we started the tour of the old houses where we were learning words for which I don’t even know their equivalent in English except for ‘large spoon’, etc.) and learned about the strange effects of el mitad. 8 feet north of el mitad the water drained in a counter-clockwise fashion, on el mitad the water drained straight down and 8 feet south of el mitad the water drained in a clockwise fashion. If you close your eyes, put your arms out sideways and parallel to the ground it is almost impossible to walk a straight line. An egg can be easily balanced on a head of a nail (I mean to try this out when I get home). And, your strength is greatly diminished when you stand on el mitad. We had to form a circle with our thumb and pointer finger and resist as they were pulled apart. I tried this one of the people with me to test it myself and there was noticeably diminished strength on el mitad.
Wednesday night we had a group Salsa lesson after dinner. We learned three basic steps and a twirl (una vuelta) in just under an hour and a half. Although I don’t consider myself a big dancer (as some of you know…) I loved salsa (it took a little while for mi companera y mi to figure out la vuelta, but we got it in the end) and a bunch of us are definitely planning on going to salsa clubs in the future.
Thursday morning we had to say good-bye to el Rancho Alegre, the hostel (but nice hostel) where we had been staying in San Antonio. El Rancho Alegre is a family run hostel and the atmosphere definitely helped everyone adjust to their new environment. It seemed like we were being feed constantly (we would have breakfast, a snack, lunch, a snack, dinner and sometimes another snack after dinner). And, our football games with Jose, Roberto and Diego at 10,000 feet will definitely be remembered (if only for nauseas feeling I got after playing for only 10 minutes. The altitude definitely does make a difference).
Three other students and I left el Rancho at 9 AM, setting out on our mission to go to El Quinche, buy a never seen before object, have lunch and get to el hotel Alston by 3 PM. Sounds easy, but we didn’t even know what El Quinche was! We confidently got on the bus headed to Quito. All was good. However, while we were talking to some of the Ecuadorians on the bus and telling them where were going, they immediately started to tell us to get off the bus. We were going the wrong way!! We immediately got off the bus, but that was our first mistake. Before we knew it, we were walking along the side of a major highway through Quito (there was a sidewalk though, just no stores or any other people). One of the other groups flagged down a cab and sped away, leaving us and one other group determined to find our way only using the busses. That is when we met Emerson. I have no idea where he came from. The sidewalk ended up ahead and I didn’t see him until he was on top of us, but we told him where we were going and signaled us to follow him. So, we turned around and started walking the other direction with our new friend in the lead. As we walked I talked to him and found out that he lives in Los Chillos (the town in which we are doing our first homestay), but works for a missionary group in Quito and travels to el oriente (the Amazon) on a regular basis (eager to see if I could use him as a resource for my ISP – which I want to do en el oriente – I asked for details, but found out he travels to the region that borders Colombia en el oriente – the one region en el oriente that the State Department has a travel restriction on and SIT students are not allowed to travel to…). Emerson, though, was our savior. He took us to a nearby bus stop where we all got on a bus, proceeded to switch onto the trolley car with us and walked us to la estaction de transferencia (bus transfer station) where we could hop a bus to El Quinche. The last leg of the trip took 75 minutes (but only cost $0.95) and we finally arrived in el Quinche just after 12 PM… The entire journey had taken a little over 3 hours!!! As a result our late arrival in town we ate a quick seafood lunch, purchased sugar cane for our never seen before object (when we first saw it we thought it was cheese), talked to a man in the market and then got back on the bus to get home. Although we spent less than an hour in the town, the day was still an adventure to be remembered. Who said turning 20 in Ecuador wouldn’t be memorable?
Later that night we found our way to a club and let me tell you… 21 gringros walking down the street at night stands out... A LOT. But, the excuse, “soy gringo” (I am a gringo) gets us off the hook for basically anything we do. And, our orientation paid off – meaning none of the girls sent a wrong message to one of the Latina guys (this ranges from how much they drink in public to the amount of eye contact they make and how they dance). I’m just glad to be a guy!
Just to prove the point even more, one of my roommates just returned from the market. As he walked in the door the first thing he said was, “I’m such a gringo!!” He had just bought a random assortment of alpaca shirts and an alpaca bag at the market. But, we can do that since we’re gringos.
I’ve now written more than 1,400 words… So I should probably bring this to a close. This afternoon we take a bus to Los Chillos and I meet my host family. I’m sure I’ll have a lot of good stories soon!!!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
.jpg){kind=small}