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.