Week Two: Spanish, Dinner with the Ex-Husband and My Two New Friends

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!!!