Bienvenidos al Ecuador otra vez!

Back! And so fricken happy about it!

I changed host families for several reasons:

1. I wanted to have a new familial experience en el Ecuador.
2. La familia Bassante was never home and was not really anything like a family.
3. La empleada en la casa Bassante stole my twizzlers and oreos. Bitch.

So now I am living in la Urbanizacion: Lomas de Monteserrin, the same neighborhood in which our dear president Rafael Correa lives in. Really beautiful neighborhood with a park right on the corner of our house. The only downfall: a hill that easily takes German Aleman (the last street I lived on) for all it's worth. For my friends who know what I'm talking about (hem hem, Melisa and Katie), it's just as bad if not worse than the first leg of way up to Guayasamin's Capilla del Hombre. Como se llama la calle? Ah, no recuerdo.

My family is awesome! My host dad Germán is the director of the Ministry of Living. He collects Ecuadorian art and is really funny and incredibly intelligent. In fact, he reminds me of Rich Smith. Just very nice, caring guy. My host mom Rocío is the nicest, soft spoken lady I have ever met. She is also a director at some sort of Ministry. Crazy. Also, I guess they met when they were six years old and are second cousins and have been pretty much in love forever. Very much so acceptable arrangement en el Ecuador. ¿En los Estados Unidos? Not so much. I have three host siblings, but I only live with one. María Gracia is 20 and is also a student at la USFQ. She's a pre-med student, so she's always busy and right now she's doing her practicum at night at the largest public hospital in Quito helping deliver babies.   Apparently, very hard to internship there. 

I have a puppy named Bruno (¡un loco y malcriado!) as well as a matted-ass ridiculous white ugly cat named Caralota!  So glad to be in the presence of animals once again.

So my host family owns this beautiful house in Monteserrín and next door is an apartment building.  They own three of these three-bedroom apartments which they have for their three kids and their families.  On the top floor live the oldest daughter Alejandra and her husband Gabriel. The middle floor is being occupied by their son Sebastian and his wife, Moca, and their two kids Camilo y Emilio.  Emilio y yo somos tocayos.  Tocayos means that we have the same name but for different genders.  Cool new word.  The bottom-most floor they are renovating for their daughter Maria Gracia.  So cool that they are neighbors with their kids.  The kids come over pretty often to visit and they get together every Sunday at the least.

My host parents also own land in a bustling and beautiful barrio called Rancho de San Francisco.  There is a club that they go to here as well by the same name that has pools and tennis courts and horseback riding.  They go every weekend and I can accompany them should I so wish.

Needless to say, it is a completely different experience living with la familia Luzuriaga in comparison with la familia Bassante.

So glad to be back in Ecuador. 

Every Tattoo deserves a tattoo fest!

So I have been contemplating getting a tattoo this entire semester abroad.  By contemplating I mean that I was so 100% positive that I wanted it, but I have really bad follow through.  I knew I wanted it that badly, but I did consider the possibility that I might not get a tattoo because I procrastinate and I push my wants aside and stick solely to the needs.  Part of the procrastination is due to fear: I don't like asking for things and I don't feel comfortable communicating needs all the time.  So instead of putting myself out there, out of fear I hide and stop myself from doing some of the coolest things.

In this way, Ecuador has changed me.  I don't fear considering and following through on my wants.

So, I found the design for this tattoo online.  I just looked up "Quito" in Google images and found this awesome illustration of Quito, surrounded by mountains, booming, busy. Everything I love about Quito.  I fell in love with it and decided if I should ever get a tattoo, it should be of this illustration.  So I showed it to my friend Katie, and she actually volunteered to redraw it and make adjustments to it for me.  One step closer to this fantasy of mine.
One day I told my friend Fernando that I wanted to get a tattoo and he told me all about the artist that does his tattoos and said he was really good.  I kept the idea alive, but didn't really take much action to get it done. Fernando was really the angel in this project.  He told me he would take me to make an appointment and kind of badgered me to get the ball rolling.  He is a true gentleman and a savior.  So the night before we went to the tattoo parlor, Katie finished the design.

So, we went to the parlor and Guillermo, the tattoo artist who has won numerous awards for his designs and tattoos, liked the tattoo a lot and told me to come back two days later to approve his redesign of it and to make an appointment.  He had to redesign it because with the amount of detail, he said he would have to make it two times the desired size to portray it all.  Therefore, I was more than happy for him to do what he needed to do to maintain it's already gargantuan size.  So we went on Saturday to approve the design, but he wasn't finished with it so he told me to come back on Monday afternoon.

Katie, Fernando and I showed up on Monday afternoon to have another 20 min wait while he finished the design and then came back again, only to find that he was free all afternoon and could do my tattoo right there, right then.  Score.  However, we had a few errands to run in order to get it all done.  I had to eat something and I had to get money.  So we had a hot dog party!!!!


Also, we got prizes from ordering combos, so Fernando and I won bracelets (which I deemed friendship bracelets) and Katie won a notebook, which she appropriately used later to draw up her tattoo design on the fly.


So we went back and he prepped a table, I got half naked and it started.  I was under the needle for 2.5 hours hunched over this nazi fold-up highschool concert chair.  Some of it certainly hurt, especially considering that he used the tiny needle to outline the entire tattoo.  But I think I took it well and some of it it actually liked.

Some of this might sound awful and unpleasant.  Quite the contrary.  This was the best experience I could have ever had getting my first tattoo, especially since my tattoo is pretty big.  I actually didn't even realize that it was that big of a deal until my loved ones were shocked at how huge it was!  Memo (Guillermo) was so incredibly nice and funny and gentle.  He definitely took really good care of me and added so many awesome details to the tattoo I was not expecting at all.  He put all of this really good shading in but kept true to my vision and Katie's artwork.  Wonderful.

The Equatorial Bulge is not a forcefield.

I wish I had tougher skin.  Sometimes it feels like I feel stress emitting from the pours of people passing me on the street, infecting my thoughts, my emotions, my functionality.  This indirect stress I sense does not compare in any way to how direct stress affects me. 

Even though we speculated and knew in some sense, we found out for sure that my brother is using again.  I don't use. I'm three-thousand miles away.  Why do I feel this so strongly? This shouldn't affect me, but it does.  I am so emotionally invested in the health of the people that I love that I almost force the pain that they are going through on myself to give them a break, to give them a lesser burden to deal with their problems in the least stressful environment possible.  Of course, I know that this is wrong. I know that this is enabling and cruel to everyone in the mix.  

I would do anything for him.  Or, at least, I would have done anything for him.  I finally shut myself off.  I am now blocking myself from those people in my life who continue to abuse drugs and alcohol and take advantage of me.  I hate myself for it.  I never wanted it to be like this. I want to run away.  Now it feels like three-thousand miles isn't enough.  I wish the Equator was some sort of forcefield that would isolate the chaos of the north and south hemispheres within their respective coordinates.  Quito would be perfect then because I would be just barely on the southern hemisphere, blocked from home, but if I wanted to feel it I could travel 30 min by bus and be on the northern hemisphere.  Unfortunately, that's not how it works. 

I never thought I would have to protect myself from my siblings, the people that I tell myself are my rock, the people I am closest to.  But, apparently, I have a lesson to learn. This would not be happening to him and to me if I we didn't need to learn from it.  I keep telling myself that everything happens for a reason to convince myself that it wasn't malicious.  That there was a reason for his actions.  That there was a reason for his cruelty, for all the hurt he inflicted on me. 

I wish the best for him. I hope that he does well. If he wants to get his shit together and wants to be in contact again, he can.  I will never deny him that. For now I need to learn to protect myself. 

Sometimes I am so grateful for all of the pain and suffering my family has endured due to addiction, because from it so many good things have come.  For example, Liz would have never met Pat and had Maxwell had she not been an addict.  Harry would not being doing really well.  I would not be who I am today had my father not been an addict, had I not been surrounded by addiction.  But going through the pain at the moment is so unbearable.  Why can't everything be what we dreamed?

When we were younger, we moved a lot.  Every time the house we were renting would sell, we would have to scramble to find a new place.  I used to worry a lot about not having a place to sleep and my mom would tell us that we would find a place, and if not, we would live in a cardboard castle.  She always knew exactly what to say.  

I feel like starting a  project.  I might make my own cardboard castle full of gummy worms, soda, kitties, everything I ever wanted when I was young.  I wouldn't mind hiding there for a little while. 

¡Tranquilo mi'ja! ¡Todo pasará bien!

I think I'm going to be a slug when I get home.

With more precision: I think I'm going to get my ass kicked at school when I get home.  Everyone is just so relaxed here: make-up work is acceptable (in fact the normal practice!), absence is your own concern, and late work is expected. If anything, this has become my downfall.  Generally, I am incredibly punctual; I get really stressed out about not getting homework done on time, and performance is everything on presentations and tests.  I know, it may not really seem like this is truly my character default, but I try not to vocalize my few anal-retentive tendencies.  At school in the states, I work my ass off to get the perfect score.  Teachers are not as forgiving there. Your first try is always the judged performance.  No practice run, no slack.

My first day of Orientation at USFQ, our orientation and department head Daniel Cordoba told us that it was expected of us to adhere to the cultural norms, which included being late to everything because lateness = punctuality (up to 20 min).  My conversation teacher taught us how to speak in the passive voice to reject responsibility for any of our actions (saying that things happened to us rather than us doing the action (even if it was our fault)).  And my Ecuadorian Culture professor taught us how to barter for time on projects and how to avoid handing in projects on time.  Needless to say, I have had a rather extensive education here in Ecuador.

I was rather on-top of my school work up until last week, when I was sick for two days and missed two papers, a presentation, a quiz, and an exam.  If you miss these things in the US, you might as well sign your own death sentence. You're failing if you miss a test. You're failing if you miss a presentation. You're fucked if you miss a paper or hand it in late.  In Ecuador, all of my professors told me to get better, and to take the test later, to hand in the paper or email it at my discretion, to do my presentation the following class.  Todo pasó bien.  In fact, my Conversation class convinced our professor that we don't have time in the semester to do our scheduled dramatizaciones.  She agreed, and now we have one less thing on our plates to take care of. Instead, we're moving the test up a couple days and we're going to have food and hang out our last day of class.

All of this change is exciting, thrilling in fact, but without the rigid guidelines, I find myself slacking.  Not beyond salvageability, but I worry about next semester.  Gracias a Dios que I already did a major chunk of Ecuadorian exploration. I can feel better about living a more tranquil life in Quito next semester.

I guess that just means I'm adapting well to ecuadorian life.

Life thus far!

So I've been in Ecuador for almost eight weeks now and I have been avoiding writing this blog for about.... eight weeks now!  It is almost impossible for me to find the time to sit down and write because I am so enthralled and captivated by life here I would much rather be exploring than sitting at home.  But alas, I do want to be able to reflect on my experiences and I want to share my thrilling life here with my friends and family.

So first an overview of some interesting cultural aspects of Ecuador that I was not expecting: 

1. They say that everything in South America is cheap... NOT completely TRUE!  Some things here are incredibly inexpensive.  For example, food.  Dining in an Ecuadorian restaurant is ridiculously cheap compared to American dining.  The dining-out culture is very different as well.  People eat in restaurants if they need to eat and have no other option.  Food is not the seductive and enchanting temptress in Ecuador that it is in the States.  Ecuadorians generally don't put as much thought and time into preparing a tantalizing dish.  They don't dream about food and drool over snacks.  They just eat. A typical meal costs about $3 which includes soup, a main course with potatoes or rice and some sort of protein as well as freshly made fruit juice or coffee.

[Speaking of coffee, Ecuador actually produces its own coffee; however, it primarily exports most of its coffee and the people drink instant coffee like its their job.  It's not that real coffee is expensive.  Not in the least.  For some reason they just prefer instant coffee.  I will defend it in the case of Cafe con leche, which more often then not is a hot cup of milk which you scoop instant coffee into.]

Generally anything made in Ecuador is cheap for Ecuadorians.  Fresh produce, alpaca wool items, etc.  Imported products are more expensive in Ecuador than they are in the States.  Recently, Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador, instated a law that imposed high taxes on imported items in order to stimulate the internal economy and promote local business.  This has done little to stimulate the economy.  It is really just increasing poverty because the country doesn't have the production infrastructure to replace the products that experience extreme increases in price.

2. Ecuador has its own sense of time.  Everything in Ecuador takes an EXTREMELY long time to do.  This extends to almost all parts of the culture.  For example, in the business world, paperwork takes forever, technicians take their own time and there's no guarantee that what they are fixing is done right.  Lines are forever long, and often you have to take a number to get in line, but people usually skip you anyways.  Ecuadorians themselves take their time doing everything.  Especially when going from one place to another.  We call this slow paced crawl "Ecuapace."  Being stuck behind someone doing ecuapace is incredibly frustrating, considering that Americans have such a strict sense of time; "get to where you're going as quickly as possible so you can do as much as you possibly can while there."  Although I do hate being stuck behind these people, I truly appreciate their sense of time and duty.  They tend to take care of themselves in comfort.  Why rush?   

There are, however, only two instances in which an Ecuadorian will move quickly: getting on the bus or crossing the street.  Cars always have right of way over pedestrians so if you need to cross the street you need to run.  Also, traveling by bus or trolley is fundamental for many Ecuadorians because many do not have their own transportation.

3. Machismo is no joke!  The most apparent evidence of this cultural phenomena is cat-calls.  For example, in Quito, when I'm walking down the street, I'll get obnoxious hissing calls from men trying to get my attention, or men will shout out obnoxious names at me such as, but not limited to:
"preciosa, reinita, princesa, deliciosa, baby, sexy, amor, etc"
Better yet are the phrases that they say in English.  In Guayaquil, all the men passing by Katie and Melisa and I said "I love you" in a really forced accent.  In Otavalo, I got a couple manly "Good morning"s with some obnoxious winks. Especially when they are in packs, the banter can be ruthless.  Women are often treated like meat, and I suspect that American women receive an awful lot because they believe we don't understand.  By no means does that indicate that Ecuadorian woman don't receive equally awful catcalls, but American women are idolized and coveted because American culture and life is coveted.  White skin here, in a predominantly mestizo culture, is idolized.

just a few observations thus far to share with my friends. many more to come!

It's been agreed upon: Latin American Music Sucks (Generally)

insane latin music I hear all the time in Ecuador...

Mi Niña Bonita- Chino & Nacho.
Pa panamericano- Yolanda Be Cool & DCUP
Stereo Love- Edward Maya & Vika Jigulina
Danza Kuduro - Don Omar ft. Lucenzo

Coconut Rice is traditional at Thanksgiving, right?

I feel very conflicted when I think about spending Thanksgiving in Ecuador.  It's almost bitter-sweet.  My mom set up her computer next to the dinner table at home so that I could electronically eat with them.  It's wonderful that I get to see my entire family and even more wonderful that I get to share this experience with them in someway, but it's not really the same.  Not being able to be physically near them is really difficult.  But I hung out with everyone on the computer while they were cooking and eating hors d'oeuvres.  Harry and I always have really enlightening dirty Spanish conversations when we're on skype; these conversations I truly look forward to most.  I also got to see Maxwell in all his adorable glory! I'm so grateful that I get to see him pretty regularly and that I'm not really missing all of his infancy.  My family has been very good about keeping me up to date on his life and new developments.  

I guess that it's truly bitter-sweet because I can't be with my real family, but I get to be with my new family, my family of friends from Ecuador. However, this experience feels a bit more bitter for me right now because I'm feeling rather under-the-weather and therefore am feeling restless because I can't do anything else but meditate on my absence from my real family's Thanksgiving.

So last night we had a Thanksgiving feast at Melisa's host-family's house.  It was the first time my host mom (Sandra) had ever had a Thanksgiving meal so we all did our best to make it as American as possible.  Needless to say we completely failed.  It was the most Ecuadorian Thanksgiving I could possibly imagine.  But Thanksgiving isn't really about the same old routine food, it's about being with the people that you care about, to be loving and kind and grateful to those people. The problem with imitating American Thanksgiving feasts is that we have completely different ingredients here. We did the best we could though.

Melisa's host family (Lucy, Dani, Valeria, Tio y Abuelita), my host family (Sandra y Rafa), Lee and Mark all showed up for the wonderful meal.  We even played the Thanksgiving game (thought you might like this mom!) So for an entrada Sandra made these little Mushroom torts, the we had greenbean casserole (which I made completely from scratch (homemade mushroom soup and french friend onions)), mashed potatoes (thanks Lee!), Turkey with mango or manzana sauce, coconut rice, pasas moradas (the raisin equivalent of cranberry sauce), this corn-pineapple-strawberry combo dish, and for desert flan with honey.  Needless to say, very ecuadorian, but very wonderful to be surrounded by some of the most important people in my Ecuadorian life.  Unfortunately but fortunately, Katie's Mom and sister flew down from Boston yesterday so they couldn't attend dinner do to time conflicts. We thought about her a lot though!

So tomorrow night I have another Thanksgiving to attend with my friends at Lucho's family Hacienda in Nono.  More details to come on that disaster!  This time Katie and her family will be there so it'll be more genuinely familial for me!