¡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.