hello again
well i´ve resurfaced after a week of doing nothing but homework. that sucked but it was midterms and there´s no use getting upset about it now.
sorry for not writing. i don´t think it´s necessary to apologize but i do the same thing to myself in my journal when i haven´t written in a while. anyway i´m completely behind on email and trying to keep in touch with people.
last sunday i got really friend-sick. i read some great emails and i miss people a lot!!! so know that i miss you and i love you.
i did have 4 days of somewhat of a break last week because it was easter. easter day is really not the big deal here-it´s Good Friday, when they make the traditional Fanesca. Fanesca is something like a stew with every ingredient you can imagine. i think there´s around 20. i quite enjoyed it. i was afraid to enjoy it though because i got "amebas" last week and wasn´t supposed to eat (lots of) certain things. but my mom allowed it because i was feeling better.
i´m finally feeling like i know my way around. this is a good feeling.
frustrations with spanish come and go. i was talking to a friend some time ago in ohio about communication. i said miscommunication in english is so frustrating, imagine in another language! and she said, well i think it´s just fun in another language. and turns out she´s right for the most part. for instance. the words "your" and "his" in spanish are off by one letter. therefore if you are in a noisy bar, and you tell your brother that you like the singer´s voice (his voice, if you will), and he gives you a very strange look, you know that he understood "i like your voice." this of course is not what i said, and we cleared that up right away.
however, learning another language is frustrating as well. for instance. at lunch today my sister told a story of something her professor did. by some miracle i understood everything she said, and then she delivered the punch line and everyone laughed and i just...didn´t get it. that´s annoying.
so finally after years, well 2 really, of trying to relate to internationals, i actually do relate to my friends in the states with english as a second language.
tomorrow we leave for a trip to the coast. one week. i´m excited for several reasons-the coast is a lot different and i´m excited to learn the regional variations. i´m excited to not be doing schoolwork because i´m sick of it. and i´m excited for the ocean!!!!! i miss the sea. i´m not excited to leave my family and i´m going to miss them.
one more thing of interest-we did a volunteer project this week and i loved it. i feel like i would rather be volunteering because i would learn more about the language and culture than in school. this is a negative attitude about school, i´m sorry to give that impression, it´s not all bad. anyway volunteering-we are painting a room at a school for girls. so of course, i´m painting greece, the beautiful island of anafi, on a wall in ecuador. i´ll take pictures.
that is all. i love you.
trying to immerse myself
this weekend i did all things latin. i went out with my brother fri night with a bunch of friends and relations of his girlfriends and we danced, and i need to learn the difference between merengue and salsa. i was the only gringo in this bar and it felt awesome. sunday i went to church. palm sunday here is much different than at home-i stood the whole mass with an elaborate creation of weaved palms in my hand, which i sometimes used to play with the baby that was next to me. the cathedral was packed, i don´t mean all the seats were taken, i mean all the floor was taken. then i went to a futbol game with my brother and sister-cuenca vs. barcelona, which is a club from quito. we won and i adored the latin american passion for futbol. after futbol, lunch in the countryside. we went to cajas national park to a tiny restaurant and i had a delicious delicous meal. and tried zhumir, the national drink. my brother just gave it to me and said try it and i said ok and took a sip and had a similar reaction to when i tried ouzo in greece, which was a painful swallowing and a bitter face. it´s not bad though-my mom´s friend was saying that it cleans you out so it´s good for something. so salsa dancing, church, futbol, and zhumir, that´s what ecuador is. i´m just kidding, there´s a lot more to it.
it´s raining as usual. it rains everyday here. kind of a downer but we do the best we can. i still love my family...i´m still a little frustrated that i´m forced to spend so much time with americans but yes, mom, patience i know, i´m trying.
ah yes the other thing i wanted to mention was how bad i am at keeping in touch. i´m thinking it´s because i find it impossible to live two lives at once and down here, i´ve got a whole other life with all these other people in it that it´s hard to maintain physical contact with my other life. but i think about people a lot, and i miss people and i want you to know that, if i haven´t talked to you, i´m getting to it and i love you.
my ecuadorian family
although there´s many other things i´d like to talk about, it is important that i express how much i love my family here (i love my family at home too, but in this context i will be talking about my ecuadorian one).
so i have a mom, dad, brother, and 2 sisters. all of us live at home. their house is pretty big. it´s like an upper-middle class house in the states. i have my own room and sort of share a bathroom with my brother.
my mom is a fantastic cook. i have loved every meal that i´ve eaten here. the key that i´ve discovered to latin american cooking, kidding, to my family´s cooking at least, is brown sugar. it´s more natural that refined sugar (obviously) and everything tastes absolutely delicious with it. every morning i have natural tea, bread, and fruit juice, i mean smoothie. for lunch the big meal, we have soup that´s always delicious, and then a plate with rice and some sort of vegetable accompaniment. and more delicious smoothie. yesterday i helped my mom make ice cream. before it becomes ice cream however, it´s something called espumilla, which means little foam. and that´s exactly what it tastes like-foamy creamy goodness it´s like eating heaven. (just like how drinking donkey´s chai is like drinking heaven.) for dinner it´s something similar to lunch sans soup. so point is, i love my mom´s cooking it´s delicious and natural and so good for me and i look forward to every meal. i forgot to mention the hot chocolate. mmmmmmm.
so, besides the food, i just love my family. the youngest sister is really funny (when i understand her.) i went out last weekend with my brother which was GREAT because i finally meet other real ecuadorians (the not meeting of such has been a source of frustration) and i met his girlfriend and another friend. my brother and the older sister both work, and my other sister is in school.
another reason i love them is because i feel comfortable asking them cultural questions and, as with the machismo, they can make me feel better by laughing about it. they´re a quiet family...and i´m beginning to feel very at home there. my family is the best part of this trip so far. by far.
being 1.a woman and 2. the minority
it´s good to have different experiences. i certainly don´t like the feeling of being a minority but i´m glad to be experiencing it. having short blond hair, green eyes, and pale skin does wonders to help me blend in. kidding. it´s painful how much i stick out. i´m getting a little used to it though. i noticed how much people look at me the first week and to me, it´s ok. i realize i´m different, and it´s just weird to feel the stares. i don´t think it´s a negative thing.
what i´m having trouble with is being a woman. i thought i was good at ignoring the catcalls and just kept on walking. yesterday though, i got upset. this is because i took a different route to school and had the bad luck of turning into a construction site. bad bad luck. i mean i´m good at ignoring them, but yesterday i couldn´t help feeling really angry. at lunch i asked my family about it. the three of them who were there all said ¨ahhh forget about it, it´s nothing, they do that to any women, just ignore it¨blah blah. to them it was no big deal. but my host mom knew i was still upset. on my way back into school i passed 3 older guys and one said to me in english ¨where are you from señora?¨ i felt really rude completely ignoring him so i answered in spanish ¨the U.S.¨ (as if it´s not obvious) and kept walking. he asked what part and i said ohio and kept walking and ignored the rest of what he said. anyway when i came home again, my sister told me she was waiting for the bus and some guy made a kissing noise at her and she thought of me. i told them the story of what happened. my mom joked saying ¨leah´s happy because some more guys gave her attention¨and my sister said ¨old ones-the best of all!¨ anyway i´ve decided not to let it bother me (although it probably always will a little). it´s something i don´t understand and i´m just going to keep ignoring it. my family made me feel better about by joking around and my sister was really funny about it.
it´s still weird to feel people´s stares but that´s the way it is.
next entry i´m going to expound on how much i love my host family.
