Ecua-mersion

Well, here it is - my very first blog! I've been in Ecuador for about a week now, though it seems about three times as long as that. It's a strange feeling to have swapped my life for another one in the matter of a plane ride or two - a new city, a new language, and new friends have suddenly become mine in just a few hours.



I suppose I should begin with a description of Quito, Ecuador's capital city where I am living to train as an English teacher. At 9,000 feet, it is one of the highest cities in the world, and all of we gringos (foreigners) started panting in the thin atmosphere almost as soon as we got off the plane! It's a long, skinny city, about 35 miles long and only about 5 miles wide, and is wedged into a valley in the towering Andes, which, I found out, are mostly moody volcanoes that treat Ecuador to the occasional ash eruption. Quito is a busy, chaotic city; full of rickety stick-shift cars and buses that belch smog, restaurants and dance venues painted exuberant yellows, pinks and reds (though many have faded with wear and dust), and, of course, the blare of cumbia and reggae ton music mixed with incessant honking cab horns. The old part of the city is a little quieter, with pedestrian-only cobbled streets and town squares filled with flowering trees and park benches, not to mention beautiful churches and an impressive basilica, though it is typically filled with people.



Just outside of Quito, the scenery is almost impossibly beautiful; we volunteers took a bus ride to some hot springs last weekend, and every (often hair-raising) turn around a mountain bend revealed yet another view of the looming, forested Andes and the little streams and waterfalls that wound throughout. The dramatic scenery (not to mention the rather sharp drop-offs) kept me wide-eyed the entire time.



Part of the immersion experience in Quito is staying with a host family during my three weeks of orientation. They are a lovely family and quite well-off by Ecuadorian standards. They speak virtually no English, which means there is a lot of pointing and confused glances. Most of my conversation still consists of the most basic comments. “Beautiful mountain,” I will observe carefully, pointing at the mountain Cotopaxi. “Yes, yes,” my patient listener will agree gravely about the mountain he or she has seen a thousand times. “Beautiful.” Sometimes my host mom will just throw up her hands and laugh when my Spanish tongue malfunctions, particularly when I say a dirty Spanish word when I mean to say “spoon,” or when I invited my host sister to a pineapple instead of a picnic. But I’m learning new Spanish words every day, and it’s exciting when I can say, “I’m going to the bus stop” rather than just “Bus! Me bus now!”



Even my host family’s house is an immersion experience. While my house in the States is a prime example of sparsely tasteful Western decoration, my house in Quito is an Ecuadorian pawn shop explosion. Every available surface is loaded with knick knacks, from fake flowers to Virgin figurines to snowglobes of Washington D.C. to trumpeting elephant figurines; enormous fake sunflowers grace the corners, and all of the furniture gleams in gold upholstery.



Different tastes in décor accounted for, however, my host family takes splendid care of me. I get fed marvelously seasoned soups every day, as well as a manner of things that I can’t identify but are delicious none the less. I have a host sister who is 21 and wants to be my best friend; she’s shown me a lot of her Latin music, and I’ve shown her how to play Frisbee (on the roof terrace, no less!) My host parents took great care in making sure I could make it to the bus on the first day of orientation classes. Originally, my mom told me to “get off the bus at the chicken,” and it took a trip in the family car to demonstrate that my bus stop was at the KFC.



“Bus stop” is really a misnomer, however. In Ecuador there are a few bus stops, but typically you just hail a bus like you would a cab…and most of the time, at least, the bus driver is kind enough to bring the bus to a full stop, but it isn’t something you can count on. They don’t waste much time in moving along, however, and more than once I’ve almost toppled into some unsuspecting person’s lap while trying to find a seat.



Orientation is also going well. There is a fantastic group of 36 volunteers, very adventurous and positive, and there is great rapport developing among us. During orientation, we’ve been learning all sorts of teaching techniques about how to introduce English to our university students – there is absolutely no Spanish allowed in the classroom, apparently (luckily for me!). We’ve also been learning the various hazards of living as gringos in Ecuador. As foreigners appear to be both wealthy and vulnerable at the same time, and thus are walking bulls-eyes for petty theft. One of the more peculiar stunts that pickpockets will pull is called “mustardization.” It’s a two person operation: the first thief will sneak up behind a gringo with a bottle of mustard and squirt it on said gringo, apparently without the foreigner noticing. The thief will then ditch the mustard bottle and say to the accosted foreigner, “Oh, look! You have mustard on you! Here, I have some napkins…let me help you!” In the midst of the commotion, the second thief will then make off with the gringo’s purse or backpack. So now the gringo not only is out of his or her wallet, but also has a heinous mustard stain. Talk about adding insult to injury.



That’s all for now – thanks for sticking with this rather extensive blog post. I hope that you’re all well, and would love to hear from you at some point! I will be posting again hopefully next Sunday.