A Day in the Life

Days here are different than they are in the US. Things happen here that wouldn’t happen anywhere else, or at least not anywhere else I have been. They don’t always happen that way, but they can. Take today for example:

I wake up and get ready at home, trying to finish up homework, shower, and eat before I leave for class. If my host dad is home, I’m likely to get some sort of compliment on my clothes or general appearance: “Cada día mas Hermosa como una diosa!” (Every day more beautiful, like a goddess!) Breakfast is laid out on the table for me by my host mom: something to drink, something substantial to eat, and a piece of fruit. This morning it was milk, scrambled eggs on bread, and a giant slice of pineapple. After a minute of waiting for the milk and eggs to heat up in the microwave, I can eat my breakfast in silence at the kitchen table, stirring instant coffee into the hot milk and maybe adding a scoop of hot-chocolate mix as well.

Of course, as hard as I try, I never manage to walk out of the house exactly when I want to, but the bus comes every 20 minutes and I always give myself an hour and a half to get to school, even though it only takes an hour. Sometimes I run into people at the bus station and ride the rest of the way with them, other times I sit on the busses doing homework or playing a game on my phone. (Jewelquest. I’ve already beat it once.) This morning, I did a bit of both.

Jumping off the bus in Cumbaya is easy, since they ALWAYS stop at the university stop. It’s the big one in Cumbaya. If I get to campus early, and I almost always do, there’s the gringo grass to study on, or people to talk to, or the Xerox center to visit if I need to print something before classes start. Thursdays, I have classes back to back from 10 until 2:30: Weaving, Andean Anthropology, and Quichua. Which means my day consists of an enjoyable, if tedious, task, eating a snack on the run, sitting through a lecture and discussion class, scarfing something more to eat, and confusedly laughing my way through a language I understand even less of than Spanish.

After classes comes the long trek to my ICRP, stopping to eat more food in the bus station if I’m still hungry. The journey is worth it though. I love walking in to el Proyecto and being bombarded by kids who want me to do this and that. Today was a bit quieter when I arrived, so I drew an iguana (this is my JOB), which none of the kids would believe I didn’t copy from a book. Apparently being able to draw realistic drawings is a highly valued skill. The drawing is now a prized possession of Camilo, one of the kids that lives at el Proyecto, and one of the better behaved kids at that.

It’s always difficult to leave el Proyecto, not only because I enjoy being there, but also because I have to free myself from any one of the various little boys who literally hang on me trying to make me stay. I’ve become adept at walking with one or two of them somehow inhibiting my progress. Today, one of them even tried to convince the security guard at the gate that he was going to go home with me. Fortunately the guard knew he had to stay, but it was quite amusing.

My commute home starts before the sun is completely down, but it has long been dark by the time I make it to my destination, partially because of the rush-hour traffic I have to travel home in. It’s not the worst thing in the world though, it means I get to walk home while there are still people on the street, so it’s less dangerous. It’s wonderful to finally be off the streets at the end of the day, since I spend nearly 3 hours in busses and stations on my ICRP days.

Occasionally I walk in just as dinner is being served, but if not, I don’t have long to wait on these days. Today I had rice with ají, salad, and meat (as usual) with my host dad. The meat looked delicious, but turned out to be rather chewy. So chewy that I chewed it until kingdom come and then ended up swallowing it whole because my jaw was tired. The salad was cut up red onion and parsley. That’s it. All in all though, it was a good dinner.

And now I am destined to taste onions for the rest of the night while I try to do my homework.

I’m not sure if this falls into the category of “boring blog post” but I thought it would be fun to share what my daily life is like here. Hope you enjoyed!

Religion is an curious beast.

Here’s another reflective post for you. Last Sunday I went to mass with my family. Catholic mass that is. They attend the church that is next to my bus stop called La Concepción, presumably for the virgin conception of Jesus. I always find it interesting to attend a church I am not accustomed to. The practices are always different, the people are different, and the attitudes and beliefs are different. It’s a lot harder to understand the beliefs of the group when you can’t really understand what they are saying, so I got a lot of observation in on the practices and people. Let me tell you, it’s a little unnerving to see and hear a huge group of people saying the same thing at the same time when you can’t understand it. I think if I had heard one person say the prayers, I could have understood, but it was impossible for me to pick out more than a couple words here and there when everyone was speaking at once. I also had a hard time understanding the homily because the preacher used a microphone and didn’t speak very clearly.

The practices of a church really are rather important. I tried to follow what everyone was doing, but it’s difficult, especially without a Catholic background. I had to stand or sit in silence for most of the service because there was very little written material which I could have used to follow along. People just know what to say or do and when to say it or do it. I don’t.

All in all, the service wasn’t that different from Catholic services I have been to in the states. Here, they have no songbooks or hymnals, everyone just knows the songs and sings along, and there weren’t bibles in the pews (I don’t think I’d ever been to a church without bibles in the pews before), but the order of events and the things they did were basically the same.

This probably isn’t a bad time to dive into my observations of religion here.

As many of you probably know, Ecuador is Catholic. That is not an exaggeration. I think the statistic is 95% Catholic. For this reason the country has many laws against various forms of post-incident birth control and the sex ed. here isn’t exactly great. But those issues are for a different discussion.

Even though the population is Catholic, many are not very devout practitioners. There are the people who go to church every Sunday and will talk to anyone about religion, even before soccer (which is saying something here), all the way down to those who have maybe been to church 5 times in the last 6 years but still believe in all the doctrines and ideologies. Then there are the people who don’t identify as Catholic per say, but they are still Ecuadorian, so they know all about the saints and the religious practices of the other 95% of the people in their country. The Catholic religion here is woven into every-day life. There are saints and crosses all over the place and references are made to biblical things and no one really thinks twice about it. And they understand the references, which totally fly over my head when they are in reference to something uniquely Catholic. What really gets me is the saints. There are very few that I know anything about, and their names change in Spanish anyway, which just leaves me lost.

There’s also an interesting mix or religions here (I think you’d call it syncretism, but I’m not sure since I only really know the word for it in Spanish…). Basically, in the more indigenous populations, the people have held onto some of their pre-conquest beliefs, but they are some of the most devout Catholics here. It’s a strange mix. The most personal experience I’ve had with this syncretism is with the stories that I collected as part of my Lit. class project (By the way, I should be able to post a translated version of one of the stories some time in the next couple weeks). One of the stories we were told was about three large animals that were “captured” to prevent them from eating the people, but at the end of the world they will be released to eat the people again. Clearly an old story believed by the people, kind of like the story of the Apocalypse. Except that before these animals are released, God will save all the righteous believers and take them to heaven. Huh? It was just such a surprise for me to hear that mix of beliefs. Especially since the story seemed to be completely finished before that bit was added.

Something I found interesting though, was the responses of my classmates in my Quichua class to the question “What religion are you?” I thought for sure most of them would answer “Catholic,” but it turns out about half of them identify as Agnositc. I kind of wonder if that’s partly due to the fact that they are all college students and, in my experience anyway, college students are much less likely to be “believers” than any other portion of society. But, once again, that’s a topic for another discussion.

And that’s all folks. Until next time anyway!

I feel like this might have been a confusing post, so if you have questions feel free to post them and I will try to answer them.

Rain drain.

It rains a lot here, particularly now that it is "winter." (They have 2 seasons here, winter and summer. It's a little cooler and rains more in the winter. That's all.) I've started carrying my umbrella everywhere with me, because it has rained every day since October first. Quito isn't really set up to handle all the rain they get though. The streets turn into rivers and there are little lakes all over the place that must be avoided if you want to be even remotely dry by the time you get home. Not only are the roads poorly drained, but my neighbor's gutter system isn't exactly top-notch.

I just had to take a picture of it. There's a gutter that is falling off the edge of the roof, connected by another loosely attached and ill-fitted piece to what seems to be the downspout, which is wired to the roof and hangs at an angle, shooting the water down onto the other roof and completely missing the dust pan that I assume is there to catch it. What you can't see in the picture is that the water then runs to the edge of the roof and is directed into the street through a similarly faulty set-up. Gotta love that drainage!

Spontaneous Reflections

I’ve been feeling pretty great this week, at least most of the time. I find myself having a lot of time for self-reflection here, on the busses, when I zone out because my brain just can’t take another minute of Spanish, or just because I’ve seen something that reminds me that I’m in another country. There are times here that something happens to me, and it makes me feel like all is well with the world. Thursday, as I was leaving my ICRP, one of the little boys who was trying to keep me from leaving pointed up at the sky and said (in Spanish of course) “Look! A rainbow!” As I walked away, I felt really happy to be liked by the kids, to have learned a new word, and that there are great things like rainbows and children in the world. There are some things that are the same everywhere, rain, sun, and rainbows being a few examples. Contrast that with the fact that earlier that day I had felt really nostalgic because of a song I heard on the radio that was in English, knowing that most of the other people around me couldn’t understand the song, let alone why it would make someone miss home enough to feel teary. It’s tough sometimes, but really it’s not much different than being home. There are days and moments where you just feel awful and stressed, and then there are times when you’re riding high on life and wouldn’t change a thing. Here, the stressors and highlights are different, and occasionally more extreme, but I think it all averages out to be about the same.

My feelings of happiness and sadness are triggered by various things. Often by something I see that reminds me I’m not in Michigan anymore. One of those things is the kids I see working every day. This isn’t helped at all by the class I took last year on children’s rights in which we talked about child labor in the world for about a month straight. There’s a little kid who gets on my bus nearly every day to sell newspaper, there’s the kid who took my bus payment today, there’s the many kids I see on the streets, and then there’s the kids I’m working with now. Their lives are so much different from mine. And even though they can enjoy things in the moment, they have known some hardships I will never have to face. That was something that really hit me the other day. Even if I were to be totally broke and jobless in the future, I have family and friends who can help me out and I have enough of an education to get some type of work. Heck, I have a resume that totally qualifies me to flip burgers or run a cash register. It may not be much, but I will always have a way to provide for myself at least minimally. These kids don’t have that. They literally have nothing. Not only that, there is nothing in their lives that is secure. Not a home, not meals, nothing. That’s really the best thing I think el proyecto does for the boys that live there. They have had really hard lives, however many years they have lived, and this organization gives them a safe place to sleep, meals, and people who care about them, no matter how much trouble they cause. The organization also helps out the families of the other kids who come there after school. Tuesday, one of the directors was handing out bags of bread to some of the kids, presumably the ones whose families can’t afford to buy it themselves. Which is saying something, since I could buy a bag of bread like that for about a dollar fifty at the bakery down the street. I’m sure I’ll have many more observations about the kids I’m working with for you later, so I’ll leave this topic be for now.

One of the things that is starting to get on my nerves here is the attitude of many men towards women. Not all of them, but quite a few. The other girls on my program and I have spent a considerable time talking about it, and in at least one of the conversations I have had it was determined that men here are practically predatory towards females. It’s not just one thing they do, but the combination of everything we encounter. Nearly every day we have to listen to the piropos of guys standing on the sidewalk, or passing by, or even hanging out of a bus. There are wolf-whistles, hisses, and calls of “Preciosa!” or “Hola chica!” or whatever else they feel like saying to you. And that’s all from strangers. Guys here also seem to think that talking to you for all of two minutes entitles them to your phone number and a date tomorrow. No thanks. Walking into my ICRP on Thursday, a man who was leaving struck up a minute long conversation with me and asked me for my phone number. After finding out that I had a boyfriend, but he wasn’t in Ecuador. Again, no thanks. It’s like they don’t know how to make friends with the opposite sex, they just want to date them.

There’s another side to all of that though, which is what I would call the “flirty culture” that seems to exist here. This is exemplified by the bus drivers who won’t actually stop the bus for you to get on unless you are female or look like you can’t jump onto a moving bus. Guys, don’t try to catch a bus by yourself unless you have a decent amount of balance. Girls, particularly gringa girls, can usually get into clubs much more cheaply (read: for free) than guys, and there’s frequently other financial benefits to being female because guys want to pay. But I would easily give up the benefits to have the predatory stuff disappear. It doesn’t make you feel liked, it just makes you feel like an object.

But all of this is cultural observation and the reason I am here is to make those observations and hope to understand the people here a little better. I think that by the time I leave I will also understand myself better as a result of seeing this culture and realizing where some of my thoughts and habits come from. We are influenced so much by the culture around us, and it’s really interesting to have that in front of your face 24/7. I’m enjoying it.

Take care and keep in touch! (i.e. leave comments!!) And if any boys out there want to give me advice on nicely discouraging interested parties, DO TELL!

Contrasts

HEY! How’ve you been? We haven’t talked in forever! …So homework kind of caught up to me last week, and I was out of town again over the weekend, but I’m finally getting back into the swing of things.

I think my last post introduced the ICRP concept. Well. This one is going to be about how that’s going.

And by “how that’s going” I mean “how much I love it.”

Today was my third day working at el Proyecto. By now, the chicos (kids) are starting to recognize me. There were a lot fewer kids today than there were last week, but one of the directors said that was because of the weather. I guess the kids don’t like to walk there when it’s nasty and rainy outside. That was fine though, it meant I spent more time helping the older kids with their homework and goofing around with the chicos that live at the project. I helped one kid with a math problem one of the other volunteers couldn’t figure out, and helped two other kids with their English homework. Which was actually kind of difficult. It seems like the kids aren’t really learning much English, just doing exercises and not absorbing anything. They didn’t seem to know any of the words I was trying to help them with and just looked at me blankly and wanted me to do their exercises for them. Granted, they do that even when I’m helping them with other homework, but it was especially pronounced with the English homework. One girl had to write about what she did over the weekend, so I helped her translate everything, but she didn’t seem to know ANY of the words she needed to say in order to write it out. And I have no idea what they have learned because they don’t tell me, so I had a really hard time trying to help her and keep the words I was using within her range. Also, English is a crazy language. Just in case you didn’t already realize that.

The kids who live there never seem to have any homework. They just kind of run around causing trouble and doing things they shouldn’t. Today some of them were drawing pictures of what they wanted to be in the future, but they had a hard time sitting still long enough to complete the drawing. Once they had, they were off to play. One of the boys pulled out from somewhere some juggling balls. Turns out, most of the kids can juggle, at least a little. A few of them juggle better than me. That really isn’t saying much, since I can’t actually juggle very well, but I was still impressed. Most of these kids are pretty young. We went outside and juggled for a while, then one of the littlest boys and I played on the playground equipment for a while. He kept asking me to show him more circus-y tricks on the equipment, which I enjoyed immensely. It was such a different experience teaching him circus tricks than the experiences I have had in the past. First off, the language barrier: It’s really hard to say, “put the bar in your armpit” when you don’t know the words for bar or armpit. Second of all, this playground is over cement. Which normally would make me super nervous about injuries from falling, but I just didn’t think about it and taught the kid anyway. He plays on that playground every day, flipping himself over and who knows what else. I think he knows not to let go.

This project is actually a really great thing here in Quito. They aren’t big enough to serve a large number of street kids, but I think they do a really wonderful job of helping the ones that they do manage to reach. I was helping a kid last Thursday who might have had some learning disabilities, but might just as well have lacked so much schooling and attention that he was just super behind. I think he was probably about 14 or 15 and I was helping him fill in the big and small letters of the alphabet and read short and simple Spanish words. The nice thing about this project is that he can come to the project and learn how to read and do math and whatever else without having to go to a school and sit in class with a bunch of younger kids feeling embarrassed. That means more kids like him will be willing to learn here than they would in the schools.

It feels great to be able to help the kids and interact with them in a positive way. They have a lot of problems and difficulties and their stories are sad, but I think this project really helps them out and I’m starting to really enjoy being a part of that. Originally, I wasn’t so sure, but after today, I’m really glad that I’m working there for my ICRP.

Just thinking about what I am doing now, writing all of this out, in English, and putting in online. There isn’t a kid in the project that could do this. Not a single one. Most of them couldn’t even do it in Spanish. But they are learning how to function in their world, learning the skills that they need, and that’s a start.

My weekend was totally in contrast to all of that. Putting the two next to each other actually seems kind of absurd. I spent the weekend doing touristy fun stuff in a small city called Baños, about four hours from Quito and into the jungle. It’s strange how here, I can do something with people who have no resources and nowhere to get them, then go to the university where nearly everyone has a lot of money, then go off and do something touristy for a price I consider to be cheap, but that would totally break the bank for many of the people I see in the bus stations and on the streets every day. Contrasts like that are everywhere, and they are not that evident in the moment, but whenever I step back and actually think about them, they are rather mind-blowing.

And now, so I can blow your minds, I shall tell you about my weekend.

Baños. It is named for the hot-spring baths in the city. (Not because they have a lot of bathrooms, which is just not true of any Ecuadorian city.) The city is basically IN the jungle. Crazy awesome plants and forest all around. I had actually passed through there on my way to Arajuno when I was working on that project for my lit class. Almost all of the people in the Kzoo program went on this trip, 25 of the 28 of us. We all left after classes on Friday and got in to Baños pretty late. Though, of course, no late enough to spend the night in. We went out and found some good dancing before crashing at the hotel. The next morning, nearly all of us went white-water rafting. The rapids weren’t that intense, but it was still fun. I also went biking around the outskirts of town with Emily, taking pictures (which I WILL post later) of the scenery and picking up avocados we found fallen in the street. The next morning, a much smaller group of us went “canyoning.” Canyoning apparently actually means “rappelling down waterfalls.” We put on wetsuits and rode out to a beautiful waterfall, where we hooked ourselves into the ropes in the rocks and decended the rock in the middle of the water. It. Was. Awesome. The whole thing ended with us lowering ourselves off the edge of a 45 meter cliff with the water falling past. Just hanging in mid-air, looking out over the water. Definitely one of the coolest things I have ever done.

I spent the rest of the day warming up and walking around Baños with Katie, looking at the waterfall in town, talking with the enthusiastic guy at the costume shop, buying ice-cream off the back of a truck, playing on the giant public playground, and generally having a blast for our last few ours of vacation.

And that’s all for now, since I need to read about some rocks. (Geology class) Take care!!