A Christmas to Remember

You've made this a Christmas to remember
Springtime feelin's in the middle of December
Strangers meet and they willingly surrender
Oh! What a Christmas to remember

Christmas… in my mind the most daunting part of my whole year abroad. I didn´t know what kind of family I was going to have, what kind of traditions they were going to do, what was appropriate for me to get them…really, I didn´t know anything. I am not going to lie to you guys and say that Christmas was by any means easy, it was not. But I think it was an important part of the experience and I got a lot out of it. I grew, learned and discovered, not for the first time during this exchange, that if I force a smile onto my face and make the best out of what I have, I will realize that I have an awful lot.

Two days before Christmas the question came up one evening, if you could have anything for Christmas this year, what would it be. My host mom started out, she said that she would love to spend the day with her mom, who lives 6 hours away in Quito. Then my host sister said that she doesn´t care as long as she could spend it with family, my host brother seconded this announcement. Then it was my turn, my mind was spinning, what would I want. The options were endless, but then it hit me, and this became my moral for the rest of the holiday season, being here, in Ecuador, is the best gift that I could ever have gotten, what I want is to spend it here with my new family and enjoy every minute of it. This was not always easy, but looking back at it, the day after Christmas; it in general was a good day.

I should mention that my family here didn´t really celebrate Christmas at all. They are very strict Evangelical Catholics, and here apparently that means you don´t celebrate Christmas. At first I was very confused by this, but I came to understand that they don’t celebrate that one day because every day is for Christ and every day we need to celebrate him, not just this day of the year. I think another part of it for my host family was the consumerism, even in Ecuador, that seems to consume everybody over Christmas.

My Christmas day stared off a little drab; I was home alone as my family headed off the church. But then I hoped on Skype and got to have a wonderful breakfast conversation with my Dad, Mom, Skye and Sue. After about an hour, at about 11 am their time, they decided they needed to go and get on that present opening so we signed off. Then I got to have a brief 10 min chat with Aunt Susan, Uncle Lee, Alex and Corry. It was wonderful to hear everybody’s voices and made me feel a little closer to home.

When my family came home from church we had a brief lunch and then headed off to buy bags of candies for some relatives my dad had in the nearby country side. These bags of candies are the traditional gift that is given at Christmas to children, particularly as a sort of charity gift to kids who are poor and aren´t going to be getting anything else for Christmas. We bought about 20 bags and headed out into the deep country. After about a 30 minuet winding drive through the mountains we arrived at a house of some relatives of my dad. I had not been expecting what I saw; we ended up in a small mud hut with a fire burning in one corner cooking dinner and over 30 guinea pigs in another corner, undoubtedly waiting to be dinner. We gave them the candies and then proceeded to have about an hour and a half conversation with them about life. They were very interested in me, where I was from, what I was doing here, why I was living with this family, what school I was going to, and would I please speak a little English for them. We chatted about those things, about religion (my dad’s favorite topic), about life in the country and many other things that came up. It was a truly awesome experience for me; I have seen poverty before, when I lived in Tanzania with my family. But this was the first time that I had a personal connection to the people living it, they were my family here, people who my dad cared a lot about, people who cared a lot about me even though they had just met me under an hour ago. They were so grateful for the candies that we walked away from that visit with three large burlap sacks. One was filled with different kinds of flour that they made there in that hour, another was filled with potatoes that were grown on that land, and the third was filled with corn that was handpicked by them. The generosity of Ecuadorians was amazing to me; they gave what they had just because they wanted to say thanks. We headed to a couple more houses for brief visits, but had to be getting home because it was going to be dark soon.

When I got home, I hopped on face book because this was my connection with the world that was celebrating Christmas. I felt like I had been transported to a different world, one with statues about new computers, cars, phones, snuggies and endless other gadgets and toys. I had almost forgotten that this is what Christmas is about in the states, when hear what Christmas is about for my family is helping out relatives who don´t have as much as we do. Now I am not trying to sound full of myself or anything, I know that for the last 16 Christmases that has been me too and that most likely for the next ones as well. But it was just a very different culture.

So Christmas had its ups and downs and I did miss home quite a lot, but I learned a lot and know that a smile and attempts at a good mood can make all the difference.

Livin´ life on the loose.

The Market

Let me paint you a picture
a picture that I know that you'd like
I'll let the colors run
it dries and then its done

A little bit ago one of my dear Quaker friends and life mentors told me (I am paraphrasing here): Take time to take a walk and enjoy where you are. You will regret not doing that when you leave.

This is something that I have been thinking about a lot in the past couple of weeks and I find that it may be the best advice anybody has ever given me for my exchange and life. When I really open my eyes and heart to what I am doing I am always filled with positive emotions, happiness, joy, amazement, and just general good feelings. I see things that I have never really seen before, but just passed by in the craziness of the first few days in Ecuador and then were just part of normal life.

With this in mind I am going to describe to you my walk to the market today and maybe you can have a little bit of my slow walk, taking in, with awe, my surroundings.

It started with just a normal day after school where I was sitting on my bed trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my afternoon. The one thing that kept popping into my head was the fact that I wanted fresh fruit, but alas, we didn’t have any in the house. So I took matters into my own hands. I threw on my Chaco’s and as I ran to the door yelled to my sister that I was gong to buy fruit. I started down the street. The first think that I noticed was the graffiti sprayed on the walls of the house at the end of the street (some things don’t change from country to country), but then I realized that I just walked by it and read it with out a second glance. Spanish anyone!??? In the next couple of blocks I took in the kids playing on the street, the woman grilling out (only difference was she was grilling out plantains), and just the general hustle and bustle of life in Ecuador.

As I stumbled upon the main street in our town I came to the work of my sister. She was chilling on the steps waiting for somebody to come into the store. We stopped and had a conversation for a bit before she asked me where I was going. When she heard I was bound for the market down the street she handed off her duties to the other girl working in the shop and joined me. There were two things that I took out of this interaction that really impressed me. The first was that I was able to stop and have a real conversation in Spanish with somebody who spoke as much English as I do Russian. Second, that it was totally normal to stop and talk to my sister as if she was my sister. I am feeling more and more apart of this family every day. I am expected to do chores, ask where I am going (and some times be told no), and have none of that guest slack cut for me now. I love feeling like I am part of a household and the joy and struggles that come with it.

As we wandered down to the market we passed many street venders selling everything from tamarind juice to large amounts of meat skewered on sticks with lots of mayonnaise. When we arrived at the market the air was mixed with the all to common order of raw fish and fresh fruit and vegetables of every color and size that were engulfing us. There were mangos, pineapples, avocadoes, potatoes, unrecognizable berries, bananas and plantains by the hundreds, oranges, apples, green beans, cabbage, carrots and passion fruit (just to name a few). All pilled into long rows of colorful veggie and fruit laden stands. We went out searching for my passion fruit and mango to make some fresh fruit juice. The first stand we stopped at nobody was there. We continued wandering to the next stand where I got 6 passion fruit and 2 mangos for a dollar and exchanged a wonderful conversation with the old lady working the stand. We trotted back out of the market and back up the street to my sister’s work. The whole time I couldn’t stop beaming, I am living the life of my dreams, in Ecuador! The air was fresh, I was in good health and life is good.

I wandered back home engulfed it the joy of fresh fruit in my hand and my feet pending the slate streets in Guaranda. Life is fantastic. I just need to take time to see it sometimes.

Livin’ on the loose.

Be True To Your School

So I know I have not written in a super long time. I will write a original one soon. But I wrote this for our local news paper and thought you all might enjoy it.

An Ecuadorian School Day

So be true to your school now

Just like you would to your girl or guy
               Be true to your school now
               And let your colors fly
               Be true to your school

Save the jeans and t-shirts for the weekends. White polo shirt, red acrylic pullover sweater, grey pleated skirt, black shined shoes, all topped off with white knee high socks. Not my everyday outfit in the United States, but it’s what you will find me in every day here in Ecuador. This is just one of the major differences that I have gotten used to while attending my all girls public school in my small mountain town in Ecuador.

            At 7am sharp the bell rings and school starts. I join the flood of students all adorned in our normal uniform or, on lucky days, our gym uniform, an acrylic red suit that makes you sort of look like a strawberry. As we walk into the school students are stopped to take out colored hair accessories or colored scarves, if you want to accessorize your look for the day everything you use must be white. Then we all head to our perspective classes where we will spend the rest of the day. Starting in the equivalent of your sophomore year in high school you choose a specialty and that is the class you will stay with for the rest of your high school career and that is the field you will stay with for the rest of your life. You can choose a specialty like chemistry-biology, or physics-mathematics (my specialty) that is leading you toward a more educated and technical job, most likely including higher education. Or you can take the path of accounting or computing that will lead you toward immediate job options after high school is over. Either way you are with the same kids for all 8 of the 45 minuet periods a day 5 days a week for 3 years.  The school assigns all the classes and they all go directly with your specialty, art and music classes are unheard of here. Everything is strictly academic. 

            I am used to walking to and from my classes, but here teachers come and go and the students are in the same class room all day, with the exceptions of gym where we head out to the school court yard or computer programming where we walk to one of the schools few computer labs. Teachers here are paid an 80-cent an hour salary so there is often little incentive for teachers to show up, some times they just don’t. I don’t think I have had one day yet in my 3 months of school where I have had all my normal classes at normal times. This is a heightened phenomenon because they don’t have a substitute system set up, so if a teacher is sick or has another appointment, no class for that hour. After about 10 minuets of waiting the students will wander out of the classroom and go eat a plate of rice and chicken at the little snack bar in the school or bask in the sun on the bleachers and pretend to be studying for an upcoming test.

            When classes happen they are structured very differently then in the States. From the minuet the teacher walks in the loud talkative class of gossiping girls is immediately transformed into the perfect quite class. As the teacher walks to the front of the room all the students stand up until instructed to sit again. Then the students greet the teacher and the teacher greets the class as a whole. This is a custom you will see in all daily interactions in Ecuador, whether you are passing a friend on the street or having business meeting a greeting always starts off the interaction. Depending on the genders of the greeting people it is either a kiss on the cheek or a handshake. When I first got here this was hard to get used to, but now it is a habit. After the greeting the teacher asks the class for a marker to write on the white board in the classroom: the students supply everything for class here, we even have to pay for the copying of our final exams. As the teacher writes the lesson out on the board all the students get out their notebooks and copy it down, text books are few and far between so everything is hand written and work sheets are unheard of. Once the teacher is done with the lesson they pack up and leave, this can range from 20 minutes to 90 minutes, depending on how the teacher is feeling that day, but either way the students do not complain. The number one unspoken rule in Ecuadorian classrooms is respect for the teacher. Even if they are wrong, you don’t talk back or correct them, it is about the rudest thing you could do.

            As school finishes students walk out of the school gates and get ready to head home where they will eat lunch and get to homework. The school day is complete and its time to spend time with family and get ready for the next day to come.