On the Loose

On the loose to climb a mountain

On the loose where I am free

On the loose to live my life

The way I think my life should be

For I only have a moment and the whole world left to see

I’ll be looking for tomorrow on the loose

(This is my song for Ecuador, keeps me going. Gotta love camp songs.)

As I sit here, next to my sister, sipping passion fruit juice that we just made from fresh passion fruit down, I realize that I am living the life of the rich people.

As I grew up whenever my family has having a particularly good connection or just a really good time one of my parents would always quote one of the families favorite childhood books and say, “This is the table where the rich people eat.” Not meaning literately rich, but life is rich, full of excitement, love, and happiness. It soon evolved into “this is the mountain where the rich people climb” or “this is the lake that the rich people paddle.” I now see it as a family saying that we have the fortune of being able to use quite often. And right now I realize that I am walking a path where the rich people walk. Now this doesn’t mean that every minuet here is easy. In fact I have quite a few minuets that are super hard. For example, this thanksgiving will officially be the longest time that I have not seen my sister. That is a daunting and hard thought, but I know it will be ok. I have a very supportive and caring family here that is doing everything possible to make this year amazing. And they are. The roller coaster ride will continue and I will love and take in every minuet of it. 

So everyday little life events.

Last Thursday was a huge celebration at my school for the incoming kids to the college (high school). It was very elaborate and exciting. It started with a marching of all the little kids into the middle of the basketball courts by all the 6 years, equivalent of high schools seniors. All of the 6^th years (including me and the other exchange students, Alicia and Giulia) we dressed up as characters. I got the pleasure of being a witch while Alicia was the queen of hearts from Alice in Wonderland and Giuila was an angel. We marched them around for a little bit. Then another large group of 6^th years came on carrying a person dressed up as a corpse. They did this long elaborate ceremony and brought the corpse back to life. Then the corpse proceeded to run around yelling and scaring all the little new comers. After this there we are variety of other aspects to the play-like-thing, like a church service for the corpse and lots of random dancing when the DJ felt it was right. Proceeding this 45-minute corpse show there were many groups of people who put on little skits or danced. They would get all dressed up, give the DJ there music and there was their little moment of fame to perform in front of 1000+ people. Well of course you couldn’t have a show with out embarrassing the gringas (white girls) at least once. So we were informed that we were going to sing a song in English. We spend the 2-day we had been given attempting to make three peoples, who don’t sing in front of people or really very much at all, mesh together. This turned out to be more of a challenge than expected. But we did it. We entered the stage, as the closing act, and sang Katy Perry’s song Hot N Cold for the whole school and many people from our town. It was an experience that is for sure. And if you ask me, we did a pretty good job at it. J

A couple of weeks ago I decided that I needed to start running again. I had stopped running because it is such a different sport here. Nobody runs here, and of the few nobodies that do run, they are all middle-aged Ecuadorian males. A tall, white, female runner… funny joke. So it wasn’t ending up being the same experience running as in the USA. I will get cat called at and honked at and just generally stared at. Its not the mental break that I am used to. But it needed to happen. When was now the question, in the afternoons I often have other stuff and am just generally lazy. Nights, well that is when I sleep. So it was looking like the morning was my best option. I have been getting up 2 hours before school starts to run. That puts my typical run at about 5am. It’s brutal but so worth I for my mental and physical health. This week I get to run at 6am because we have finals and school starts later then normal. I really like this because I get to see the city wake up. I often do this 15-minuet loop about 3 times. This really is an awesome way to watch the day starting. This morning on my first loop I watch a woman walking pushing her packed up vender stand with her school aged child. The second loop they were setting up the candy stand out side of a local school and by the third loop they were selling to the younger children who started school earlier because they didn’t have finals. It was very cool to watch the city come to life and get my exercise at the same time. J

Life is going. Life is good

Livin’ life on the loose.