The Tides are Changing

I’m not noticing things as much. By ‘things’, I mean differences.

Below are a few examples:

The endless piropos (whistles, comments) that guys say to any female walking along…. “Mi preciosa, mi amor, muneca, mi vida…” At first, I found it highly irritating, now it’s part of the daily routine.

Everyone seems short here. I used to feel so tall, and still do sometimes. But the other day I saw a man that was probably about 6’5’’, and I literally wanted to classify him as a giant. Must be getting used to all these short people ;)

I went to the gym and was on the treadmill. I won’t bore you with the details of how the machine was different (it wasn’t just that it was in kilometers, but something else too, that I still haven’t figured it out.) Anyway, the first few weeks I would have found that really frustrating, and now I just was more curious about what “measurement” it was in.

It’s actually hard to think of examples, because, like I said, I am not noticing the differences as much. Of course, I still notice things, but for the most part, I feel like I am getting into the swing of my new Ecuadorian life.

My family (and from what I have heard, everyone else’s Ecuadorian families too) eats soup every single day, typically twice a day. This is one difference that I just can’t get used to. I mean, I like my fair share of soup, but not twice a day… everyday. I’ve started to say that I don’t want it with dinner. To this, my “grandmother” then says that I need to eat a good meal. My question is, “since when did having soup with every meal constitute a good meal?” The whole ‘soup situation’ was brought to my attention today (again, I was forgetting about the excess of soups until the following comment) by a comment from my “great aunt.” She started talking about all of the wonderful soups (most of them taste the same to me…. AKA lots of cilantro) and she was just explaining how they have the perfect weather for soups. I was so confused. I didn’t know that “summer” was the perfect weather for a hot bowl of soup. Ohhh, that’s right. People here think it’s kind of chilly at 70 degrees. Apparently, being high up in the Andes is perfect weather for eating soup. Who knew?

Speaking of weather, it’s always perfect. Gorgeous blue sky, fluffy white clouds occasionally, and probably ranges from a low of 55 degrees at night, and gets up to 77 degrees most days. For the most part it seems like it is right around 70 degrees if I had to guess. I’m still waiting for this supposed rainy season to happen. (Apparently this January was the driest they had had in years…. Which meant they had to have scheduled power outages…. Will get to that in a second.) So the interesting thing is that very few people where sandals, shorts or skirts. I think this just adds to me sticking out like a sore thumb. Yes, I’m wearing sandals… did you not get the memo that it was going to be gorgeous out?

So, power outages. I still need to learn more about this. But, it is something to do with the rain creating hydroelectric power… does that sound right? Well, with the lack of rain, they are lacking electricity, so they have these scheduled (or not-so-scheduled) power outages. Again, this does not bode will for businesses trying to make money. I was at an internet café the first week, and an employee came to tell me that the power was going to go out in 5 minutes and that I needed to get off. You will constantly see different intersections with the stop lights out. They have police officers directing traffic at these intersections. Typically they turn the power off for 2 hours at a time. When I got home from the beach (exhausted, tired, dirty) the power was out at our house. So that meant I had to lug all my stuff up 8 flights of stairs. I also had to wait to have a hot shower. Funny thing is, when this happened, I didn’t think much of it.

Again, I am getting more accustomed to all of the differences. I think the tides are changing: so far, this week is feeling really normal (something I haven’t felt much since I got here.) It feels really darn good.

This weekend I’ll be heading to the Amazon region (will be my 3rd of 4 regions). I’m really looking forward to it.

Chao :)

Em