Things Fall Together

And so the long, long, long wait is over. I've been waiting since April to hear about who my host family is and what city I'll be living in and the email finally came. My mom got the email first, she called me while I was at work and I tried very hard not to freak out too much as she read all of the information to me. Despite restraining myself from jumping up and down and screaming, my co-workers still asked if I was okay. I had to explain to them that I'd been waiting for months to hear about my family and that I finally had information.

So, where in this big world will I be? I'll be living in the city of Guaranda, in the state of Bolivar. When I try to describe a map of Ecuador to people, I say that it looks vaguely like an upside down pear, rounder on the top and then thinner on the bottom. Guaranda is located almost in the middle of the round part. If you look on the map, it's between Quito and Cuenca. See if you can find it!
Guaranda is a city of about 55,000 people, and its at an elevation of 8,753 ft. It's a market town, known for its week long Carnival celebration. I hope that I get to experience that celebration firsthand, and I promise to post pictures if I do. For all of my friends who've been to Peru, the pictures remind me of Cusco. The buildings are the same colonial style, and some of the streets are cobblestone. It looks beautiful, mountainous and green. It looks like the kind of place that is more breathtaking in person than in pictures, which makes me so incredibly excited to see it with my own eyes.

As for my host family, I have a host father named Christian, a host mother named Wendy, and a host sister named Andrea. Andrea is about a year and a half younger than me. I tried hard not to have any preferences about my host family, but I'm terribly happy to have a host sister!

I fly to Miami on August 21st for a Gateway orientation with all of the other American students going to Ecuador, then we fly to Quito on the 22nd. It seems to me that some of the closest friends exchange students make are other exchange students, so I'm excited to get to know the other AFSers!

Now I get to fill out more forms for my visa application and go shopping for anything I need before I leave, all while waiting for more information about my host family and any information on my school. I don't mind waiting for that so much though, because now I have a tangible, if not very detailed, picture of what my life will be like. It feels good to have a place and a family. I no longer feel like I'm wandering around without any sense of direction. I know where I'm going, and I feel like maybe I can belong there.

Hasta luego,

~Elisa

Pre-Departure Jitters

Welcome to my blog! I figure that the majority of the people reading this already know me, but for those that don’t, an introduction is in order.

Hi! My name is Elisa. I’m a recent high school graduate, and in a month and a half, I’m leaving for the biggest and most terrifying adventure of my life. My favorite color is blue, I love reading, singing, acting, and math, and I’m going to major in Civil/Environmental Engineering in college. I live with my parents, sister, and our neurotic dog Jasper, and I have an insatiable desire to see the world.

So, what’s the big adventure? Well, I’m participating in a ten month, cultural immersion exchange program to Ecuador through AFS Intercultural Programs. I’ll be living with a host family, attending high school (yes, that means five years of high school, which some people might complain about, but I don’t mind at all), and generally absorbing as much Ecuadorian culture as possible.

You might be wondering where exactly in Ecuador I’m going to be, what my host family is like, and even what school I’ll be going to. Those are everyone’s follow up questions when I tell them I’m going abroad. I’d love to tell you all of those things, and believe me, if I knew, I would. The truth is that I have no real idea about any of that. AFS will tell me about that placement information sometime between now and two weeks before I leave, and I’m sitting in a pool of expectant anxiety while I wait.

Not knowing a lot of details about where I’ll be in Ecuador has made preparing a very strange situation. Sometimes it seems like my departure is just around the corner. I need a big suitcase, a visa, vaccinations, and some other basics before I leave. I need to decide what I’m going to take with me (I guess it’s unreasonable to pack all of my books…) and I only have a month and a half-ish left to hang out with my friends with any consistency. Realizing that you’ve seen someone for the last time, either in a long time, or ever, is a very weird feeling. When I think about those things, everything seems to be happening too fast, like it’s all too close for comfort. On the other hand, when I think about what life is actually going to be like when I get to Ecuador, it all seems very far away, because I don’t have a clear picture of what to expect.

Being an exchange student is all but written in my genetic code. My mom and her two siblings hosted students and went abroad during high school. My family hosted a girl named Melissa, from Costa Rica, during my sophomore year and we’ve hosted a couple of students on short exchanges as well. My mom is an avid volunteer with AFS and has filled nearly every role there is to fill within the organization. Needless to say, going on exchange is a semi-unofficial expectation in my family, and one that I couldn’t be happier to fulfill.

I think that knowing so many former and current exchange students is the primary reason that I decided to go to Ecuador. I love listening to people talk about their experiences abroad, and after hearing so much, I’m ready to be the one telling stories. I’m excited to finally be fluent in Spanish. I’ve been speaking it with varied consistency since before kindergarten, and I’m ready to be able to speak it without thinking so hard. I’m also ready to not be a tourist. I’ve traveled to a few other countries, and with the slight exception of my trip to Peru, they were all touristy vacations. I had a blast, of course, but I’m ready to be a foreigner who came to live, not one that came to see the over-photographed landmarks.

So for now, I’m waiting. Waiting for a departure date, waiting to know where I’ll be living and who I’ll be living with. It’s a test of my patience, and I’m not always the most patient person. But despite my worries and impatience, I also can’t wait to get on that plane. Not traveling has become an itch I can’t scratch, but I know I get closer to reaching it all the time.

Thanks for reading my blog! I’ll be sure to post more as soon as I know more.

Hasta luego,

~Elisa