Back to School

Its been a while since I last posted, but I wanted to at least semi-understand how school works here before trying to describe and explain it to the rest of my world.

Somewhere along the way, I decided that 4 years of high school wasn't enough for me, or, more accurately, I decided that I enjoyed learning enough to go through five years of high school in order to go on exchange. I don't regret that decision whatsoever, but let me tell you, high school here is wild beast that I've got no idea how to tame.

I'll start with the easy part: uniforms.

This is out daily uniform. We also have a gym uniform that I think I'm going to end up loving, just because it isn't a skirt, sweater and white knee-high socks. Were not allowed to wear make up, nail polish, and all hair ties have to be white. I can't tell yet exactly how strict they are about those rules, but I'm afraid to be rebellious because the other day the inspector came into our class and made everyone stand up to make sure that our skirts were long enough. Mine wasn't, even though it was to my knees when I pulled it down as far as it would go. But being fashionable aside, its actually really nice to not have to think about what to wear in the morning. I can be very indecisive on that front.

On to classes. I'm taking 12 different subjects:

Psychology

Investigation (still trying to figure out exactly what that subject is...)

Math (This class is going to be beautiful, because I've already learned a lot of what were covering, so I might actually understand it and have a chance at getting a good grade)

Chemistry 

Biology

Issues in the Contemporary World

Citizenship ( as far as I can tell its essentially government/civics)

English ( My teacher already calls on my 90% of the time)

Language and Literature (The first unit is on fantasy fiction, so the first class we talked about Lord of the Rings the whole time. I can definitely get behind this class!)

Emprendimiento ( I still cant figure out exactly what this subject is and I only have it a couple of times a week)

Gym

Computer class

I have 8 periods every day, and a different combination of classes every day. This schedule is essentially the most confusing thing I've ever had to deal with, and I took AP Calc last year... My saving grace is that we all stay in the same classroom all day and the teachers come to us, so I don't have to worry about moving rooms ever. Its a little strange for me to be in the same classroom all day, but what really throws me off is that there's a whiteboard at the front of the classroom and absolutely nothing on the walls. I'm so used to the walls and classrooms at school being covered in poster and pictures and who knows what else, that having bar walls all around me seems very empty. 

I won't lie, the first day of school felt a little awkward. I am one of exactly two girls without black hair, and the other one is also an exchange student. Also, here I'm the tallest girl in my class, and one of the tallest in the whole school. The first day, mostly people stared at me. They smiled timidly too, but only a few girls talked to me. It was awkward. But, I'm happy to say that after that first day, things started to feel less weird with my classmates, they've definitely become less shy. I routinely get asked to help with English questions, and the other day one of our teachers just didn't show up to class ( that's normal, I guess...) so they all sat in a circle around me and asked a billion questions about everything I could possibly tell them about. It was a little overwhelming to be bombarded with questions like that, but it was also a lot of fun!

School has been where my Spanish skills are being tested, and surpassed. I can hold a conversation about my family or how my day was, but trying to understand chemistry in Spanish is a whole different story. I understand about 70% of what goes on in class, and I'm thankful for my friend Jeimy who doesn't seem to mind repeating the homework from every class to me, because I usually can't catch what the teachers say. I'm struggling most with how the homework is supposed to be presented. There seem to be all sorts of unwritten rules about what you write in your notebook and what to put in your folder, as well as when its okay to copy, paste and print from the internet and when things need to be handwritten. I've already messed up there quite a bit. 

I just keep telling myself that it's okay to not have everything figured out right now, I've only been in school for a week, and I've only been in Ecuador for three. Its really crazy to think about that. Sometimes it seems like its been way way longer than three weeks, and sometimes it feels like I just got here. 

I really do want to write more frequently, but I almost never have down time at home, so it's been harder than I expected. Regardless, I'm going to try to make room for blogging, because, like my darling best friend Olivia pointed out, I haven't posted in forever and she's tired of reading the same few posts. She wants to hear more, so Olivia, this post is for you :) I promise to write more soon.

Hasta luego,

Elisa

Culture Shock!

This post is going to be all over the place, but to be fair, it'll be representative of my life in the last week and a half, since I've also been all over the place.

I want to start with my very first bus ride from Quito to Guaranda. That was the first time I truly experienced culture shock, I just didn't realize that it was culture shock until later. I tend to get most homesick and sad when I'm alone or not doing anything, when I don't have anything else to think about. That first bus ride was the first time I had some time to think about everything since I got on the plane in Denver, and so I thought a lot about what this experience was really going to be, and how long 10 months really is. I was thinking about all of that, and allowing myself to miss my family, as I watched the Ecuadorian countryside roll by. There are a few towns and smaller cities that you pass through on your way from Quito to Guaranda, and as I watched them and all of the people, I started to get really panic-y about the year. I mean the "What have I gotten myself into/ Am I really capable of being gone for 10 whole months?" kind of panic-y. I didn't realize until later what had made me so freaked out. It was the poverty that I saw that got to me. I don't want you all to get an image in your head of straw huts and naked children running around, or any other stereotypical "poor" things. I want you to imagine buildings with facades the color of the sunset and bare concrete block walls on either side. I want you to imagine  indigenous women in traditional clothing selling food from tiny roadside stands and too many street dogs to count. I want you to imagine construction that appears without warning around every other bend in the road. The kind of poverty you see here isn't a slap-in-the-face kind of poverty, its more subtle, but it's definitely there. I knew coming in that Ecuador is still developing, and that this wasn't going to be like visiting Europe, but seeing it up close and personal from the bus was jarring. What was really kind of scary was seeing it all and realizing that I would be surrounded by this lifestyle, this standard of living, for the next year of my life. I don't want to sound like the rich, privilaged American who scorns the "less fortunate", but seeing Ecuador didn't exactly fill me with the kind of "I will go and solve all of the world's problems now!" attitude that I would have hoped. I'm not on a mission trip, I'm not here to tackle poverty to the ground. I don't know if that makes sense, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that its strange to see a situation that you're accustomed to approaching as something to improve and realizing that instead, it's now something to learn to live around. That was my first real bout of culture shock, but, like everything else that was new at first, I'm getting used to it.

On to lighter topics, lets talk about food! In Ecuador, meals work differently than in the US. Here, breakfast is a small affair, usually with tea/coffee and some bread. Lunch is the staple meal of the day. There is always some form of soup first (usually with potatoes), then rice with meat and salad or cooked plantains. There's also juice, every kind of fruit juice you could imagine (plus some fruits I didn't know existed until this week) and always fresh squeezed. Dinner isn't really a thing, instead there is merienda, which is more of a nighttime snack than a meal. Usually we eat hot chocolate/tea and a sandwich, much like breakfast. It's been an adjustment, going from hardly eating lunch at all to that being the biggest meal of the day, with the other two being small. It's probably healthier though, not eating a big meal before going to bed.

Driving with my dad in the US used to make me nervous. Papi, if you're reading this, I take back everything I ever said about you being a bad driver. Although I have yet to see a single crash, the drivers here are much crazier. Speed limits seem to be optional, as well as staying in your lane (even on two lane roads). Plus everyone drives a stick, so driving is just a little jerkier than I'm used to anyway. You can part wherever there is space, even if it means parking in the on-coming traffic's lane. One of the three major AFS rules is that you can't drive, which I wont have a problem following at all. I don't think you could pay me enough money to drive here.

My school, while now technically co-ed, is basically an all girls school. Everyone here calls it "el feminino", which translates to the feminine, or something along those lines. I have a lovely and ugly uniform. Grey skirt, red, itchy sweater, knee high socks and black mary janes, along with a full gym suit that I get to wear when there is P.E. I went to school today for the first time, but they havent figured out the schedules yet, so there haven't been any classes thus far. That means that everyone shows up at school and socializes all day and then goes home. I talked to a girl in my class for most of the day and she showed me around, while informing me that the girls here could be kind of shy. That explained why I got lots of stares and some hesitant smiles, but not a lot of actual conversation with most of the girls in my class. I felt a little awkward, and very tall.

To finish up here are some random, but interesting things that happened: When I went to Quito to meet my host mom and sister, we visited a monument that you could see the whole city from. At the base of the monument there was a man playing a few different flutes for entertainment. One of the songs he started playing sounded familiar and it took me a second to realize it, but I soon recognized the song as Chiquitita, by ABBA. I laughed so hard, because in what universe did I ever imagine that I would hear an ABBA song being played on the pan flute?!

Also, I was with my host father at the bank the other day, running errands, and the security guard told me that I was Barbie. I know he meant it as a compliment, but it was pretty strange to hear. I'm not that blonde, am I?

There will be more to write later, but that's all I have for now!

Hasta luego,

Elisa

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

The AFS group from Guaranda in Quito, standing on the actual equator.

Me and my host family (minus my host mom, plus my host sister's boyfriend) in Quito over the weekend.

Quito!

The view of Guaranda

Chimborazo, the nearby, active volcano

Guaranda, from my grandparents front steps.

My house!

My room! (I have a lovely Hello Kitty bedspread that I'm slowly learning to tolerate)

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I'm hoping all of these make up for the short post. The truth is that I have about a million words to say about life here in the last week and a half, but I've had zero time to write about it, so forgive me if I promise to post about it all soon, instead of writing about it now. I'm shooting for a post once a week, or at least once every two, which should become easier once I'm settled at my 99.9% girls school (It's technically co-ed, but apparently you can count the guys on one hand) and I have some sort of schedule.

Hasta luego,

Elisa 

Deep Breaths

I am alive. Severely overwhelmed, completely outside of my comfort zone, but alive none the less.

I guess the beginning is a good place to start, and the beginning for us, is Miami. After my last post, I met the other three American students going to Ecuador, Hannah from Alaska, Madison from the San Francisco area, and Gavin from Washington. I'm happy to say that we all hit it off right away, and had a blast together at both orientations. We had a short orientation in Miami, before heading off to Quito, where we were picked up at the airport along with Sacha, who is the only AFSer from France and who we adopted into our little band. Then we drove to a retreat/camp place where we met all of the other AFSers in Ecuador, and had a day long orientation. We talked about safety, cultural norms, the visa registration process that we have to go through now that were in-country, and how to deal with earthquakes and active volcanoes. The most natural disaster type thing that ever happens in Denver is snowstorms, and the occasional tornado warning, so hearing about tremors and ash fall was a big change.

The sense of time and punctuality here is very different. At all AFS USA orientations, there was always a schedule to be followed with specific times for everything. Here, they told us the general things to be covered, we didn't cover them in any specific order, and the only things with generally set times were meals, but even those it was okay to be late to. I hate being late to things, so all of that was quite an adjustment for me. Hooray for cultural differences!

Then Sunday morning everyone left to their respective host communities, which meant a five hour bus ride for me and the eleven other AFSers going to Guaranda. Five hours is nothing to me (we routinely drive anywhere from 7 to 19 hours to visit family in the US), but to my Belgian friend Bram, five hours was an eternity. Apparently in Belgium you can drive a couple of hours and be out of the country!

When we got to Guaranda, we were picked up by our host families, with a couple of exceptions, including me. Turns out my host sister is starting her first year of university in Quito this week, so she and my host parents were in Quito getting her set up. So instead of being picked up by them, my host mother's sister, Maria, and my host grandparents picked me up, along with my host cousins, Alejandro and Orlando. They took me to my house and we watched some movies. I was incredibly excited to figure out that I can watched dubbed movies in Spanish and understand them, for the most part! I unpacked and everyone stayed at my house with me for the night. Then today I met a ton of other people and relatives, because in Guaranda, everyone knows everyone. I've tried to remember all of the names and connections, but once I started meeting the friends of my host cousins I gave up and just smiled and kissed lots of cheeks. My host father arrived from Quito this evening and picked me up, we talked as he drove me around the city a little and then came home, where I finally got connected to the internet. I like my host father a lot so far, and I cant wait to meet my host mom later this week!

So here I am, writing to all of you, checking in with my parents to tell them about everything, and generally unwinding after a long day. There is so much to take in and thus far all of the years I've spent speaking Spanish in snippets are being put to the test. I'm trying to just go with whatever happens and not break into tears when things almost seem like too much.

Adjusting is hard, but its also exciting. For so long I've wanted exactly this, and now that its happening I've had a few moments of panic, but for the most part I can't believe that it's actually real. But I'm alive, and I'm pretty sure I can do this, so I think I'm ready for tomorrow, and the rest after that. Deep breaths are key, and I'm becoming very good at them.

I promise to post pictures soon, it's just that posting pictures requires taking some, which I haven't done yet. It's nice to write, but it's also nice to hear from people, so if you think of anything to say, please comment!

Hasta luego,

Elisa

Waterworks

I was talking to my aunt, a former AFSer to Belgium, the other week about exchange and she gave me this piece of advice: let yourself feel whatever you feel, because it just gets too exhausting to hold feelings in. I have not put that to better use than in the last three days. I've been happy and frustrated, confused and completely at peace, but mostly sad. Its hard to say goodbye, over and over again, to all of the people you know and have it all lead up to the biggest blow of them all: saying goodbye to my family.

I absolutely love the Humans of New York project. One of the questions that he asks people is what was the saddest moment they can remember. I know what I would say. Hugging my family and boyfriend just outside of security, bawling my eyes out, and then having to walk away into a huge adventure that at that moment seemed like the most terrifying thing I could possibly be doing. But I did it, I got on the plane.

I had been joking with my parents that whoever sat next to me on the plane had better be a little sympathetic, because I knew I would be crying a lot. What I didn't expect was to sit next to a woman who had hosted an AFS student when she was in high school. I got to sit next to someone who completely understood what I was feeling at the moment, and I was so grateful for that.

I've been saying goodbye to so many people that I was really getting tired of it. It was draining. A very small part of me was looking forward to getting on the plane, because that would mean that I was done with goodbyes. It didn't feel like a relief at first, but after I stopped blubbering and calmed down a bit, I realized that I was starting to really look forward to everything ahead of me again. I'm going to ECUADOR! How crazy is that?! I'm going to miss everyone terribly, but I'm also happy to not have to dread saying goodbye anymore. That's behind me, and I'm glad for it.

I'm writing this from my hotel room in Miami, where I'm waiting to meet the three other students who will be flying to Quito with me. We have a short orientation and fly out tomorrow afternoon. Another realization I had was that now that I'm done with goodbyes, I'm doing a complete 180. Now I get to introduce myself to everyone. That, in itself, is a little daunting, but so far, I'm enjoying it.

Now I get to put my friend-making skills to the test. I'm a little nervous, but it helps to know that the rest of the AFSers are in the same boat, or on the same plane (just to be accurate).

Hasta luego,

Elisa

The Visa: As If Everything Else Wasn't Hard Enough

After sending in my visa application 3 separate times, calling the Ecuadorian consulate in Phoenix countless times (because they never answer their phones), waiting weeks to hear back from them, many, many stressed out conversations with the AFS staff, a hastily rescheduled in-person appointment, and a 24 hour trip to Phoenix, I have a visa. I guess Life decided that I wasn't stressed out enough by everything else.

After having been to various orientations and lots of potlucks with AFS, I've heard my fair share of exchange student horror stories and things that have gone wrong. There are things that I know will be hard, and I know I'll be able to deal with them when they come up, but I've never heard of anyone having the visa process be a nightmare. That was unexpected.

We sent in my visa application, for the first time, about six weeks ago, figuring that gave us plenty of time. Then we didn't hear back from the consulate for a week, until we got an email saying that the documents we sent weren't attached in the correct order. So we sent it again, and a third time after that, only to hear that there were other documents that they needed, or that there was actually a different order for the documents. I was getting pretty panicky when it was already August, and I still didn't even have an appointment with the consulate, much less any sort of documentation to get me to Ecuador. Then finally, just before all hell was going to break loose, my dad got through to the consulate, only for them to tell us that they had us scheduled for an appointment in a couple of days. I guess it never crossed their minds to let us know, so that we could show up. My dad got them to give us an appointment the following week, so that we'd have time to buy plane tickets and arrange everything. And so it came to pass that this last Monday night, I got on a plane to Phoenix with my dad, and showed up to the Ecuadorian consulate the next morning.

The whole reason that they ask you to show up in person for your visa is so that they can conduct and interview. I was nervous about that, because I can speak pretty good Spanish, but I don't do very well on the spot. Turns out I didn't need to be worried, the consul asked me all of three questions, and then spent fifteen of twenty minutes talking about Ecuador and all of the great things you can do there. It was good information, but it seemed to me that we had gone to great lengths to get there in person for a relatively unimportant interview. But here's the thing: when you run out of options, you can't be picky. At all.

So now I have a visa. It's in my passport, all official and everything. I'm happy about that, despite the fiasco it was to get it, because it means I can get on the plane to Ecuador. That's the really important part, that I can get on the plane, because that's the first big step on my gran adventure.

Hasta Luego,

Elisa

Life Packing 101

To be or not to be? That is not the question. At least, it's not my question. My question how to fit all of these clothes:

into one suitcase and one large back pack. Follow up question: Can it possibly weigh less than 50 lbs?

Both of these questions are really just details I have to figure out in order to answer the real question that every exchange student comes face to face with: how do you pack your whole life into a suitcase?
There are obvious things to pack like clothes, shoes, toiletries, etc., but the hard part is figuring out what else to take. Books? Pictures? Bags? Journals? What other miscellaneous things do I have that I want to take with me? What is important enough not to leave behind for ten months?

Packing is a lot like evolution. Survival of the fittest is a very real thing that my clothing now has to face, because space is valuable. I've already started going through all of the stuff I want to bring and tossing what I can do without. Sorry navy striped sweater, you've been voted off the island. Black dress, you're next. I guess the one thought that makes the decisions easier is that I'll be wearing a uniform to school. It'll be an adjustment, but another exchange student, who's blog I've been reading, made a good point: a uniform will be nice since it means I wont have to worry about my clothes being culturally appropriate. I'm hoping it'll be nice to not have that to worry about all the time.

People always recommend that you bring something to hang up on a wall, someplace to put pictures or other things to make a space feel like your own. I haven't been the kind to plaster pictures of me and my friends all over my walls, I prefer my world map with pins stuck in all of the places I've been to, but I think it would be good to bring something to hang some pictures in as a reminder of home.

I leave in 13 days. I'm to the point where I've made a list of all of the people I want to see before I go, and I'm quickly realizing that I don't actually have that much time to see them all. A trip to Phoenix next Monday and Tuesday cuts down on my time, but I'm determined to make it happen. I don't want all of these visits to become goodbye sob fests, I don't like those kinds of goodbyes. I'll cry my eyes out once I'm in Ecuador, when I miss my people. For now, I just want to do the same things that I usually do with the people that I do them with. I want to sit in my room and talk to my best friend Olivia about Pretty Little Liars while we scroll through Facebook. I want to have a movie weekend with my friends Michelle and Rachel. I want normalcy, I want to enjoy it before I jump into the whirlwind.

I realized the other day that I've been focusing almost exclusively on missing my friends, and that I haven't been allowing myself to think about missing my family. I know how to be away from my friends, I don't see them everyday, I don't live with them. My family is a whole other story. I've traveled without my family before, but always short trips, and always with people that I'm close to. This exchange is entirely different, and I don't want to think about missing them because I know being homesick is going to suck. I don't doubt my ability to live in Ecuador, I know that I can do this, but I can't imagine what its going to be like to not see my mom, dad, and sister everyday for so long. I know that I'm avoiding it, but at this point I'm okay with that. I'll deal with homesickness when it hits me. I don't want to focus too much on the sad parts right now, I want to focus on being excited. It's a lot more fun :)

Hasta luego,

Elisa