Opposite Ends of the Spectrum

I am a nerdfighter, which for those of you who aren't familiar with the term, means that I'm an avid follower of Hank and John Green and their YouTube channel, Vlogbrothers. They make videos about all sorts of different topics, create events to raise money for charity, and have started various educational YouTube channels that have saved my grades on several different occasions. I could write about all of the cool things Nerdfighteria does, but that's not the object of this post. If you want to know more, check out the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel, or click here. The point I'm trying to get to is that today the Vlogbrothers posted a new video titled "Will Life Get Better for the Poor?". In it, John Green describes the "empathy gap" that exists between many of the people like "us" who live in developed countries, and the millions of people in developing countries who live in poverty. He quotes the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Annual Letter:

"There is overwhelming evidence that people care about others who are suffering—when they can see the suffering."

Green goes on to describe how hard it can be for us to be truly empathetic towards extremely impoverished people, because it's as if we live in a separate world from them. Those people aren't our family friends, our neighbors, they don't even live in our cities. It's hard to empathize with people you've never seen or interacted with.

I was like that too. I've always had a good life. All of my basic needs have always been met, I've had a great education, a supporting community, the opportunity to travel internationally. How many people get the chance, and have the economic resources, to be an exchange student for ten months? I've always been in environments that have made me aware of how lucky I am to be born into this life, but despite that awareness, I still didn't really understand poverty until now. Sure, I'd had brushes with poverty in Mexico and Peru, but you gain a completely different perspective on the topic when people living in various stages of poverty become your family members, friends, and classmates. In his video, Green says that its easier to empathize with people who feel like "us", who we can see and interact with. If you've never spent time in impoverished places, it's hard to feel connected to the people there, which isn't any fault of our own, it's just how we humans work. But I have that experience right now, I get to live and connect with people here and what I'm most grateful for is that living here has made me think of Ecuadorians not at "poor people" or "rich people", but just as people. These people and their situations have become part of my "us", they are part of my world, which means I can empathize with them far more than I ever could in the past.

I'm more than halfway through my year now, I've officially spent more time in Ecuador than I have left, so I've been thinking a lot about what my favorite parts have been. What I realized is that the most exciting parts of exchange have been while I've been doing touristy things, but the most meaningful parts have always been during "normal life", while connecting with people. Realizing that makes me happy that I get to be both a tourist and just a person here. I get to travel to the tourist traps, take a million pictures, and get 'jump up and down' excited about things like zip lining, all while also being a student, a friend and a daughter. It's pretty amazing to have both, because one without the other isn't as interesting. If I was just a tourist, I wouldn't get the same cultural insights, and if I never did the touristy stuff, I'd get bored with normal life. It's a good balance to have. 

So in celebration of being past the half way point, let me share one of my highlights with you all! A few weekends ago, I got to travel to Baños, which is one of the big tourist attractions in Ecuador. I went with my family and some of the AFSers in Guaranda. We went biking, zip lining, hiking, swimming, saw a magnificent waterfall, and just all around had a good time!

This is at the "Casa del Arbol" or the tree house at the end of the world.

Zip Lining!!!

We biked all over the place, mostly in the rain, but it was fun anyway

This is the entrance to the "Pailon del Diablo" which is a huge waterfall. The entrance has 'welcome' written in 30 different languages. You'd be surprised how similar some of them are.

Me and my friend Bram at the bottom of the "Pailon del Diablo". I had my dad take the picture from up above since there was absolutely no way to go down without getting COMPLETELY soaked, and I didn't want to damage my camera.

A very wet group picture on the way back down.

This is the waterfall, from the other side of the mountain, but it's too long to get the whole thing into the picture.

More pictures from the "Casa del Arbol"

A map of all of the volcanoes in Ecuador. The red ones are active, the blue are dormant, and the green-ish are potentially active. Chimborazo (the volcano near Guaranda) is potentially active.

Check my Facebook for more photos :)

Hasta Luego,

Elisa

Navidad y los Años Viejos

Navidad

I promise that my next sentence doesn't reflect the tone of the rest of this post.

Christmas this year was kinda a disappointment. I've been told so many times in the past to not set many expectations of exchange, mostly because life in a foreign country is thoroughly unpredictable, but I thought it was safe to set some expectations of Christmas, since AFS sent out an email describing Christmas traditions similar to those in the US. Turns out, Christmas in Ecuador is not nearly the huge deal that it is in the US, in fact, its a much more subdued affair, despite the fact that, come the holiday season, the plazas get draped from head to toe in Christmas lights.

For starters, school vacations are shorter, only about a week and a half, and classes go through the 23rd of December. As for Christmas eve, I spent it like like most any other day, with the exception of some family and close family friends coming over for a very late dinner that consisted of chicken, rice, and potatoes, which we eat almost on a daily basis. After dinner and some nice conversation, our guests left, and everyone went to sleep. I do want to say that even though it was a quieter evening than I expected, it wasn't bad, I just came out of it expecting more.

My family is Catholic, and although we haven't gone to a single mass since I arrived, I assumed we would go to mass on Christmas eve, considering it's one of the most important Christian holidays. In the end we didn't go, which made no sense to me, until I Skyped with my mom and aunt who are both AFS returnees. They both said that Christmas was not a big deal on either of their exchange years, and my aunt said that Americans tend to go to and be more involved in their churches than in other countries. I hadn't thought about that before, but I can absolutely see how it's the case. In the US we tend to measure how devout someone is by how often they attend religious services, and how involved they are with their religious organizations. I cant say anything about the rest of the world, but in Ecuador, a person's devout-ness isn't measured in the same way. 95% of the population is considered Roman Catholic, and while they may not attend church ever Sunday, or even every month, they are deeply religious. You can see it in the way there are always fresh flowers on all of the graves in the cemetery, the depictions of the last supper that hang in every home, the way there are more nativity scenes than Christmas trees, the short Catholic mass held at my public school that every student had to attend, and most of all the beliefs that the people hold. The way religion influences life here is so incredibly widespread, especially because almost everyone belongs to the same one. That kind of homogeneity just doesn't exist in the US.

On Christmas morning we packed up our car and drove to Guayaquil to visit an aunt who lives there. The four days that we spent there were fantastic. Nothing screams vacation like hot weather, the beach, a nice pool, mangoes, and napping in a hammock. I spent the whole time marveling at how wealthy my aunt and her family are. Ecuador is considered a developing country (For a full list click here), and there isn't as much economic inequality within Guaranda as in larger cities like Guayaquil, so spending four days in a huge house, with a pool and basketball court, reminded me of how much of a gap there is between the rich and the poor. Then remembering that, I realized that we tend to give a connotation of unhappiness to anyone we consider poor. I don't mean to say that living in poverty is necessarily a desirable situation, but what I sorta knew in the past, and what I am seeing and living now, is that not everyone who is poor is unhappy. There's this painted picture of impoverished people in developing countries who are unhappy, malnourished, eeking out an existence. Don't get me wrong, there are real disadvantages to living in poverty, but I think that the negative side is emphasized to pull at our heartstrings and wallets. It's been a beautiful little epiphany to realize that Ecuador, and many other developing countries I'm sure, are not places brimming with poor and unhappy masses, but rather with people living lives that can be extremely different from ours, but are not the unhappy squalor we sometimes make them out to be.

Some pictures from Guayaquil!

 This is at the Iguana Park, a square in downtown Guayquil that is literally crawling with iguanas!

Años Viejos

It's safe to say that New Years is a much bigger deal to Ecuadorians than Christmas. There are quite a few parts of New Years here that are similar to the US, like parties, fireworks (although not to the same extent), toasting to the New Year, etc., as well as some distinctly different parts. The biggest celebratory tradition is the making and burning of the años viejos. The años viejos come in two different forms, the first of which are dolls made from old clothes, paper mâché heads/faces, and stuffed with newspaper. The second form are representations of anything from politicians and celebrities to comic book characters and animals made entirely of paper mâché, called monigotes. The monigotes can be incredibly impressive, some because of size (I saw one of Mufasa from the Lion King that was almost two stories tall!), some because of detail, and some because of both. There's a competition for the best monigote, and some people really go all out! The idea behind the años viejos is to make your doll in the form of someone who did bad things in the last year and then you burn them at midnight, to send the bad things off with the last year. Although, like many things, this tradition has become more commercialized, I still think it's a pretty awesome thing to do, and it’s fun to see how creative people get!

These are the paper mache faces that people buy to put on their homemade años viejos.

My family wishing each other 'Feliz Año' at midnight

I spent New Years Eve walking around Guaranda looking at all of the años viejos, eating a turkey dinner with family, burning our años viejos and toasting at midnight, and then dancing until 6 in the morning. Over all it was a rather fantastic night, and I don't know how quickly the police would show up if we started burning años viejos in the street in the US, but it's a tradition that I'd like to continue in the future!


It's been almost five months now, so I'm practically half way there. I can hardly believe it, and it makes me both excited for the five months to come, and sad that half of the year is already over.


Hasta luego,


Elisa

A Collection of Thoughts

I know it's been far too long since I last posted, but my thoughts have been in too much of a jumble to write something coherent. I still doubt that my thoughts are in any sort of order, but there are some thoughts I really wanted to share, and I figure that if this post is a little all over the place, then you'll all be getting a peek into how my mind feels 90% of the time here.

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My honeymoon is over. AFS has a cultural adjustment cycle that describes the different phases of cultural adjustment that every exchange student goes through during their year abroad (https://www.afswiki.org/index.php/Common_Phases_of_Cultural_Adjustment). Like with anything new and exciting, there's a phase of exchange where you're life abroad is just that: new and exciting. You're being flooded with new experiences, cultural traits, languages, and people, which can be overwhelming, but in the end makes you happy about your new life. Like any honeymoon, this comes to an end as you settle into your life and establish a routine. My honeymoon is over. There aren't many things that seem novel anymore, and the culture shock has mostly worn off. In some ways this is nice. I feel like I have a life here, with family and friends, and like I've said in the past, the normalcy and routine can be comforting. In other ways, it makes life, and my many feelings about it, a lot more complicated. Normal, routine life can seem boring sometimes.

Ever since I got back from my trip to Peru a few summers ago, I've been announcing my desire for non-touristy travel to anyone who will listen, proclaiming that I want to understand culture, not just see pretty sights. While that is still completely true, and I'm incredibly happy to be doing just that this year, I'd like to say that tourist travel, despite its usual shallowness, is incredibly fun. I've always felt weird pulling out my camera to take pictures of seeming normal things here in Guaranda, since I'm not a tourist here, despite my obviously foreign appearance. Now that I've been here four months, I've found myself itching for touristy travel again, after denouncing it for so long, to break the routine of daily life here. It can be such a breath of fresh air to be able to pull out my camera, talk in English, and marvel at new sights without feeling like I myself have become a spectacle. Luckily for me, the AFS trips to the four regions of Ecuador (Galapagos, Sierra, Amazon, and the coast) are coming up in the second half of the year, so I'll get to practice my minimal photography skills soon.

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I'd like to make a short note about bravery, since I've been hearing how brave I am quite a bit recently. Let me tell you something: I don't feel brave. Not now, nor at any particular point since I decided that I was going to take this gap year. On the contrary, I've felt scared, sometimes down right terrified, more often than any semblance of bravery. The thing is that, for me, bravery seems a little overrated. No part of this process has felt like a show of courage to me, if anything its felt just the next step in my life. Maybe that's because I can't even remember when I decided I wanted to be an exchange student, but mostly I think it's because this was just something I wanted. 95% of any big decisions, especially the life changing ones, are just wanting something enough to go after it. Maybe there is some bravery in the decision, but after you've made your choice, its not bravery that keeps you going, its will power. It's the will to deal with whatever repercussions, good or bad, that come with your decision, that keeps you going.

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Exchange students are popular right? Who doesn't want to be friends with the new, cool, different, foreigner? This is a stereotype that I've definitely had to deal with being here, in the sense that, like any stereotype, it has some basis in reality, but doesn't account for everyone's experience. You see, at least in my experience, exchange students have a very specific kind of popularity. We are like shiny, new toys. In the beginning, everyone is very interested in you. They want to talk to you about your home country, your life there, and how you like life in your host country. They have lots of questions, and you have variations on the same conversation with every new person you meet. I personally was really grateful for others' interest in me in the beginning, because it gave me something to talk about when I might not have known what to say otherwise. But just like new toys, the novelty of exchange students fades. It can be hard to move from being the interesting foreigner to being just another person that people know, because you have to put more effort into conversations and relationships, but in a way loosing that novelty marks the point where you begin to make deeper and more meaningful connections with people.

I'll admit that I've had some trouble no longer being the shiny new toy. I could talk about the US and my life there for an eternity, but its been harder at times to know what to say when conversations turn to people I don't know, events that I wasn't here for, or aspects of life here that are still strange to me. I can probably attribute that to the language barrier, or my infuriating shyness in some situations, or the fact that even though I'd like to think I know a lot about life here, I still can feel incredibly lost. Those kinds of situations and conversations can make me feel lonely, they make my lack of history here especially apparent. It's easy to spiral downward into homesickness, to miss my friendships that have existed for years and conversations about my past with people who were part of it, but I try to remind myself that this year is worth it, that I'll always be proud of myself for going for it later on.

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My German friend pointed something out the other day that I had noticed, but hadn't given much thought to. In American culture, and I think in many European cultures as well, individualism is valued. Its okay to be different, to have different tastes and preferences. I'd say its considered normal to not be normal. That isn't a very prominent trait in Ecuadorian culture. Homogeneity is everywhere here, not just in people's physical appearances, but in their tastes as well. Everyone dresses very similarly, they all like the same music, enjoy the same TV shows, etc. Popular culture is narrower here, and straying from what is 'normal' has heavier consequences. I knew that this would generally be the case, AFS gave us a list of countries, from the most individualistic to the most collectivist, and while the US is almost always at the top, Ecuador ranked almost at the very bottom. Regardless, knowing something and living it are two very different things. I think I get some leeway, as an exchange student, to be different, but it's still strange to feel that society pushes you to fit in, rather than being told it's better to stand out.

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I could write more about everything that I've talked about so far, and as the year goes on I'll only have more things to say, but since this post is already pretty long, I'll leave you with what I've written. Hopefully it gives you some insight about exchange students, life, Ecuador, or really just anything. I realize that today is the day before Christmas, so I promise there will be another post soon, that's all about Navidad :)

Hasta luego,

Elisa

Christmas and Camping (almost...)

Pictures are nice right? Here are some to try and make up for neglecting my blog for the last month and a half.

 Some pictures from setting up and decorating my uncle and aunt's Christmas tree in Quito.

 My Christmas tree (the lights are actually multicolored, not just blue)

We spent a weekend at my great-grandfather's old farm house, and cooked out. It was the closest I've come to camping, although there was some electricity in the farm house, so we only half roughed it. 

My mom, dad, great-grandpa (he's 91, and still putters around fixing up the house) and me.

 Blackberry picking! They grow on trees here, and have lost of tiny spines.

That's all for now.

Hasta luego,

Elisa 

Queso! (and my sixth sense)

I love cheese. I also love chocolate. Do you know what exists in Ecuador? A town that specializes in producing cheese and chocolate. Do you know what could possibly be better than a town that produces cheese and chocolate? A three day cheese festival in said town, that's what!

Yesterday, I went to Salinas, a small town about a half and hour from Guaranda, for a festival that was all about cheese. There was music, lots of foreigners, and most importantly, free food! I couldn't tell you how many different types of cheese I tried, but they were all delicious. I don't have any real cultural insights about the festival, except maybe that celebrations of food seem to be pretty universal. You could probably go to any country in the world and find food fests. We humans like to eat good food, and I cant tell you how happy it makes me that sometimes people organize events where we can all eat good food together :)

The weather in Ecuador is even more unpredictable than the weather in Denver. It was beautiful and warm in the morning and suddenly, the fog rolled in. I was so happy to have taken my mom's advice and packed my winter jacket, because when it gets foggy like this, its cold.

There were a few different musical performances, this guy was from the US, and could not only sing beautifully in Spanish, he was a phenomenal guitar player!

These are the natural salt mines just outside of Salinas. Water collects in little naturally formed pools, and when the water evaporates, salt is left behind.

I spent the hole time at the salt mine with my camera glued to the floor, because it was a million different colors and textures.

Part of the festival was some guys doing tricks on bikes. I'm not sure exactly how it relates to cheese, but it was interesting anyway.

One part of the festival was a 2 kilometer relay race, where each team member had to run while carrying this enormous hunk of cheese. My friend Rebecca and I almost participated, and then were glad that we didn't when we saw the cheese and were told it was 2 kilometers, not 200 meters. 

Two of the cheese-runners, at the starting line.

My friend's brother, finishing out the race for his team. They got second place.

Another one of the musical performers. I really enjoyed their matching ponchos!

As I mentioned before, there were lots of foreigners at the festival. As an exchange student, or probably just by living in a foreign country, you gain an expert ability in spotting other foreigners, and an uncanny ability to guess where they're from. Now of course in Ecuador, its easy to tell who isn't Ecuadorian, because all of the Ecuadorians look so similar. What was a little more surprising was that you can somehow tell the difference between the Italians, the Germans, the Americans, etc. I don't really know how to describe it, but I could tell that the few Americans were american. They just looked like it.  My friend said it's like we exchange students have a sixth sense for detecting other foreigners and where they're from. I think its true, and its a nice sense to have, because even if the foreigners we see are complete strangers to us, there's something comforting about seeing them. Its like someone is saying "Hey look, don't worry, you're not the only one!"

Hasta luego,

Elisa