Ecuador-finito...
^That's not even Spanish. The point is, I feel I haven't entirely tied up ends about my Ecuador trip due to my recent problem of eternal bodily exhaustion. So naturally I'm going to list here a mixture of words I used frequently in that crazy foreign country and talk about how they relate to my trip.Gringos: A white person from an English speaking country.
How to even sum this up into a nice bite sized paragraph? Our gringo house, the gringo circus, the gringo playpen, getting called gringos all the time by everyone else and getting whistled at every time we stepped outside...what a fully Ecuadorian country Ecuador was. I can understand that they just weren't used to seeing gringos, let alone a Chinita (little Chinese girl). But hey Ecuador, as much as I love you, I'm Korean.
Habitación: Room/accomodation.
This is one word I learned, purely from repetition. Every time our group took weekend trips, it was necessary to find a room to stay in, and most of the times, the room was located in a hostal. Although some of the questionable sheets and worn-down walls used to make me finicky at first, I adjusted to staying in a room with no air conditioning, water pressure, hot water, or heat. These hostals, however ridiculous, gave us all a funny story to look back on. And it gave us a chance to live on less.
Taxi/autobus/trole: Taxi/bus/trolley.
Public transportation being a common way to move from place to place, these words were used frequently in Ecuador. Unfortunately, they do not bring to mind a positive connotation. Speeding buses never stopped fully for passengers to get on or to exit. Some taxi drivers were not the friendliest. On trolleys it was imperative that we protect our belongings so that they did not get stolen. And as a general rule of thumb, no Ecuadorian vehicle ever followed the rules of traffic. Let's just say that by the end of my trip, I learned to shut my eyes, close my mouth, and infinitely trust that the driver was in fact competent.
Helado: Ice cream.
Being stressed out from the kids after school and craving a yummy frozen treat, the TQP bunch adopted a habit of seeking out the lovely corner store every 2 days [but really, who am I kidding..it was more like everyday]. Also, there was this mysterious and very shady looking store that stood very close to our house, with a questionable "helado" sign outside. Hannah and I decided that they sold helados....DEL SANGRE (which means ice cream... of blood, of course).
Marcar [?]: to pick up?
Still not quite sure where this particular phrase stems from. But everyday the kids would whine, "Amárcame, profe!" which means "Pick me up professor." Now this was not just a normal whine. We learned very quickly that the Ecuadorian kids could adopt some sort of superhuman whiny voice that was able to annoy us a ridiculous amount. And even though we made fun of it and got annoyed once in a while, the kids were just so wonderful that we did indeed pick them up, whiny voices and all.
This was just a quick wrap-up of some of the daily things from my trip that I will miss...with the exception of the public transportation. Although some of these things may sound negative from those simply reading, for all of us TQP'ers, they all created memories that we could truly treasure. Not because we were "living the life" in Northern Quito, not because we knew everything from the get-go, but because we figured everything out on the way, and learned to "rough it," together. Only this way did I come back to the U.S. being really grateful for every luxurious thing that I get to live with here.
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