Ecuador-finito...

9:14 PM flashesofgold 0 Comments

^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.


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.

Final day- hellish.

3:37 PM flashesofgold 0 Comments

Friday was...extremely difficult and ridiculously uncomfortable. Not because the day was terrible, but because it was the last day and I couldn't stop crying. The actual day was pretty good, with the exception of Hannah and I being mysteriously ill. We had a students vs. teachers soccer game and we performed a dance that Annie choreographed the night before. We all had our own "stations" where we did different activities with the kids. Although most of the day was a little blurred by my sickliness, Henry and I had a whole lot of fun running our obstacle course station. The kids got really competitive and dizzy and clumsy.. all at once. Kevin and Milton did the whole obstacle course so fast, and screamed with their adorable voices something about no one being able to beat them. For some reason, the sadness didn't hit me until about 2 seconds before the kids left, at which point I asked Hannah if they were really leaving. I was beyond confused...how could people get so attached to one another, after only about 3 weeks? I told all the kids hopeful things about how I wished them well and how I wish I had helped them. Hugging each of them and sobbing, I didn't want to let them go. But alas, it was necessary. I just remember the saddest thing of all was the fact that I couldn't see them grow into wonderful people...I wouldn't get to see what improvements they would make at school. Even knowing that the kids probably didn't understand the concept of e-mail, I gave them each my e-mail address, hoping one day I would get a cheerful message about their exciting lives.
Saturday, my "last day" here was spent relaxing with Hannah and Annie. I went to MegaMaxi to buy last minute foods I wanted to bring home, and there happened to be a market right by our house, so I bought a couple things for friends there. After that, the rest of the day was spent relaxing with Annie and Hannah. We watched Along Came Polly, which was a lot grosser than I remembered, but we enjoyed watching a simple funny movie together. When it was time to leave, the sadness started to set in..as we exchanged hugs and the cab started driving, I felt as if I was leaving my own family. Was it because I was sad to leave Ecuador? Maybe because of this, my fate was to stay in this country for 3 more days. I was not allowed to leave because I didn't have my green card with me. And what's more, was I had to wait until Monday, when the U.S. embassy would be open again. So back I went, without a phone, without certainty that people were home, and in my frazzled state, I even forgot how to get to the entrance of our neighborhood. It was really horrific. But luckily, Bri had gotten to a computer at the airport and messaged people in the house. Luckily, I was able to get inside the house.
After waking up on Sunday morning, everything felt like a terrible nightmare. While I was beating myself up, everyone else decided to go to the virgin statue. Annie stayed back with me, however, and told me that she knew exactly how I felt. That she would be blowing the problem out of proportion in her head too, and that I shouldn't be alone in my thoughts. So, after taking a shower and clearing my head, we went downtown for a little bit of wandering. I ended up having a great day with Annie, first getting lost [both of us are directionally challenged, go figure] and then looking around the market. The day was so loosely planned and adventurous, and I had a blast. We ran into some of the others, who told us that Alex's family wanted to have dinner with us that night. We got back, relaxed, and got ready for dinner by the Santo Domingo trole station. The streets by the station were so cute and cozy, with lots of restaurants and tiny stores. Even though we were there during nighttime, I could visualize the camraderie that would take place during the day. We ate empanadas and talked about all the funny things that had happened during our time here, and got back home in Alex's cousin's car.
Monday, more people left and it was just down to Caitlin and I. Through my frantic energy, she stuck with me all day while I tried to get documents for my green card. It would have been impossible without Paulo, the super open minded and kind taxi driver. He not only took us to every place I needed to go, but he also talked to the police and migration and gave us a tour of parks and a museum. After Caitlin and I got back, we ate dinner and Caitlin got ready to leave. We watched Remember Me, which was super depressing, especially because I would be home alone for the night [I would have the first and second floors all to myself.] I was so incredibly grateful for Caitlin and Paulo and everyone who tried to help me through all of this.
Today I woke up thinking about my plane ride home later tonight. In a daze, I helped Keren and Casey clean up the house. Even through the nostalgia that was hitting me as I looked at the empty rooms, I could not imagine going through this nightmare of my green card situation any longer. As I went through my day only hoping for the night to come, I took in Ecuador, and wanted to remember enough of the adventures TQP had here to tell my family and friends.

Thirty-eighth day- emotional.

10:53 PM flashesofgold 0 Comments

Today was an eventful day. Some things that happened while Hannah and I were not feeling too great:
-Eduardo, who had been absent from our class for about 2 weeks, came back to school today. It was definitely a high point of my day.
-Milton cried about getting on "the list," which led to me explaining to him that he was not a bad kid.
-Xavier hit the other kids at recess, resulting in me yelling at him.
-After recess, I came into a class full of kids with various wooden sticks, trying to hit each other.
But one of the biggest things today was that Jairo cried. He was misbehaving in class [which is a normal occurence], so I took him outside and gave him the "disappointed" speech. To this he only nodded in silence and agreed, until I gave him a hug. He broke into tears during our embrace, which not only reminded me that he is indeed a good kid, but also of the fact that I would miss him a ridiculous amount back in the states. It reminded me of why I loved Jairo so much...because even though he misbehaves, he can do well with the right kind of attention. With kids like him and Milton, I really couldn't imagine leaving. I couldn't imagine giving them the attention they needed and then leaving them to return to normal school.
After school, I got some laundry done and during the night we all played Oh Heck and Most Likely To. I can't remember the last time that I laughed so hard for such a long time. During Most Likely To, everyone clearly got the pieces of paper that matched their fake "stereotypes," which made the game extremely hilarious. Caitlin got the ones related to violence, Alaina and Courtney with being attractive young women, Annie with being strange, and so on. Four people from our ed group, who are heading to Peru, are leaving tomorrow which set a sad tone on this night. It hasn't quite hit me that we're leaving so soon...but laughing and enjoying every minute here has made me realize I love all these people so very much.

Thirty-seventh day- dramatic.

8:14 PM flashesofgold 0 Comments

So Friday morning we woke up early, and got ready to take off to Mindo. After the hurried blur of the morning, we were finally on the bus to the northern side of Quito, and then on another bus to Mindo [most of which, for me, was spent sleeping]. When we finally got off at Mindo, the first of our many dramatic events of the weekend had occurred. Caitlin couldn't find her medicine or toiletries...or sweatshirt. After a while, the gang puzzled together that her stuff must have been stolen, because the stolen items were the ones that were placed towards the top of her backpack. Annoyance aside, we hopped on the back of a pickup truck [which by now had become too common a mode of transportation for us] and were on our way to find a hostal. We arrived at the main part of Mindo, a home-y rural town with lots of quaint restaurants and cottage-cozy hostals. After a long gander at the beautiful view at the Hostal Sanchez, we dropped our things off and set off to Pizza de Tere. Being as hungry as we were, the 7 of us ended up ordering 3 large pizzas. In the process of ordering and eating, we met the friendly owners, one of whom told us that "Todo es posible en Mindo." After making our stomachs happy with food, we went to find a place to zip line. Although I'm not normally a big fan of being high above the grounds in nothing but a harness around my legs, we all decided to venture into the forest for some adventure. After only a couple zip lines, my dear friends had established to our guides that my nickname was Chucky, which started a long session of nickname-making. Which also established a "casi novios" case between Henry and Bri, which Henry was not too happy about. But the 13-zip-line adventure overall was such a fun experience. We zipped through the forest in mariposa pose, superman pose, and bouncing up and down while the guides pulled the line up and down. We found a yummy chocolate/coffee place, and had humongous pieces of brownie. After that, we went to a bar outside with swings as chairs that we had spotted ahead of time. We all ate burgers and had a grand time and then went out to El Diablo after playing the "most likely to.." game in our room. Caitlin started getting sick and drama filled our night, but we had fun nonetheless.
The next morning, Hannah, Annie, Alex and I went to El Quetzal [the cute chocolate place we went to the night before] for breakfast. I had delicious coffee [the first cup of coffee I had in Ecuador that wasn't instant] and pancakes to prep me for a long day of hiking. We went back, Caitlin decided she would venture on despite her incessant vomiting, and were off to the waterfalls. We took a cable car from one side to the other in order to get to the waterfalls. We had a pleasant walk with singing, talking and taking pictures, and we got to see about 4 waterfalls. Annie, Alex, and Hannah paid a couple dollars to jump into a waterfall which was epic. After the waterfall hike which left us out of breath, we went to lunch at a Mexican restaurant. We were absolutely famished because it was around 4, and ended up devouring all our food in negative 5 seconds. After our very late lunch, Caitlin and Alex left, and the rest of us decided to stay in Mindo for another day. The 5 people left went to find a hostal. We walked into "Bird Planet," which looked very expensive but stupendous. It was expensive. While we were in the process of leaving to look for another hostal, however, the lady caught us and made a deal we could not refuse. She gave us a cabana for $7 per person, and we took it. The cabana was small and cute and a lot like a doll house. We loved it. After settling in and taking a shower, we decided to go out to El Quetzal [for the millionth time now] to get a brownie snack. At the cafe, we looked through a book of dogs and picked ones that matched our personalities/looks, which was followed by a thorough reading of the dogs. Laughing and talking, we returned to the hostal and played card games like Oh Heck, which we all learned to love. Annie decided to go to bed early since she didn't feel too great, and Hannah and I came upstairs to see her sleeping on the floor [there were only 2 beds]. She woke up, said she needed to go to the bathroom, talked to Henry and Bri downstairs, and came back upstairs. Hannah and I assumed that she was awake, but apparently she was sleepwalking because when we woke her up later to get her to sleep on the beds with us, she said that she had been sleeping the whole time. We all had a good laugh and talked about our fake ideals in men [aliens, hobos, etc] until Henry pretended to be our dad and told us to go to bed.
Sunday morning, we woke up and Hannah and I decided we would want to go to the butterfly house while the others relaxed. We ended up going to ChocolArte with Annie and Henry, getting delicious toast-and-omelette breakfasts. Bri woke up feeling sick so she ended up staying back in the cabana and Annie wanted to explore elsewhere. Henry, Hannah and I set off to the butterfly house, walking for about 30 minutes to get there. The butterflies were very unique and we got to hold them in our hands but the $5 we paid to get in was a little bit overpriced. After grabbing some last minute snacks and medicine [for Bri, poor thing], we were ready to leave, when we found out that the 2:00 bus was full. Because of this, we ended up cramming in the 2:00 bus without seats. Despite this, I had a pretty good bus ride back besides being very tired from the weekend trip. When we returned, the house was empty due to the other half of our group that was still in Montanita. I had a pretty relaxing Sunday after I got home, and got ready for school the next day.
Monday went pretty normally, with school in the morning and relaxed afternoon after school. I was extremely tired and cranky last night so I went to bed early.
Today I went to school and had a surprisingly great day. Everyday I've been with the kids, Jairo has been the troublemaker of the class, but one that will listen and come around if I cater to his needs. Today, my argument to him was that I would be leaving soon and that I didn't have time to fight with him. After that, he listened to me once again and told me he would come to the U.S. with me. It was a re-realization that kids like him are sweethearts, that their troubled minds just need someone to understand and to have the patience to wait for them. Xavier also surprised me today. I had a very soar throat in the afternoon, thus needing the kids to be quiet. Xavier continued to talk, but after I told him very firmly that I won't ask him to be quiet anymore, he stopped and listened. Again, kids coming around. Wonderful. I also had some sad realizations, like the fact that Jenyfer's dad hit her mom. She wrote about her in her diary entry about inspirational people, and although it warmed my heart, it made me sad that I couldn't help her home situation.
After school, Hannah and I went down to La Mariscal and explored, seeing La Basilica and 4 other churches. They were all beautiful in their own ways, and I loved having the freedom of exploring the city with my dear friend. We had dinner at "La Menestra del Negro," which besides being more than slightly racist was pretty decent food. Afterwards, we left and came back to the house, realizing that we had been out for about 5 hours! Tomorrow we are hopefully taking salsa lessons, under the assumption that my stiff bones will care to move a little.