Monday, November 7, 2011

English in Spanish

One of the craziest things that I'm learning how to do here is to speak English in Spanish.
Ecuadorians use some English words, but they pronounce them way differently. For example, when they say "cornflakes" it's sounds like "coneflay" and when they say "facebook", it becomes "fayboo," or just "face" (which is always fun because then they say things like "I'll put this picture on your face").  This actually leads to a bit of a dilemma for me. Since I speak English, I know how to pronounce the English words correctly. However, I worry that if I say "facebook" or something the way we say it in the States, they won't understand me since it's so different. But seriously, I just feel so ridiculous saying "fayboo."
Another exciting use of English here is on clothing. I have yet to see a t-shirt that has Spanish writing on it. Everything is in English. But the thing is, a lot of the people here don't know what their t-shirts are saying. For example, I once saw a little girl with a t-shirt that said "make love, not war" on it. I assume that she, and her parents who bought it for her, didn't understand why an 8-year-old should not be spreading that message to her other 8-year-old friends. In addition to slogans like that, another big thing is the fake university/sports team stuff. We have things like that in the States, but at least they make up names and make it seem a little legit. I saw a shirt here that just said "sports team" on it.
That's all for now, but I'd just like to leave you with the knowledge that I have not been to school for over three weeks, thanks to travel, school vacation, and exams I don't have to take. I love being an exchange student.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Odds and Ends

I really like reading all the other exchange students' blogs and seeing how consistently everyone has been slacking off on their blogging.  It's really fun because I know that, just like me, they're busy with exchange student life. And by exchange student life, I'm pleased to say that means making friends, trying crazy new foods, and lots of travel. So, in the last two and a half weeks I went on two big trips. The first trip was with all the exchange students in my Rotary district, which also happens to be all the exchange students in Ecuador. The trip was a tour of Manabi, which is this province: 
If you're observant, you'll notice that it's on the coast. Which means lots of beaching. And if you're really observant, you'll notice that it's also the province that I live in. Which means I'd already been to some of the places we went. However, since this is Ecuador, it was certainly no less exciting or fun. Since I have a lot to cover in this post, I'll refrain from explaining the entire trip in great detail, and hope these photos will suffice:
One of the loverly beaches we visited
We could go on a boat ride down this river with bazillions of pelicans

Another one of the beaches, this time with sports! On the right there's a volley ball tourney and the left a soccer tourney  that we could make teams for and join. At this beach they also had banana boat rides!

All the exchange students atop a hill in Crucita

A Chiva ride through Portoviejo. If you can't tell, there's a band on top. 


We visited a market thing in Montecristi, which is where Panama hats come from. Hence the lady making one. 

We also visited this museum/morgue of some really important person. I don't really speak Spanish, so I don't know what it was about, but at least it looked cool.

This is the hotel we ate lunch at one day in Manta. It was pretty. But there was sand in all the food, because the floor of the restaurant was sand.


The second big trip I went on was a spur-of-the-moment decision two days after I got back from the Manabi tour. My host brother and his wife and daughter were in the process of moving from Quito (the capital) to Bahia (where I live) and were going back for a week to say their final goodbyes, bring the last of their stuff to Bahia, etc... Anyway, the point is that they invited me to come! So we made some calls to Rotary (travel without host parents is not usually allowed), calls to my school, and then we were on our way. We took a bus overnight to Quito, which was nothing short of terrifying. Bus drivers in Ecuador drive just as fast and furiously as car drivers, but buses are a lot bigger and, as it seemed to me, tippier. If you don't know, Quito is in the mountains, so the bus ride involved lots of whipping around corners on curvey mountain roads in the pitch black. Luckily we completed the six and a half hour bus ride unscathed and I was able to see the lovely city that is Quito. Again, I'll just show you some pictures with brief blurbs about them, though I have to warn you: my sister-in-law decided to be in charge of the camera so I could be in the photos, and she didn't exactly take pictures with a blog in mind. So I have few pictures of my two favorite parts of Quito: the mountains and the graffiti art, and just lots of pictures of me. So, if you want to see the Quito in all of it splendor, you can go here or here to the ever helpful Google Images. Anyway, here are some shots of what I did in Quito:
This is me and the view of Quito from the statue of Mary in the middle of the city

Me and the statue itself

One of the churches in the old district of Quito

In Imbabura, a province just North of Quito

On the equator! Sort of. This is the monument, but the actual equator is a bit further North, as they discovered later with some exciting GPS jazz.

Another exciting thing that happened while I was in Quito is that I experienced my first earthquake! After a quick Google search I discovered that the epicenter was 17km North East of Quito and that it was a magnitude 4.0. I mostly have no idea what I just said, but basically I just woke up in bed feeling like I was on a bumpy bus ride, so it wasn't that big of a deal. 

So, as of October 21st I'd been here two months, and now I've been here a bit over ten weeks. So, a few notes about the grand scheme of things. 
In the first couple months, exchange students normally go through the "honeymoon phase," where they're super excited about everything and everyone's excited about them, and then afterwards, once everything settles down and such, start to feel more homesick and culture shock. That's not really what happened to me. I didn't really have a honeymoon phase, and after like the first whirlwind of a week, started to be homesick. After a couple weeks of that, around my one month mark, I started to feel at home here, and be less homesick. That has carried on swimmingly, and, though I always watch for the signs of culture shock and homesickness (it sounds weird that I have to watch for it, but sometimes it really is hard to tell when it's happening to you) in case I have another bout coming, I think my contentedness is here to stay. 
Another thing that has been happening in these months is SPANISH. Lots of Spanish has been happening. Being spoken to me, being spoken by me, and just in general bumping around my head. A few people have asked me if I've had dreams in Spanish, and my answer is that I unfortunately have not had any true Spanish dreams. BUT. I did have this really exciting dream that took place in my city. I was basically just riding the bus around (a skill I've obtained here. more on that in a second) and talking with people. However, since I don't really know enough Spanish to fabricate entire conversations in my sleep, everyone had some excuse about why they were speaking English. Some people were learning it in school, some people had moved from Canada, and there were some eccentric British people there for some reason. Anyway, the good news is that even though they all spoke English, my dream self kept wanting them to speak Spanish to me, and I was about to delve into a Spanish conversation with the Canadian kid when I woke up. It would seem to me that Spanish dreams are just around the corner. An additional anecdote that's kind of related to me and my Spanish speaking is that while I was in Quito I was watching a movie with some family friends of my brother's and they put English subtitles on for me. Upon seeing this, a kid turned to me and was like "sabes ingles?" which means, "you know English?" Granted, I hadn't really spoken any Spanish to him, so it's not like I have a flawless accent or anything, but at least he didn't immediately peg me as a foreigner, as most people do. I like to think I've lost a little of that confused, wandering around look.  
Buses! Yes. I have grown to know that it costs 18 cents to go anywhere in the city, but everyone just gives them twenty cents and they don't give change back. I've learned that if you're on the bus and some kid puts a piece of candy on the seat next to you, you give it back to him immediately or you'll have to pay for it. I've learned that if you're sitting on a bus waiting for it to leave and a guy holding a half empty bottle of vodka gets on, you get off. And then you get a taxi. Which is also a very new thing for me. I think I could count the number of times I'd been in a taxi on one hand before coming to Ecuador.  However, it's enough for me to know that taxiing here is a whole different thing from other places. Bahia is a city of about 30,000 people, so most people know the cabbies. They'll chat with the them and even sit in the passenger seat even if there's room in the back seat. Again, I'm no expert on taxis in the States, but I'm pretty sure that would never happen there.
Another very important aspect of an exchange year is FOOD. I know earlier I was kind of complaining about it, but since then I've discovered that there is more to life than eggs for breakfast, chicken and rice for lunch, and grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. It turns out that something people really, really like to do here is parrilla, which means grill. And they don't do no mamby-pamby hamburger grill-out. They go all out. For example, here is the inventory of what I was given during one parrilla: a cob of corn, four hot dogs, a grilled chicken breast, a steak, a pork chop, two baked potatoes and a salad. I managed to eat about half of that, and afterwards I thought I was going to throw up or pass out or something negative like that. Luckily, though, nothing negative happened, and the food didn't even go to waste. Some of the other people were able finish my food after they ate all of theirs. Honestly. Another new and different food that exists here is the hamburger. At first glance, not so new and different. But honestly, they're pretty crazy here. In addition to the typical cheese, lettuce, tomato, and onions on the burger, they add cucumbers (not pickles - cucumbers) and fried eggs. Like, seriously, if you just go to one of those stands on the street and order a hamburger, it comes with a fried egg on it. And before I move on from the topic of food, I have to mention the rice. So much rice. They serve spaghetti and lasagna with rice. They serve soup with rice. They serve french fries with rice. And they're all really convinced that rice here is way better than rice in the States, though to tell the truth, it really just tastes the same to me. 

SO. I think that's about enough to make up for a month of not posting, though before we part, I want to leave you with some more photos. I've posted lots of pictures from trips and such, but not very many that I've just taken around town. Bahia is a beautiful enough city that I owe it to it to share some of the snapshots. So, here you go: