jan 30

Nothing too interesting to write today. I didn’t do anything but go to class and then eat lunch. I tried to sign up for my trip for Saturday but evidently you have to do that during office hours which is only for one hour a day, which I had missed.

I had my anthro test this morning. I think it went okay. Not as good as I would have hoped, but I guess it was okay. We will see how it ends up I guess.

I have some stuff I need to mail, which means I need to go to the post office. I might do that tomorrow during my big break between classes. I have a postcard to mail mom & dad – its from 2 Saturdays ago – jan 20^th. I am going to put that date & the date that I actually mail it on the post card. Let me know how long it takes to get from Ecuador to US (obviously the later date will be the one that I mailed it on haha).

Um, I did have some questions about things before I came to Ecuador, and now I have a few answers:

1. the keyboard/computer – I wondered if the keyboard would have Spanish letters and symbols, etc. The keyboards actually look mostly like the ones we have at home, the letters are in the same places, however, some of the symbols are not. You can change the settings on the computers (somehow, I am not that computer savvy to know exactly what to do) and make it “ENGLISH” which means that everything is just like at home, or you can leave it and fumble through trying to find the @ symbol on the keyboard until you give up and open a word document, insert the symbol, and copy & paste it into your internet browser where it is needed.
2. the toilet – it flushes clockwise, just like at home
3. idea of personal space – I have always been taught that latin America has a smaller idea of personal space. If this idea had not been made super clear to me already, today I saw a perfect example. I was on the bus this morning on my way to class and there were only about 2 people standing, everyone else was sitting comfortably in a seat. A woman got on the bus and proceeded to come right up to me, her stomach rubbing my shoulder (I was sitting in a seat), balancing herself by holding onto my seat and the one in front of me. There was plenty of room for her to stand in an area where she wouldn’t have been on top of anyone, she could have stood in the middle of the bus, holding onto a bar above her head, which is probably what would have happened in the US, but her thought process told her that there was nothing out of the ordinary with this act. The fact that there was tons of open space and she stood practically on top of me meant nothing to her. Personal space very clearly means very little to these people, which is fine, just a difference that I have noticed.
4. poverty – the country of Ecuador is definitely in poverty….compared to the US. There are rich people in this country. And I wouldn’t define my host family (or anyone else’s that I have met) “poor” by any means. However, I do know that they have much less income than my family at home. Which is fine, it isn’t necessarily that they all live in “poverty” with only having small amounts of money, the cost of living here is low. Very low. You can get a whole lunch – food, drink, and dessert – for $2 if you go to the right place. So, basically, my observation is (for clarification) that the people here are not living in poverty, the country itself is in poverty.

I know I have spent a lot of money here, but its not that I am being frivolous, it is just adding up. $1 a day to get to and from school, lunch, weekends are usually eating out and going on some sort of trip….I guess now is the time when I really should start budgeting my money wisely. I know it is going by fast. I just don’t want to pass up any opportunities that come my way because of money. The teleferico yesterday cost $4, plus a cab ride up the mountain and down. Which is fine, I just know that if I do that everyday its going to take my money quickly.

Anyways, I guess that’s all for now. Just some stuff I was thinking about today. If you have any questions that you’d like answered, go ahead and let me know. I do get all your comments I just cant really reply to them as promptly as I would like and I know you all don’t get like any kind of notification when I do reply so I just haven’t really been doing that, but hopefully when I get my internet here at the house…..whenever that is…..I will be able to be much better about that. For now, just let me know if you have a question and I will try to answer it ASAP.