I don’t get on the internet very often and when I do it is only for a few minutes during break at school. We don’t have internet in my house so I have been leaving my computer at school to use during breaks because it is easier than using the very slow computers in CIMAS (the place where we go to classes) but today I brought my computer home to type a longer post that I can post when I get on the internet.
A lot has happened in the past several days. I will try to keep it kind of short but it is hard when everything feels an adventure because there are always challenges and new experiences.
Most entertaining moment: On Thursday a bunch of students who take the same bus were leaving CIMAS with our host moms. Some of my friends had been talking about going to by cell phones but didn’t know exactly where to go or how to meet up. Suddenly all the moms started making plans loudly and rapidly shouting across the bus, figuring out who lived where, who would meet who, where we would go, meanwhile all of us students had no idea what they were talking about or what the plan was. We were all just looking at each other with confused faces saying “No Se?!” “Que paso?” and laughing a lot. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time and soon the whole bus was laughing at us (or with us?). The areas we are in are not at all touristy and I have probably only seen 5 gringos (outside of people on our program) since I’ve been here, the sight of 7 gringo students with Ecuadorian mothers was very bizarre. My mom thinks all of the other moms are crazy and she just sat and listened and made confused and funny faces at me while they all yelled rapidly about our plans. We ended up somehow figuring out how to all 7 of us meet up but ended up failing miserably in our excursion to buy phones. Finally this afternoon my mom went with my friend, Ashley, and me to buy phones at a sketchy but much cheaper place near our house. We were very proud of ourselves for finding a cheaper place and getting better phones than a lot of our friends!
Most uncomfortable moment: My family is very religious and even though my mom is very open and doesn’t care that I don’t have a religion, her friends that come to study the bible every Saturday night do care. I had just returned from our bonding trip to San Miguel de los Bancos and was tired and just finishing eating when she told me that her friends were coming. She invited me to join and I politely declined but they arrived before we finished eating and it would have been awkward for me to leave. So I joined the family bible study. The man, Adolfo that was leading the study started talking to me and before I knew what was going on he made me repeat after him something along the lines of “I believe in the power of Jesus Christ and have accepted him into my life as my Savior…” I don’t know exactly what I said but I couldn’t refuse to repeat what he told me in front of the whole family. Then on Sunday I went to Church with my family which was another experience. They are Protestant and go to a smallish church that is very modern with a full band, backup singers, dancers wearing aqua colored sequined dresses with various flags and pompoms. The first half hour was just music, followed by 10 minutes of hugging all the people around you. Then the service lasted another hour and a half. I think it meant a lot to my family that I went and I am glad I did but I hope I can avoid it some weekends.
The trip to San Miguel was beautiful and fun. We stayed in a gorgeous resort, ate delicious food, hiked in the rainforest, swam under a waterfall, heard a few talks about the energy on the equator (we were on it!), and played games to bond with the people on our program. I got a bit sick from adjusting to the water and food here but it wasn’t that bad. I will post pictures at some point. I took a lot of pictures on this excursion but
So far I am safe, happy and treating every little thing here as an adventure! Much love to all J
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