And continuing on the topic of bring thankful, in the spirit of Thanksgiving. This past week, I truly wanted to co-exist in two places, because I am happy to be where I am at but I really miss being with my family (and friends, but its just different to be away from family especially at a time your body comes to inherently know as being spent with them regardless of day
to day proximity to them). But I am enjoying meeting new people and adding them as friends to my facebook friends profile, err I mean to my life in general (I am soooo kidding about the facebook thing). I have not been posting on the blog on account of how much ¨social capital¨ I´ve been building, in the words of social scientists and public health types. =) Some people you meet during travel can touch you and make an impact after just a short interaction, while others become lifetime contacts. Being abroad presents an interesting time to turn these ephemeral meetings into something meaningful as the nature of your brief encounter serves as a catalyst to quickly turn this into friendship or some type of immediate bond. And more to be thankful for ...So I did get to celebrate Thanksgiving in true American over-consumption style, thanks to a visit from my friend Ann, who is serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in the southern part of Ecuador. She braved 7+ hours on the rocky bus ride along the crazy winding mountain roads to join me in Cuenca for the weekend. We had a great time reconnecting and getting to meet each other´s friends here in Ecuador. In addition, her fellow PCVs extended an invitation to me
to join them all for a Saturday night dinner in town, which ended up being 14 Northern and Southern Americans gathering together to enjoy great company as well as food. Everyone welcomed me and I felt immediately accepted regardless of my timidity in speaking Spanish. When we went around the table to state what we were thankful for, I tried to express the sentiments that initiated this post though I´m pretty sure what came out was ¨I have thanking for (insert incorrect form verb ¨to be¨) here, my family is in Loja I mean far away but we are here and I am funny - I mean happy - and I am thanking for mac n´ cheese!¨ Nevertheless, our many laughs and embraces throughout the evening reinforced what I meant to convey, and I thank them for including me. http://picasaweb.google.com/dcromp/ThanksgivingEcuastyleI´ve met interesting people all throughout Cuenca, granted mostly extranerjos and not Ecuadorians. As Ann remarked several times over the weekend, this town is different from most of Ecuador for both its beauty as well as the number of gringos. And it´s natural to strike up conversation at random with anyone who is visiting from North America, Europe, or Australia - all of whom are easy to spot. On a side note, this is the only place I´ve been without a bunch of Asian tourists! So Ecuadorians do not always know what I mean when I say I was a Japanese tourist in a past life (in explaining my prolific picture-taking). http://picasaweb.google.com/dcromp/VidaEcuatoriana But you forge and instant bond with other travelers and it´s great to talk about our reasons for being here, places of interest discovered, what is totally incorrect in Lonely Planet, the food, customs back home, etc. And sometimes it feels like such a small world -- every weekend I feel I start to recognize a new batch of gringos. For example, my first weekend here I started talking to a young American girl using her laptop in the park in the center of town (yes, they have free wi-fi in the PARK, what´s lagging in the US? I want to check my email at Gas Works for free!). She is involved in a Gap Year program, in which students fresh out of high school are plopped in various places for three weeks at a time to conduct a research project. She was in Cuenca looking into the Ecuadorian chocolate trade (she endured my talk about banana production!) and described some of the other research projects of her friends. A few days later, I was chatting with the owner of the English language bookstore, a former profesor from North Carolina who retired here in Cuenca, when into the store walked a few young Americans drooling for Harry Potter books. They were also on the gap year program, to which I quickly received an answer to ¨which one of you is doing the graffiti project?¨ (I had heard from the other girl in the park about it) and I got to ask her my questions about the political and religious graffiti I had seen all over town. And then I saw them again a few days later, and I continued to drop by the bookstore to chat with the owner before he went back to the States to spend the holidays with his sons.
I am grateful for the people brought into my life through language school - teachers (who again bring lessons on more than the language but about Ecuadorian life and some common themes across all people in the world), the other staff, and fellow students. I spent Thanksgiving day with Wendy & Dave, a cool couple from Seattle who have essentially adopted me (even after I seemed to insult these Eastsiders with a comment during our school´s field trip to the suburbs, which one of our teachers referred to as the slums in compared to the refinement of the city of Cuenca, and I muttered ¨Oh, like Redmond¨). http://picasaweb.google.com/dcromp/LaEscuela But there is a constant flow of people and conversation and exploring the city together. Not to mention bonding over our journey in learning the language, from the struggles (Americans do
NOT know grammar terminology in comparison to our European counterparts) to ¨little victories¨(I said something my teacher understood today, and she said something back, and we both laughed and this time I understood what just happened!!! ). I spent most of my time with an Ozzie and two Danes, and we´re in denial that our little pack is breaking up this weekend -- I´m off to southern Ecuador, the Danes are off to volunteer in the jungle, and the Ozzie is staying put for a couple months before continuing his three-year long trek around the world. The downside of meeting people while traveling is that even a strong connection can in reality be so fleeting and you do not get to do everything you want together.Julie and Adrian, my housemates, immediately took me in as a good friend and I am grateful that they have become much more than temporary roommates. The house is full of color in both a physical and metaphoric sense, allowing me to enjoy the music (in many languages) and people (interacting in many languages, Adrian is learning French, I am learning Spanish - really!, their niece is learning English) and laughter (no translation needed!). http://picasaweb.google.com/dcromp/MiCasa
Which is all I really need to make a home away from my own. People who understand and embrace (even my type of) humor, and I´m lucky to have many of those here in Ecuador during such a short stay.
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