When it rains, it pours

There are certain experiences intrinsic to being abroad that even the most independent and adventurous of travellers or expats can identify with, and I think one of those is having moments of mini-breakdown. This is where you get overwhelmed by negativity, frustrated by the things that bother you about the region you´re in, and you even know you are OVER-reacting to what set you off ... or worse yet, do not even know what set you off.


This fits in with my general (as of yet unpublished) ¨theory of undulating feelings¨, that people who experience lower lows in life are more capable of correspondingly experiencing higher highs. This comes up usually when I am talking through a friend’s personal or familial problems and trying to come up with meaning for why we experience misery and sometimes the kindest of people are faced with the most unfair life situations. But I´m getting off topic. Within this theory of undulating feelings is a subset phenomenon of being outside one´s normal way of life, and for me being abroad presents a time that I feel that I have a lot more ¨high highs¨ but also ¨low lows¨ -- those general hyperactive responses (like small things can make me disproportionately happy or sad or frustrated). Although I have yet to experience any type of misery, AND I haven’t been really moving around at all, I find that just about once a week I get this wave of negative emotional outpour. But within a breath of that, I can feel really happy and completely content with the world (a high indicator of happiness in my mind). It´s not just hormones, boys, so don´t even think it.

To illustrate my point - in general, things are peachy keen great here for me in Ecuador for the happy feely goody things I´ve depicted in previous posts. But I have experienced a couple different (and truly fleeting) moments of anger or sadness, where I go off in my head about all the little things that bug me: Latino men of all ages and status who whistle and cat-call constantly at any female-like-being (which I happen to be), dogs in the street (I was too cheap to get the rabies vaccination so I´m convinced one is going to come after me), Ecua-time (everyone is always late, except for the bus that we paid for a couple weeks back that left 5 minutes early without us though with our money), the gringo tax concept, having to haggle for prices, the number of robberies and thefts we hear about, did I mention men being completely disgusting? I say all of this with a light heart - any place has it´s issues, many of these things are totally out of context, most were told to me before I came and how to properly interpret them (such as men´s behavior - seriously the machismo is harmless, and it´s generally safe here as long as you don´t put yourself in known harm), etc etc etc. Nothing is that bad, but I just get this little outpour of one thing that sets of a train of such thoughts including some that really do not make any sense, and I´m all pissed and cranky.

Ironically, these have always taken place at times when the weather suddenly changed. Thus the title of my post, as it really does serve a good metaphor (granted I´m ruining it by stating the connection so clearly). But to digress, you all know how important weather is to me so I´m not that excited about how quickly it can go from HOT sunshine to cold TORRENTIAL rain. And we´re not talking Seattle drizzle, it´s like liquid hail. Dang rain season near the Ecuador where you have to be prepared with sunscreen and rain gear each day. But really, the weather is generally pleasant, it´s just interesting to me that it can switch extremes just as much as my own emotions can do the same.

I meant to post this a couple days back - I´ve already left my temporary home of Cuenca where the weather is probably either hot & sunny or pouring rain, but I´m about 5 hours south in wamr Loja. I´m off to Vilcabamba, a ¨backpackers resort¨ and looking forward to a couple days of being totally tranquillo: definitely consistent weather and mood while I relax in a pool at our hosteria and hike in this peaceful valley. Ahhhhh.

Contact update

Despite finding value in living free of gadgets for awhile, I have decided to purchase a cell phone to accompany me in South America. I would LOVE to hear from you - though email is just as good. But if you ever feel inclined to waste some money and get ahold of me through the mobile, here are some guidelines.

- Email me to get the number, dcromp@gmail.com
- Text: Check your plan for cost but it´s about 20 cents per message.
- Call: It´s expensive so this info is truly not a solicitation to take this route. Remember it costs more to reach a cell and some cards quote the price for a land line.
- Recall that I´m 3 hours ahead in Ecuador. And that I´m old & boring and go to bed early.

I am sad to be making my Exodus from Cuenca early this Saturday morning, as it seems time went by so fast that I did not get to do everything I wanted or go back to my favorite hangouts. Though I am excited to see more of the country and reunite with Ann in her territory farther south. Then I´m off to Argentina in a few more days; can´t wait for the beef & wine & sun!

Continuing the topic of thanks...

Travel presents great opportunities to see new things and experience different places, but the most rewarding part often comes with those you meet. Which reinforces one of the most durable lessons in life, that the people you surround yourself with are your most valuable asset (to put in a globalized world, free trade context). Insert gagging noises here if you wish, but I am permitted to purge myself of some corny but earnest sentiments at this time.

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/ThanksgivingEcuastyle

I´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.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am sending many thoughts of happiness, health, and good eatin´ to you all back in the United States this Thanksgiving.

My teacher asked me to explain the holiday to her, to which I responded, ¨we eat a lot food with people we love¨(and for lack of limited vocabulary, left out that side effect from the original Thanksgiving with white people bringing disease to the native people and taking their land ...). While this combo of food and family/friends-who-are-like-family makes Turkey Day one of my FAVORITE times, and I dearly miss my family and our craziness I mean lovingness, it´s kind of easy to forget about it being here in warm weather and not a hint of turkey around. Not even among the millions of fresh carcases available in the numerous open air markets, or maybe I just don´t recognize its bloody form. What a nice image for you all.

But I did think of the things I am thankful for, in a nice Hallmarkesque moment in my mind while watching a movie at the school today (about drugs, sex, murder, and gangs in Ecuador, what a way to start the day!). Thought I´d share some of the small things that I´m happy for at the moment. Besides not being involved with drugs, prostitution, or gangs.

-- Ecuadorian bananas. So sweet, so good, about 5 cents each. I often get the small ones, too, and have little moments of happiness when I make a peanut butter and banana sandwich and one tiny banana is the PERFECT size for slicing to put inside.

-- The hot shower I enjoyed last night. While I am fortunate to have access to a warm shower in Cuenca, it is not usually HOT water and I had been wanting just that for sooooo long with this wish granted last night.

-- Our new mascotas (pets) in the house, two little bunnies. Last week, the rooster and duck disappeared: in a hilarious moment in which I seemed like a child to Julie and Adrian as parents, I asked them hesitantly if we would be having any type of bird-like meat for dinner that night - luckily what Julie meant by ¨they are off to a better place¨was the school she teaches at, where they have more room to run around outside.



-- Having someone else wash, dry, & cutely fold my laundry for a nominal fee. Yes, I said cutely, as I have never seen my clothes presented in such a pleasant form. Me gusta la lavandera.

-- That the radio is currently playing the ¨Macarena¨ song, which I hadn´t heard in years until this past weekend on a crazy crowded bus in the middle of nowhere, and now I´m hearing it again. It´s hideousness partly repulses me but also makes me laugh.

Heading back home now, where many other types of music will greet me along the way - cumbia, random Latin rap, folklorico-traditional, everything, constantly music at play in stores and homes...

Enjoy your turkey and pumpkin pie for me, have an extra big portion on that account, to fully enjoy the over-consumption that is America. Miss being with you!

Dreams

I finally had a dream en español (at least, finally recalled it). I thought it was interesting that the language has not been part of my numerous and vivid dreams since arriving in South American, given my relative immersion. I often had French in my dreams in high school - thanks to our teacher Madame Caine drilling it to us and enforcing things like French camp for a whole weekend pas d´anglais... so you´d think I´d be having my crazy dreams about border crossings in Spanish.

Not until last night, and what a stupid one it was. I was contemplating to myself in perfect Spanish (so, first cue this was a dream) how to translate the Shakespearean line ¨to be or not to be¨given that there are TWO verbs ¨to be¨in Spanish, estar and soy. In this dream, I posed various permutations (different subjects, tenses, verbs) to my audience in a large concert hall, but I couldn´t see them because of the lights, but went on about ¨estás o no estás¨ ... then I decided that I needed to go to Quito (the capital of Ecuador) and turned on the light, to find that my audience consisted of a few school children in their uniforms, many with tears. Likely from boredom, but who knows. Then one started chasing me, and I called her a robber. Anyway, then I woke up - thanks to the loud noise made my the mischievous bunnies in the next room (the bunnies were NOT part of the dream, they are reality but more about our new pets later).

Anyway, I had to share because I consider dreaming in the language an achievement and indicator of my engagement with español. I will tell my teacher because we are watching a movie this morning and I tend to fall asleep in such situations, and I can assure her if that happens I´ll still be practicing Spanish in my head (and not in my beer).

Las fotos

Finally, I have posted photos.

There are several ¨galleries¨ from South America within the main page, by arbitrary theme. http://picasaweb.google.com/dcromp

I´ll be moving around pictures most likely, and adding captions as I find time (I adore telling stories through photos!) These will serve to tell some of the stories I DON´T ramble on about in this blog. The power of technology.

Chao!

Learning more than the language

A glimpse into the place where I spend much of my time and energy: la escuela (school) Simon Bolivar. It is a Spanish language school in the city center of Cuenca that offers individual and group lessons for foreigners, arranges home stays for students, and coordinates volunteer experiences throughout Ecuador ... in addition to serving as a travel agency! I am enjoying my experiences here at the school, with my fellow students, teacher, and coordinators. And quickly found that I would be taught just as much about Ecuadorian culture as the Spanish language, which is GREAT but it took some getting used to the ways in which we are given such lessons.

I spend 4 hours each weekday morning one-on-one with my teacher, a kind and patient Cuencana woman around my age who speaks some English (but of course mostly Spanish with me, though it´s helpful when I really don´t get a word or concept and she can resort to English). She seems older, on account of her maturity (and my relative immaturity, or what I like to call ¨youthful disposition¨) and by nature of the reason we find ourselves in the same room together for so many hours a week. We quickly settled into a comfortable didactic student-teacher nurturing relationship, where I feel so dependent on her! But I like to think we learn from one another. We have a large classroom to ourselves within the spacious three-floored school, and take a break halfway for coffee (colored water) and the bread assortment provided for the day (mmm).

During breaks and after classes, us students congregate to meet and catch up with one another, as there is a constant flow of new and returning students at various stages of learning español. Luckily many are beginners like me. There´s a whole colony of Danish people, some Germans, an Aussie for the moment, some Canadians just showed up today, and there are always many Americans. There is a middle-aged but lively couple from ¨Seattle¨(posers from da Eastside), a programmer from the Sierras, and one girl from Campbell (a burb of San Jose) who just left. We come from many different places for a variety of reasons - gap years between university, solo travel, volunteering, escapism - but we are instantly united by being away from home and not knowing Spanish to help us interact with the very busy world outside. We can participate in various activities arranged by the school, from Latin dance to Field Trips around town. But our main lessons come from the individual classroom, during interactions with our teacher and following our trusty lesson book.

And what interesting lessons they are, laden with social commentary. My first day was spent relatively light - learning vocabulary and sentence structure to be able to tell someone else about my family, and of course if I am married (hahaha, I stumbled on this THIRD question posed to my teacher, ¨Do you have a boyfriend? ¨I paused, partly because I was thinking ¨why is that so important eh?¨ and also because I was considering the different options she had just explained about levels of relationshiping, from boy-girlfriend, fiancee, spouse and some other thing I still don´t get ... though still not sure why that caused me pause in answering for myself. Don´t worry mom & dad, I´m not yet married to the Ecuadorian of my dreams who will build be a castle and for whom I will birth many babies). But, simple enough to start with.

Then Day Two, in between vocabulary on parts of the body and intro to conjugation, I am asked to read one of the various notas culturales in the lesson book, little blurbs on Ecuador & Latin America (like fun facts, about the importance of open air markets and info on the major cities). This one was about family life, and I happily started reading out loud the description on family structure - that most people marry young and couples live with one of their parents and have many children right away, for cultural and economical reasons. Oh, and of course there is Latin machismo to contend with, where men decide everything, and sometimes cheat on their wives if they don´t outright leave the family altogether. And there´s not much concept of family planning, on account of the role of the church, so the family is big ... but united and very close. Yay. And end of the nota cultural. My teacher added a lot and I encouraged her, because luckily I can understand much better than I speak. We conversed (meaning she spoke, I gesticulated and said claro, which for me means everything from ¨I get it¨ to ¨Really, tell me more!¨) about a cascade of topics from there, about family life and gender expectations tying into the larger societal, cultural, economical religious concerns. She introduced the daily struggles for the average family to make ends meet in this globalized world, which invariably involves immigration to another country (10% of all Ecuadorians immigrate, mostly to the US). And the pervasive level of corruption that permeates every aspect of Ecuadorian life, where you buy everything from your way out of a ticket or jail to passage to another country. And horror stories of immigration failures and lives lost, sprinkled with questions to me such as ¨is it true George Bush is building a giant wall at the Mexican border?¨ And then nearly in the same breath, my teacher moved to the next topic as if to say ¨that lesson done, now time to conjugate important verbs.¨ Whereas for me, this was a lot to digest - and I couldn´t help thinking we don´t discuss or present US society in lesson books with quite the same style.

These social issues are constantly brought up in our lessons, and I do find that discussing them is helping me learn the language - though it is EXTREMELY frustrating to consider complex topics internally but not be able to express much externally. I want to say and communicate and ask much more but am limited by lack of vocabulary or ability to form sentences. I end up settling for simple remarks and having to leave out contextual or thorough information about my opinions, which leaves me feeling shallow or that I cannot appropriately answer my teacher´s questions to me to describe what it is like in the United States (from the social norms in getting married & creating a family to enforcement of laws and policy formation).

And I do not feel that my teacher or the school is pushing any type of agenda or make any judgement towards me as an American (which is good, considering my Guilty American Complex). I knew a hard part of travelling for me in this region would be coping with the understanding of more poverty and economic & social hardship in some places, compared to the relative wealth of being American. And that many global problems are a result or consequence of Western actions in the past and contemporary policies. But my Guilty American Complex is not being stimulated the way it was in watching ¨Hotel Rwanda¨or hearing about other friends´experiences being a foreigner abroad. Every day I have a different reflection on my positionality here in Ecuador, and overall the people have been very welcoming and genuine. I take in the constant discussion of social problems as learning the local perspective and have not felt any negative response or appropriated judgement to my being American.

Although my teacher gave me a hint about tomorrow´s lesson plan: women´s liberation movements, anti-discrimination laws, and social roles of women in various countries. I predict more exposure on a personal level between us and the different lives we lead. What happened to learning activities like making a childrens book about fruits coming to life, like I did in high school French class?