What I've learned in Ecuador

Less than 24 hours left in Cuenca. That's really weird, and I can't pin down how I feel about it, which is really frustrating. I think I'll be really happy and excited tomorrow afternoon once we're about an hour outside the city. Until then...blah.

I am finally finished with all of my work for the semester, which is a wonderful feeling. To celebrate that fact, I've created an account at the most recent new, awesome, procrastination-inducing website, formspring.me. So if you feel inclined, head over and ask me a question and I'll answer it! It's really ridiculous how entertaining this thing is.

There were so many times I felt like I'd never reach this point, but looking back, I can't believe how fast these ten weeks have gone! I only spent six weeks on campus, but I feel like I spent more time at B-W than in Ecuador, or at least equal amounts of time. This trip has definitely been a life-changing experience. I've learned so much, and it's definitely going to take some time to process it all once I get home. There are some things that really stand out, though:

*For the most part, food is food.
Most of the things I eat on a daily basis here are essentially the same foods I eat at home, they're just sometimes prepared in a different way. There's a lot of potatoes, rice, chicken, pork, fish, eggs, cheese, and bread. There's no point in going to a foreign country if you only want to eat the same things you eat in your own country, and you've got to have an open mind and be willing to at least try things. I had pig skin soup the other day, and though that sounds disgusting, it really wasn't that bad. Also, I feel like foreigners have no business whining when “their” foods aren't prepared exactly the way they're used to. My host mom sometimes gets food from the little grill down the street, and the hamburgers have all the usual things, like lettuce, tomato, ketchup, and mustard, but they also have ham, salami, fried egg, and diced-up fried potatoes. Yeah, that's a little odd for me, and I'll be glad to get back to the standard Wendy's Junior Bacon Cheeseburger, but I can deal with a different kind of hamburger for a little while.

I should mention that I draw the line at cuy. I might have been willing to try it back in July, but now there's no way I could possibly eat it and then go home and look my guinea pigs in the eye.

*Clean is a relative term, and clean clothes aren't as big a deal as you think.
When you've been living on a boat in the Galapagos or at a research station in the Amazon or in a legit log cabin in the mountains for several days, there's really no way to get around this. Everything you have with you is either wet, muddy, or both. Your things are also likely covered in insect repellent and sunscreen. It's okay that you've worn the same socks for four days in a row because you don't want to ruin more than one pair. Nobody's going to judge you if you take a shower and then go to bed in the same cami you were wearing earlier. In fact, you might have a few days where you only wear three sets of clothes: the “before shower” ones, the “after shower” ones, and your pajamas. You reach a point where you and everyone else are all so sweaty and gross that you stop thinking about it. If there's no alternative, you might as well make the best of it.

*Childhood is universal.
Children in Ecuador cry and whine and refuse to eat and frustrate their parents just as much as children in the United States. They also sing and dance and giggle and say the darndest things. They want to be big kids and do things for themselves, and they want to learn your games but they also want to teach you what they know. They all like Barney and Mickey Mouse. No matter the structure of the language, kids follow the same pattern when they learn to speak. Their parents and grandparents can understand what sounds like gibberish to you, but if you spend enough time with the little one, you start to be able to understand them too. My friend Aryn advised me that talking to the kids is one of the best ways to get more comfortable with a foreign language, and he was absolutely right.

*Being a teenager is also universal.
Where there's a mall, there will be prissy fourteen-year-old girls taking up the whole mirror in the bathroom so they can put on makeup and drool over Taylor Lautner. It's a fact of life.

*Lying to yourself can be a really effective motivator.
“I'm not going to see a big hairy spider in the shower today.” “Swimming with sharks is perfectly safe.” “If I can just get to sleep, the headache and the nausea will completely disappear.” “I'm the best bargainer in the world.” “I can totally find the post office without getting lost.” If you tell yourself these things, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish, and some of them even wind up coming true. Some of them only work to a point, however. Convincing yourself that the shower is actually really warm, for example.

*Don't judge a book by its cover or even the first couple of chapters.
I try really hard to keep an open mind when I meet people, and that attitude has brought me a lot of great friends over the years. This trip has taught me, though, that knowing someone inside the classroom, even when you see the same people every single day, is not the same thing as knowing them on a small boat and in a tour bus and at a nightclub. There were certain people in our group that I had written off before we left as annoying or just someone I wouldn't ever be very close to, and now I can't imagine how I ever made it through my days without them. On the other hand, there were people that I thought were really awesome and wonderful before Ecuador, and while I certainly don't dislike them now, their attitudes and actions on this trip have caused me to lose a lot of respect for them.

*You can't come away from this kind of thing without having formed a family.
This reminds me of two of my favorite quotations. The first is from the pen of J.K. Rowling, at the end of the tenth chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: “There are some things you just can't share without becoming friends, and knocking out a ten foot mountain troll is one of them.” The second was said by my incredible high school band director, Kent Eastham: “Band is like family. You love some, you hate some, and they're all crazy.” The Seminar in Ecuador has had a distinct lack of both mountain trolls and musical instruments, but the results have been the same.

We don't all get along all the time, and I probably won't keep in touch with everybody after we're done with all the Explorations promo stuff I think we're going to have to do next semester. There are a lot of strong personalities on this trip, and sometimes they clash, but I think this kind of adventure requires a strong personality. Despite our differences, however, we've all formed a really strong bond. We can tell our friends and family all about everything we've seen and done, but there are some things that no one outside of these twenty-four people will be able to understand because they weren't there. And really, once you've thrown up together over the side of a boat, sorted through each other's laundry, gotten lost together in the dark and pouring rain, chopped garlic together by candlelight because the power was out, and had conversations with each other in your sleep, there's really no way you can avoid being friends.

This is most likely my last blog from Ecuador. Chronicling this journey was the main reason I started this blog in the first place, but I'm definitely going to keep blogging, and I hope you'll keep reading. I've always got plenty of stuff to run my mouth about (so to speak), and I think it's high time I started chronicling the adventures I somehow wind up having on a daily basis. As I've said before, no one would believe the life I live...

Hours till I'm back in Ohio: 66