Slowly adjusting...

6.22.10

The time passes by pretty slowly here so far, tomorrow we will be here one week and it feels a lot longer than that. Today in class we talked about the importance of family in ecuador. It seems similar to that of the U.S. in some ways, but here it’s very common for family to see each other every day and to be in constant contact. Sometimes the grandparents and parents will help to raise the children in the family and always help no matter what. We also talked about machismo and the rise of femenismo/feminism as well. There are some commercials that talk about machismo being part of violence, and woman are slowly gaining more respect. The other day when we went to Otavalo for La Fiesta de San Pedro, Jorge (my madre’s son in-law) was driving but couldn’t find the entrance to the party, but his wife was telling him where it was. He wouldn’t listen and pretty much pretended that she hadn’t said anything, he didn’t even respond to her. This was really frustrating to see because i wanted to yell at him but i knew i couldn’t . Otavalo is another town like an hour from Tabacundo, it's a big tourist spot and known for its Market. Fiestas de San Pedro are two months of basically partying in the streets, to be honest I'm not sure of the history but I know that people save up the rest of the year to be able to do a lot during the two months of San Pedro.

Today was frustrating in general because things kept changing and Norma wanted us to talk about the average age that people get married in the states, if we agree with extended family living together, etc, and no one really cared that much about the answers to her questions. We have a general meeting tomorrow in Ayora and heard at the last minute that we had to buy coffee, tea, snacks, etc for the day for 70 people. We felt frustrated because i feel like this is a new job, and it is not my responsibility to coordinate these things. Each group will have to do it at some point, and i understand that it was probably a test to see how we would handle it. We have everything we need and hope it’s enough for everyone, so we will see. It also didn’t help that i woke up this morning with a bad headache; it has gotten better but is not totally gone. I need to drink more water but I also have to go to the bathroom and i can’t! Tonight i’m in bed early and just trying to relax before i have to wake up early tomorrow. We did get to talk a bit with Gabi and Cristina, the Program Managers, which made us feel better to talk to them about some of our concerns, and we talked about “girl stuff”, like plucking eyebrows haha. I told them that last night I was practically in my closet with my flashlight plucking my eyebrows because I needed more light.