Conversations

The little things make my days here wonderful. One of the little things that always makes my day interesting and lively are the conversations I have with my host family. Not only are they funny or intruiging or contemplative or fascinating, but the thing that really gets me is that I'm having these conversations in Spanish. Regular, normal conversations, and I am able to fully grasp them and talk about them all in Spanish. It's amazing. For example, the other day we were talking about Pico y Placa (how on Tuesdays we can't drive between 7 and 10 and 4:30 and 7:30 because our license plate ends in 5) and about how one time my host mom left in the car to go get bread at 7:15 without realizing it was Tuesday. Pico y Placa fines are immense ($80 and they impound your car for a day...after your first offense it gets worse) so you don't want to get caught driving when you're not supposed to. So anyways, my mom leaves the house in the car when she's not supposed to. Isabel, my sister, realizes this and calls her to tell her to come home. She catches her on the phone when she's at the corner. If she goes around the circle drive thing to get back to our house she'll pass directly by the police and get caught. So she has to put the car in reverse and get back to our garage. So she puts the car in reverse and starts backing up and all these people are yelling at her and yelling at her and saying things like, "why are you out of the kitchen?" and "shouldn't you be at home cooking?" obscenely sexist things like that. And all the while she's just backing up the car. Maybe you had to be there but it was SUCH a funny story. Isabel, Marcia, and I were just cracking up. Joaquin was oblivious of course. Jaja. But it was amazing to me that we were just chilling, chatting, and it was all in Spanish and I felt totally comfortable. :)

Some other conversations we've had are about fairy tales, which ones are the same in Ecuador and the U.S. and which ones they have that we don't and vice versa, how one of my friends looks super-Latina but she's not at all and that makes for some interesting encounters with the locals, how my madre accidently insulted one of her friends and how hilarious it was, and how Joaquin always coughs (even when he's not sick) because my madre always does that and he learned it from her.

Conversations are amazing in general because they allow you to really connect with other people. It is spectacular to me how at home and comfortable I feel here in Ecuador and with my host family and I love the interesting conversations I have both with them and with the people I've met here.

-EM

P.S. I hope you have an amazing conversation too this week. :D