So where have I been the last 3 weeks? That's a pretty good question. Honestly, I've been sick. I can't seem to shake this cold. I've had a runny nose for weeks on end. Also, my stomach just doesn't feel 100% ever. It's weird, somebody told me that they never really felt healthy when they were on study abroad but i just shrugged it aside. I now know what they meant. You never know when you're stomach is going to act up or you're going to have a clogged up nose or you can't think cause your head is so congested. It's really weird. It's never anything serious so there's nothing i can really do about it. I'm being as healthy as i can and doing what i can, but sometimes it's annoying.
In addition to being sick, i've been swamped with homework. I'm taking 24 credits here. That's more than 1.5 semesters worth. its 2 classes shy of a full year's schedule crammed into a semester. You honestly think, this the week i can finally breath. I can go to bed early tomorrow night or i can go hang out at a friends house or do whatever. Nope. For the last three weeks I've had something due every day. Not just a sheet of homework, but a quiz and a presentation, or an annotated bibliography, or a paper, or readings or anything. I have a full week off next week and when i come back i have 2 presentations to give, and a rough draft of a paper, and i'm sure something else i'm forgetting. i'm the only gringo in the program that's dealing with this really because i'm taking more ecuadorean classes than everyone else and it's kind of a hassle considering i truthfully do not like my classes. it's nothing against the program. i just do not care for anthropology. it's honestly a waste of my time i feel. the icrp is great, but i don't want to write a paper on it. i love spending my friday's going to chicos de la calle to tutor and play soccer and hang out with the kids and chase them around and do whatever. its an amazing experience. but art history? no thanks. give me econometrics. give me macro. give me calc 2. i'll do that happily. italian is still pretty rad, but come on. but i think things slow down two weeks after i get back from my trip.
So I'm off for a week you say? yeah. what am i doing with my time? good question. well my program has a trip planned for us. saturday we are heading to the paramo. that's a region in quito where we are going to indigenous communities to help out and live with them and just experience the culture there. then after 3-4 days of that we are heading to the coast for a few days. it should be a pretty fun trip. however i have to wake up by 6 or 630 every single day on the trip which is the opposite of what i need after these weeks of exams and essays
So 2.5 months in, huh? well i think it's a bit late to say first impressions. so i'll just say where i'm at right now. basically, i love quito. i love the city. i just really don't like the school. is it cause i'm taking 6 classes? maybe. was that my choice? no. i really don't like the other people on campus either. this might just be "american negligence" but i don't think so. people walk at an exceptionally slow pace, pda is ridiculous, everyone is preppy as all get out and if you know me then you know that those people are just not for me, roughly 50% of the guys smoke cigarettes, etc. i just really want to go on trips right now and not worry about school, but that's not exactly possible. i have to wait to like january or february which makes it even more annoying cause i'm ready right now. sometimes i'm sick of this place, the traffic the buses not having a car, the internet connections, the homework, the hour commute, living 10-20 minutes away from all my friends, etc. when i'm in those moods its not even like i want to go home, its just i want to get away for a little bit. go on a hike or do something. also if you haven't noticed a trend, i post these all around 11-12 in procrastination of other essays. which i've already done two tonight. and two last night. fun. right? sometimes i'm not even certain why i came here, other than to improve my spanish. which by the way, if i could be the judge, i'd say i'm fluent. i mean, i can honestly say i'm happy here. just sometimes its a bit frustrating, but overall i'm still happy and content. sometimes it doesn't really feel like i'm ever going back home. i haven't even been here half the time that i am supposed to. i can't imagine ever being back in my house again or seeing my friends. it's really weird to believe but its true. sometimes i just forget what home even feels like. i forget that this isn't my permanent home. every weekday feels the same as the last here. i come home from school and get home at like 630. i eat dinner. i do homework for 45 minutes. i have coffee with marcia, then i do homework the rest of the night. i fall asleep around 1 or 2, wake up around 9, and restart. i've hit numerous breaking points. and i'm sure i'll hit a lot more. i've saved a few choice words up my sleeves to spare my mom some heartache. but i'm going to finish up this little paper real quick. talk to you guys eventually. sorry if my posts begin to spread out when i write them, sometimes it's just difficult to get myself to do this. but i want you guys to remember, this is for me and not for you guys. the full intention was to remember how i felt during the trip when i get home, in 6 months from now, in 6 years from now. i don't ever want to forget how i felt while i was here. i've got one or two entires saved that i'm not really sure i should post due to the personal nature of them and just lengthiness and whatever. this all might sound contradictory, but i mean i can't really explain it any better than that. everything about this place makes me feel hypocritical from one day to the next including my emotions and actions and everything in between. well anyways, that's all for now.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Sunday, October 6, 2013
06.10.2013
So I guess I haven't actually written anything in roughly two weeks. So what's been going on? Studying. Midterms, papers, etc. Taking 6 classes is hard, especially when 5 are in Spanish.
So I'm just going to include a few quick tidbits I thought were pretty funny from having conversations with Marci. I can only really recall two right now. One was she said hijo de perra (rough translation: son of a bitch) and the other was a common phrase her husband used to say. Some context, soup here is almost a necessity with lunch. 99.99% of the time you eat an Ecuadorean lunch you'll have a huge bowl of soup. Soup in spanish is sopa and a little bit of soup is sopita. So when she would ask her husband if he wanted soup he would say sopita o soputa. puta also means bitch. so basically you either have soup with your meal or you aren't a man. Yeah, my first pun that i understand here is about swearing with soup... awesome.
So what am I up to right now? I'm studying for midterms, just planned a trip to Mindo which is a touristy place with zip lines and chocolate factories and crazy wildlife apparently. After the following week, I'll be able to relax for a little bit I think. Italian is probably my favorite class right now. I learned I'm over literature in Spanish. Yeah, I said it. I love the language, day to day stuff is easy and whatnot, I've got most of my Spanish on lock. But reading books and stories in it, just aren't interesting to me. But I should have expected that, I don't really enjoy that kind of stuff in English either. My parents just booked their flights to come visit me for like 4/5 days in December which is pretty sweet. I'm not sure how my mom will react to being in a 'third world country' even though its pretty great here.
Do I miss home right now? Not particularly. But I'm not 100% mentally in Ecuador. Its just the whole exams thing which is just a small little valley but it'll be fine. I wouldn't change any of these experiences for the world. That hiking trip was actually surreal. Sometimes you have to snap back into and realize that this is where I live and its just making me want to travel more. Maybe I'll even choose to live in a foreign country someday. Music helps cope with nights when you're doing homework all alone. I was kind of expecting to come here and have everything all figured out by the time I get home and the more I'm here the less I see that actually occurring. I certainly see changes I want to make but in reality I have more questions than answers. So I'm going to get back to studying, hope all is well for everyone back home and for anyone else on study abroad.
So I'm just going to include a few quick tidbits I thought were pretty funny from having conversations with Marci. I can only really recall two right now. One was she said hijo de perra (rough translation: son of a bitch) and the other was a common phrase her husband used to say. Some context, soup here is almost a necessity with lunch. 99.99% of the time you eat an Ecuadorean lunch you'll have a huge bowl of soup. Soup in spanish is sopa and a little bit of soup is sopita. So when she would ask her husband if he wanted soup he would say sopita o soputa. puta also means bitch. so basically you either have soup with your meal or you aren't a man. Yeah, my first pun that i understand here is about swearing with soup... awesome.
So what am I up to right now? I'm studying for midterms, just planned a trip to Mindo which is a touristy place with zip lines and chocolate factories and crazy wildlife apparently. After the following week, I'll be able to relax for a little bit I think. Italian is probably my favorite class right now. I learned I'm over literature in Spanish. Yeah, I said it. I love the language, day to day stuff is easy and whatnot, I've got most of my Spanish on lock. But reading books and stories in it, just aren't interesting to me. But I should have expected that, I don't really enjoy that kind of stuff in English either. My parents just booked their flights to come visit me for like 4/5 days in December which is pretty sweet. I'm not sure how my mom will react to being in a 'third world country' even though its pretty great here.
Do I miss home right now? Not particularly. But I'm not 100% mentally in Ecuador. Its just the whole exams thing which is just a small little valley but it'll be fine. I wouldn't change any of these experiences for the world. That hiking trip was actually surreal. Sometimes you have to snap back into and realize that this is where I live and its just making me want to travel more. Maybe I'll even choose to live in a foreign country someday. Music helps cope with nights when you're doing homework all alone. I was kind of expecting to come here and have everything all figured out by the time I get home and the more I'm here the less I see that actually occurring. I certainly see changes I want to make but in reality I have more questions than answers. So I'm going to get back to studying, hope all is well for everyone back home and for anyone else on study abroad.
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