2015-03-03
My very first blog post, back from when I was living in Quito in September, was about how my host evangelical competitively swimming upper middle class family in Quito seemed to be more of an exception to a rule when it came to Ecuadoreans. Four months later, as I contemplate my current Ecuadorean community, I...
Read More2015-02-07
A few weeks ago, there was the grand opening of some museum in Quito, so naturally, the Ecuadorean government had to invite cute little indigenous children to sing a traditional song in traditional clothing for the opening ceremony. They took the cute little indigenous children from my community, Santa Rita, specifically from the 7th grade...
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2014-11-24
Today, my host mom woke up at five in the morning to get on the first bus into town in order to buy food. She wasn’t buying food for my family, but rather, for a group of twelve tourists that was coming for a tour. Santa Rita doesn’t get many tourists, but about a year...
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2014-11-21
My youngest host brother is six years old. His name is Edy. On September 20th, when I arrived in Napo, Edy came with my host parents to pick me up from Tena, the capital of Napo, and bring me to Santa Rita. While my host parents introduced themselves smiling, Edy clung to my host dad’s...
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2014-10-09
Imagine you’re in Quito. Imagine you’ve just arrived on a plane from wherever you’re from. Imagine getting on a bus and heading East. Imagine driving through the valleys of Cumbaya and Tumbaco as you leave the city, and then imagine climbing the Andes mountains until you get so high nothing grows. Then, very suddenly, you’ll...
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2014-09-12
If I were to describe my first few weeks in one word that word would be ‘exceptional’. Be careful: By exceptional I don’t mean wonderful or perfect or exceeding my expectations in absolute blow-my-mind-into-a-million-pieces-ness. What I mean by exceptional is, characterized by exceptions: things that are unusual or not as one would expect them to...
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2014-07-30
A few weeks ago, as we walked across our high school’s parking lot, a friend of mine turned to me and said soberly “this is the end of life as we know it.” The first thing that came to my mind upon hearing this was the first thing that always comes to my mind upon...
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