You’ve gotten fat…
As much as I pride myself on being someone who can easily adjust and accept cultural differences, there is one difference here, in Ecuador, that I can’t wrap my head around, let alone be an active participant. Coming from a society where it’s just not acceptable to make comments regarding one’s personal appearance to his or her face, I cringe every time I hear someone here make a comment about someone’s appearance…usually pertaining to weight. In the U.S. we’ve been raised and told that it’s rude to give someone the truth to their face and, in turn, we have learned to take offense to seemingly “negative” comments. I think, the difference here, is that these comments were never learned as “negative”, but merely observations. Make sense?
To make my words more clear, here are just a few examples:
People commonly call for other’s attention by yelling out “gordita” (little fat one). Or in conversation, when referring to someone else who’s name you may not know but you do know their weight, you can simply say “oh yeah, you know, the gordita or the flaco (skinny one). This kind of name-calling would not fly in the U.S. but it’s simply a term of endearment here.
Almost every day, while eating lunch, my host mom or sister mentions how they are getting fat and need to be strict with their diet. This then leads them into conversation about which of their friends and acquaintances have recently gained weight. The other day, my host brother was over for lunch and his sister told him how his wife is getting fat. Sounds awful, right? Well, it must be that the words, “you are fat” or “she is getting fat,” just don’t hold the same negative connotations we assign to them in the U.S.
There is a typical dish here called “Guatita.” It is kind of a soupy dish with potatoes, vegetables and the “guata¨ some sort of cow innards (I think tripe). Everyone likes to ask me if I have tried it yet. North Americans are notorious for not liking it, I guess. Well, my time came to try guatita, and I wasn’t about to turn down the opportunity. I have created high standards for myself among my host family for liking their food. I just so happen to not be a picky eater, which they had yet to experience with their past volunteer guests. They love to tell all of their friends how “Katy eats EVERYTHING!” which always gets a reaction of surprise and awe from those who have just been told the news.
Anyways, back to the Guatita…I gave it a first try. It was okay, but just knowing (or not really knowing for sure) what it was, didn´t allow me, mentally, to like it. I tried to understand just what part of the cow was used. Upon asking, my host mom decided to show me rather than tell by reaching over and pinching the fat of my stomach! I jumped back out of shock to which my host mom interpreted as her physically hurting me by pinching too hard…there´s no such thing as invasion of personal privacy here. That’s just the way things go here. Everyone is always pinching everyone’s fat, literally.
They’re always pinching their own fat as well. While hanging out with a few of my students, one points out how another has gotten fat, to which he responds by grabbing his gut, and saying, “yep, look how fat I am.”
One more example. This is a good one! In my advanced conversation class, my students are currently working on short presentations. The assignment was to choose a favorite song (many of them have favorite songs in English) and present the song to the class while explaining its importance and meaning. One of my middle-aged students, Consuelo, is, though very quiet in class, quite a character. She presented the song “Far From Over” by Frank Stallone, a song made known from the Rocky movies. The song is fast paced, and for Consuelo, a source of inspiration. She pulled out two pictures, in which there was an obvious weight difference between the two. She then proceeded to tell how when she was younger she was skinny (here she shows skinny picture), then how she gained a lot of weight (now the after (heavier) picture). In English it would’ve sounded like this: “When I was younger, I was skinny and then I got really fat. Check out these pictures…wow was I fat!” After gaining so much weight, she decided to start up an exercise routine to the theme song from Rocky…she had the class, including me, in hysterics.
Just Say, “YES”
While living a few short months in Ecuador, I have developed a philosophy of saying “yes” to most, if not all invitations I receive. Being on my own, in terms of language, friends, and the comforts of home, has taught me the importance of having an open-mind and willingness to do or try anything. So far the “just say yes,” policy has worked well for me with the exception of accepting a dinner invitation to a male friend’s house. I immediately felt as though I was being looked at as the next best thing to walk into this guy’s life, if you know what I mean. By the time I left, I had taken pictures with the family and the guy, been given a flower by the mom, received another dinner invitation, and had politely declined an invitation for an after dinner walk in the park with the guy. A walk in the park in the dark is certainly not a ¨just friends¨ activity here.
This past weekend was booked to the max thanks to saying “yes.” I may have overdone it…
Friday night, the university had a staff Christmas party. It was lots of fun and a good opportunity to meet the rest of the English teachers, many of whom I have never met before. We ate, exchanged Secret Santa gifts (conveniently, out of 30 or so professors, Bryce and I had chosen each other…definitely rigged), and then danced. There’s not even the option of saying no to dancing. You’ve just gotta do it, and do it well. When they say dance, I dance. When they push me in the center of the circle with a dancing partner/stranger, I do it.
After the school party, a few of my students came by to pick me up and take me to a graduation party. One of my students had graduated from the marketing program of the University and the graduating class was having a private party at a club downtown. We headed over there and danced the night away, surprise, surprise. I have, no exaggeration, never danced for as many consecutive hours as I danced that night. I usually am ready to leave a couple hours before we ever do, but I never want to leave alone, so I force a second wind upon myself and keep dancing.
Saturday, I spent most of the afternoon at the church helping with the Christmas Pageant rehearsal (more on this spectacle later) and later went to a wedding that a student of mine had invited me to. It was actually the wedding of her sister. My new Ecuadorian friends are so eager to introduce me and include me in anything and everything. I met the family, took pictures with the bride, danced with her brother and some other strangers. Again, I didn’t even attempt to resist the invitations to dance. It’s becoming a weekly occurrence for me to dance with complete strangers and actually have fun doing it.
It’s tradition, if alcohol is served at the reception, at weddings to place a bottle of whisky, a bottle of sparkling water, and a bucket of ice on each table. It’s all or nothing at these weddings. Your options are straight whisky, straight water, or a combination of the two. I tried to leave the wedding reception early since I didn’t really know anyone and I was really looking forward to getting some sleep. However, and I knew this would happen, when I tried to politely leave, I was told to just wait and eat the dinner first (remember Ecuadorian wedding dinners are served at 1 am). How dare I try to leave before they give me some food…I should’ve never tried. I finally was able to sneak out by 3 am stuffed with wedding foods and with cake and party favor (another bride/groom cake topper to add to the wedding souvenir collection) in hand.
Sunday, I woke up early to meet some of my students for a paseo (trip) to the waterfalls just outside of Machala. Only 45 minutes out of town, you can find yourself surrounded in beautiful and tropical nature. One of my student’s dads gave us a ride in his truck, guys in the back, girls in the front. Just minutes into our drive out of Machala, the guys in the back start serving up beer in little plastic cups in which they pass from the back of the truck to the passenger in the front. To my relief, the driver declined his little cup of beer. I just held onto mine, which didn’t go over well with the bumpy, windy road to the waterfalls. Most of my beer ended up on my legs. This was before 10 am!!
The waterfalls were beautiful. We saw 7 waterfalls out of eight in only a 30-minute uphill hike. As hard as we tried to find the 8th waterfall, it would not show itself. We found out later that we had actually seen the 8th but it was the 6th that the trail had been closed off too because of extreme danger. I wouldn’t say I felt any extreme danger at any point but the rocks that scattered the trail were so slick. All of us took a fall at one point or another but I had the fall of the day which landed me, fully clothed, into a deep pool of water at the base of one of the falls. This is still a high-light of conversation among my friends.
After a long day at the falls, I wanted more than anything to just pass out in my bed but I had already promised my presence at a baby’s first birthday. So, with no break in between events, I headed over the party where I was immediately grabbed by one of the hired clowns to participate in some sort of dance competition. The one event I had thought I would escape the dancing this weekend, but nope, I even was forced to dance with a children´s party clown! My family and friends (of the church) were amused and captured plenty of pictures of the whole scene. I’ll be sure to share once I see these pictures for myself!
And that’s what you call a jam-packed weekend. With Christmas and New Year´s just around the corner, I´m sure the festivities will continue. Time to buy some new dancing shoes and extra strong coffee!
Puerto Bolívar sunset, Machala
Cascadas de Manuel. Day trip with some students.
Thanksgiving with Level 4. This is the full group shot with my largest class.
The purpose of this picture is to show you a clear picture of the interior of my classroom, not to show you the energy and excitement that I bring into the classroom. I call it bare bones and that´s no exagerration. The walls are in desperate need of a paint job. The desks are incredibly old and made of heavy metal that makes the most awful sound when dragging them across the concrete floor. The tops of the desks are covered in notes from past attempts at cheating throughout the years. The ¨window¨up to the right is an open vent out to the courtyard. Since I teach at the University´s Liberal Arts Institute, I share a small courtyard of classrooms with the music classes and the dance classes. Right outside the vents in the picture is where the music class loves to practice their dance routine at which point I have no option but to have my students work individually because my voice cannot be heard above the rhythms of traditional Ecuadorian folklore music. I then stand at the door and stare at the dance class and instructor until he gives me the signal that means he´s sorry and that they´re almost done. It´s all in a days work!
