Meng - Blog 16

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11)     My host mother is María Dolores Bravo. María lives with her son David but he is a student and busy so he is only around sometimes; her daughter (who is older than David) is married and lives in the country with her father Oswaldo. Oswaldo lives in the country because he does not hear very well and it was hard for him to live here in the city. David is in school to work with tourism. María is in her late 50’s to early 60’s and works in a hair salon. In the salon, they cut and dye hair as well as do nails. I have been able to communicate surprisingly well with María even though she does not know any English. The first night we arrived here we hardly spoke to María but when she realized that we knew some Spanish we quickly got to communicating and now I speak quite freely with her. We have become good at working around words that we do not know in either language.

22)     Tonight at dinner we talked about a lot of the differences between the U.S. and here. In Ecuador, it seems that some traditional gender roles still hold; María has a job but she also fulfills all the typical roles of a housewife. María is happy to cook and clean up after all meals without help (though we do offer every night) and spends a lot of time preparing those meals. We have talked about a lot of the differences and similarities in our cultures like how juice here is made fresh and specifically for meals rather than bought in cartons. Since María’s son is in university here we also talked about school including things like payment for university (the government pays here) and meals (our less than satisfactory cafeteria experiences and the unhealthy practices of students here who eat out quite often). We talked about what foods are common both locally and from other cultures and I discovered that both María and I like sushi. It is clear that family is very important here: tonight, María asked about our families and to see pictures of them, we talked at length about our families and friends, what they do, how old they are and other things. María’s family is very important to her because in a collectivist society community is important. Our communities are important to María and I believe that knowing about someone’s community helps us to know more about them.

33)     Today was a very interesting day. María likes to go to the community center pool to swim and sit in the saunas on Sundays so we accompanied her. Right away we were faced with cultural differences. Aaron lives with us as well (he is also from Alma) and he came along but when we got to the pool deck the lifeguard would not let him swim because she didn’t believe that his swim trunks were a swimsuit, here the men wear fitted swim shorts. María rented a pair of swim shorts for Aaron to borrow and thankfully had enough swim caps with her because we also were not expecting that swim caps would be necessary to enter the pool. On the pool deck we were faced with another new experience: being the minority. Having the privilege of being white and middle class, I could never pretend to truly understand the experience of a minority but I did get a taste of it today. Even walking into the community center, it was immediately apparent that we were outsiders. Aaron, Caitlin and I were the only white people there and our differences were extremely visible, both figuratively and literally due to us being in bathing suits. The stares that we usually get as a group of tourists were multiplied and not the friendliest. Our appearances, language and apprehensiveness at customs at the pool all screamed “outsider.” It seemed that many people were wondering what we were doing in this place. I found myself making a conscious effort to smile at everyone I made eye contact with as if I was compensating for something. The longer we stayed at the pool and the more comfortable we got the more the looks seemed friendly. Though the pool was uncomfortable in some ways I think that it was important for me to experience and I am glad that María brought us. After the pool María wanted to bring us to a market. The market was called “La Carolina” and it was quite similar to the pool in the fact that we were outsiders. It was amazing to see all the different fruits and meats on display and we ate traditional meals and juices recommended by María in the market. Later when we were home we talked with María about things like politics (at her prompting) and many of the differences and similarities between our countries that I have mentioned. I learned a lot today.