Blog Post Fourteen: The Market, Neque y Mas Neque, and Cooking

Neque y Mas Neque
The Mercado Artisinal is a great metaphor for Ecuadorian culture. The market is filled with handmade clothing, blankets, pottery, jewelry, and so many more items that are staples of Ecuadorian culture. All of these items also tend to be made or filled with bright colors which is common here in Ecuador. Another way the Mercado Artisinal is a metaphor for Ecuadorian culture is the fact that you negotiate the price of the item. In Ecuador, it is common to negotiate prices in markets, at street vendors, and even in taxis.

The biggest thing I learned from the kids while working at Neque is that it doesn’t matter whether a kid comes from the U.S., Germany, or Ecuador or whether they are in poverty, the middle class, or they are rich, they are all the same. Every kid wants to play, to learn, and to have someone care about them and take an interest in their life. During our time at Neque I also learned that doing service work, no matter the size of your contribution, makes a big difference and is greatly appreciated. If you take away the small donation of food and school supplies that we gave to Neque all we really did was go play with kids for two hours on four different occasions. It doesn’t sound like much, but it meant a lot to the kids and the workers at Neque as well as us. Our time spent with those children, as short as it was, will be a lasting memory for them and us.

Cooking with our professors was a great form of intercultural communication. The obvious reason that makes it intercultural communication was that we had to communicate in Spanish, but learning to cook two traditional Ecuadorian dishes, empanadas and locro soup, is another example of intercultural communication. By sharing their knowledge and dishes with us we have gotten to learn more about their culture.


The biggest challenge while cooking for me was the food prep. My specialty dishes are cereal and PB&Js so my lack of kitchen skills was pretty obvious. Thankfully I ended up being one of the people who rolled out the balls of dough for the empanadas which was an easy job. Those challenges were rewarded by having a tasty lunch ready for us at the end as well as learning a little bit more about cooking.

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