Ziling Liang - May 6th - Blog Three

My favorite experience today is having lunch in the indigenous house. It was so wonderful to enjoy a lunch with good food, music, and dancing. For nowadays people who live in a modern way with a lot of online stuff like social media, it has been very hard to enjoy life in this way. When everybody put down their phones and pay all of their attention into a lunch with others, in my opinion, I can see the meaning of being alive. We were so glad to have good foods. We were enjoying the civilization in this world like music and dancing. And we were close to the nature like mountains, fields and the smells from the surroundings.


During the lunch, we were introduced to some indigenous Ecuadorian cultures. They serves a kind of food called cuy, which is barbecued guinea pig, that is not common as a food in other places. Due to the living condition, local people do not have other choice as meat but guinea pig. Also, a native band played music for us, and these songs have strong indigenous feelings. As we all know, with the development of technology today, popular songs can spread all over the world through internet. However, the music created by this local band maintains a lot of soul that only belongs to this place, and it is impossible to be copied because they are connected to the culture there.

I did the food research of Ecuador before coming here, and I was very surprised when I firstly saw the food cuy. Even though it must be interesting to try different food, I am kind of a conservative person about trying new things especially food. I have been in the United States for almost two years, but I still believe Chinese food is the most delicious one. I kept my mind towards Ecuadorian food, but I immediately changed it when I ate the barbecued guinea pig. I believe the reason why I was able to persuade myself to try this strange food is that people came with me were all exciting about it. I think trying something new with a group a people is a good idea when you think yourself is not brave enough to do so.

I am missing the taste of that little guinea pig now.




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