Change of heart

It's good I didn't write my last post a mere twelve hours later, as it would have been much more negative. My friend Ben came over to study on Sunday, and I got in a huge fight with my host parents following his departure. I haven't spoken with either face-to-face since, and have only been in the same room with my host mother- once- when we didn't even have eye contact.

I told my host mom he would be coming over to study that afternoon. When he left, my host dad told me that I could not have people in the house he didn't know- "es una regla." Not any rule you have ever told me! I said, "para estudiar?" and he said, "nadie que yo no conozco-" again, no one I don't know.

The irony in this is that my host parents have no interest in my life, don't know any of my friends, so that basically means bitch, you can never have a single soul in the house. Although one, that is not fair and I am sure not within the guidelines of hosting, and two, they never told me this! I got really mad, was going to the roof to call Ben, and turned around and said "can I tell you something? You (plural) should not have host students here, because you are not nice people." I then stormed up to the roof, and he protested but didn't followed me.

I called Ben and then Liz and cried up there for awhile, and under their advice and my own that I had not done anything wrong- I let my host mother know that he was coming before he did; if there was a problem, she should have told me- I went down and started speaking in whirlwind Spanish, saying I hadn't done anything wrong, I told her he was going to come, etc. We fought for about ten minutes and got nowhere. They told me this house was not a place to meet up.

ONE PERSON! TO STUDY! They should not HAVE host students if that is unreasonable! I was furious and started talking about how uncomfortable I felt in the house, and she said why? I give you pills when you are sick (once), I give you little desserts a few times a week, everything you need.

That is not what I need. I need to NOT have to ask permission to drink a glass of milk in my own house. I need to feel comfortable. I need to not feel like I am doing anything and everything wrong in your presence. I told them I had tried to change so much, and they were not trying to work with me at all. They said they were. I asked how. Then they said they didn't have to change, I was the one who had come there for exchange.

This is true. But living here has been one of the hardest things I have ever done. Hours alone in my room (I can't go out every night), door shut, usually no internet, no stimulating conversation, no interest. It blew my mind. I was so upset. I should have worked harder to move in October. This house is a pesadilla.

To make matters worse, Monday I started coming down with a cold, and yesterday I was miserable. I had finals both days, and on Tuesday, walking to my first bus, I felt so nauseous I keeled over on the street and contemplated taking a taxi home, but I went to school and got through with the final. It's been hard to stay awake 12 hours at a time. It is just a cold, but with extreme exhaustion, sore throat, runny nose, etc. So those plans to spend a night in a town a few hours away to escape Quito? Kaput. I feel like shit.

Tomorrow or Friday I will go shopping one last time, and I have to start to pack because I will be gone most of Friday and half of Saturday, at my class party and sleeping over. I am a bit wary, even though I love all these kids and always enjoy hanging out with them; that I will just not be i the mood to party all night. If I am still sick I won't go, but I really want to. I also need to find time to say bye to other gringo friends that are still here, although I have no idea when that will happen.

I am incredibly upset that this is how I am ending my last days in Quito- sick, unhappy with my host parents and wanting to leave, but there is nothing I could have done to change it, save shut my mouth when my host father said that to me. But I don't regret. I feel like I have been walked over all semester by them. I've already written a letter detailing why I have been unhappy here and what inappropriate things they have done.

I miss my real family. I miss being able to tell who is walking through the house just by the sound of their footsteps, my mom watching all her stupid antiques shows, the winter living room with the CHRISTMAS TREE we will have oh so soon, New York City streets, being to walk outside (at night) without fear of being mugged or assaulted, not being stared at by everyone from young girls to old men because of what I look like. So soon. So soon.

To sum it up, I am sick, tired, bored, homesick, unhappy and unwelcome in this house, and more than ready to go home.

My flight is 7:30 AM Sunday.

3 days...

The Notable & the Inconceivable

The Notable and the Inconceivable

Recent Notable Events:

1) This past weekend was Fiestas de Quito. I only truly partied one night, but it was enough for the weekend. I went on a chiva (open-air party bus which has a band playing on the roof) and drove around Thursday night. It was incredibly fun. I also met a very nice man, and we went dancing. One of the best nights I’ve had here. Too bad I’m leaving in two weeks...
2) Friday I went to the mercado artesenal with Susie to do some Christmas shopping, which was fun. Ali, Steven and I went to a very cheap Chinese restaurant in la Mariscal for dinner and it was delicious. We walked through the Mariscal (basically the center of all the bars) for a bit. I loved it- tons of drunk people singing and dancing, but Ali and Steven were not having it. I was going to meet up with my friend Ben, but couldn’t find him, and was still exhausted from the night before, so I went home.
3) Yesterday (Saturday) I went up the Teleferiqo with Steven and Ali. The Teleferiqo is basically an enclosed skilift that goes all the way up Pichincha, the volcano right next to Quito that I can see right now from the window in the living room of my house. It was a great view going up but there was so much fog that we could barely see the city from the top, which was sad. We walked a bit and you could feel the altitude- it is something like 3400 meters, Quito itself is at least 500 less than that. I was definitely breathing hard when we hiked uphill.
4) Ali and I hung out at her house while Steven went to a Persian class (?) Then he came back, we wanted to go to dinner at this Mexican restaurant on our block, but it was closed due to the holiday, so we got in a cab and ended up at S’pan’es, a Colombian fast-food restaurant, which was delicious. I had an arepa with guacamole and cheese and mini chicken empanadas. However this was not a happy meal because Ali had just lost her phone in our cab and thinks her iPod was pickpocketed earlier this week... somber dinner. Steven went home and I slept over at Ali’s.

And for the inconceivable...

1) Exactly two weeks from this moment (clearly as of time of writing) I will be sitting, most likely exhausted, in George Walker Bush International (will they rename it Barack Hussein Obama? Could Texas do that?) airport, waiting for my connecting flight to take me home.
2) In ONE week from today, I will be flying to the south of Ecuador and traveling with my friend Carmen for the week.
*This weekend I was seriously considering backing out on this trip, due to money issues and feeling like I should stay in Quito my last week, but I realized how terrible it would be. Ali is gone next Sunday, and any foreigners staying in Quito will be doing so for exams or to spend time with their Ecuadorian boyfriends, neither of which I care to participate in (I have already arranged to take my exams early and do not want to change that now and study more). So I will be traveling.
3) I will not see any of my friends here for a very, very long time, and I won’t process this until I’m gone.
4) My schedule for this week is as follows: TUES: Literature presentation. WED: MUN Final exam. THURS: LIT Final Exam, Anthro presentation, Anthro Final Exam. ... NOT looking forward to it.
5) Of course finals have to be at the end of the semester, which of course is when you are feeling the most confused, vulnerable and emotional (at least in my case). I spent so much time here seemingly just floating through my days, and now that I am truly happy I have to spend this week studying and stressing about finals, money and packing to go... home? I cried Thursday night, Friday morning in my room, Friday afternoon waiting for Susie at the bus stop. I am a bit more put together now. A bit.
6) Not that I am dreading being home. I think it will be lovely... I’m just not ready.
7) I will be back at Beloit in a bit over a month... I got into all of my classes, which I believe is the first time that has happened since my first semester. So I will be taking:

Politics of Latin America and the Caribbean
Women’s Health
Economic Development
Nicaragua in Transition
Claude Levi-Strauss at 100 (.5 credit)

It is an amazing schedule as I don’t have class til noon on Tuesday and Thursday, and 11:15 MWF. I didn’t do that on purpose- I am actually fond of morning classes- but I think it will be very nice to have mornings free. The classes (I anticipate will) also complement each other extremely well, at least Nicaragua and Economic Development, along with POLS.

Let me know if you are in any of them. Also, anyone know anything about the proposed Spanish minor? Jenny?

8) The economic situation in the US (slash, the entire world). We have been raised in a time of plenty and I think, especially for my/our generation, to see the economy fall apart like this will have an incredible impact on us for the rest of our lives, the same way September 11th did.

I still remember when I found out about what happened. I was in 8th grade at a public middle school in uptown Manhattan (nowhere near the towers), and that morning, parents began coming in and taking their kids out of class one by one. We had no idea what was going on and were quite scared. Finally, between periods, I asked my math teacher what had happened, and she said two planes had crashed into the Twin Towers.

“Cool,” I said, having absolutely no understanding of what kind of damage she was referring to, my childish mind unable to imagine the damage which had occurred only miles south of where I lived. I remember walking to my brother’s school to pick him up (about two miles away) and going home with him. I don’t think buses were working after the attacks. When I got home I watched the coverage on TV for hours, and cried.

The next day was one of my best friend’s (still a best friend’s) birthday, and school was cancelled, and we had a quiet lunch. There was a thick layer of dust on the windowsill of our apartment, which had drifted uptown and settled, one of the few things that remained of the Towers.

One night when I was falling asleep- I think my parents were going out- I remember being terrified that an airplane was going to crash into my bedroom, and that nowhere in the city could be safe.

My point being– well, I don’t have a point, but I have many thoughts. How will what happens to us when we are children affect our long-term development? Will we believe we are more prone to disaster? Less likely to trust the people around us?

But then– how can we rebound so quickly? I have no fear riding the subway in New York or walking in crowded areas, and very minimal fear on an airplane. Is it naivety? A necessary mechanism to keep me from going insane? Will these economic events affect our decision-making for decades to come? Will teenagers entering college lean more towards a career path than freedom of intellectual exploration? Will college actually become unaffordable for most American families, as the New York Times predicted?

One thing that scares me is that statistic that graduating from college during a recession decreases one’s income by 10% (that is probably entirely wrong, but it was some significant number). If half a million people lost their jobs in November– people with decades of experience and loyalty are getting fired– how on earth are we going to get jobs? I hate when people deem the current crisis more or less equivalent to the Great Depression. It is not. That Depression has 25% unemployment. We are at 6.7%! Although that number is not considered truthful, as many people have dropped out of the workforce due to the inability to find a job- as well as their lack of hope. It is still not on equal terms, the same way the Attacks on Mumbai are not India's September 11; their death toll not even close to one-tenth of what was experienced in 2001. Not to be callous. It's just one way of determining it. Not to make these issues seem less important than they are or give them less attention than they deserve (uhh, does anyone even read this?), but scaring people with incorrect information does not help anyone.

Depressing, isn’t it?

If you like reading about this stuff, a blog I like is Econowhiner. There are usually two or three posts a day, various things about the economy or tips to save money/ your sanity. It’s interesting. Go look at it.

I should go study or something. I should also start packing (I am determined to have one suitcase packed before I leave to travel next week), but I doubt I will start before Saturday, because it will make me too sad. I am not looking forward to goodbyes. Sorry to conclude this entry about something that happened seven years ago. Processing all my thoughts about the present has been too overwhelming.

Two weeks?!