A few details about my life here!

I though I would share a couple interesting facts about my life here in Ecuador.

1) The hopitality here is really incredible. People are so welcoming and treat you as one of their own. They literally adress people as ¨hija¨ which means daughter, even though they have no relation with the person whatsoever. Adults as well as children constantly say good morning/afternoon/night when they pass by me or anyone for that matter. In the community where I live the people are very hard working, they don´t have the luxury of taking the weekends off like we do. However, the most shocking is that they´re so genuinely happy, laughing and smiling most of the time. It´s very touching to see and I know for a fact that we have a lot to learn from these people.

2) The weather isn´t as hot as you´d expect here. During the day it varies from warm (when the sun comes out) to chilly (when the clouds cover the sun). At night it´s especially cold since there´s obviously no heating and the isolation isn´t very good. But with a sweater and lots of blankets, I´m fine.

3) I noticed that people here, or at least up in my community, use the formal form of ¨you¨ a lot. Even with little kids. So I´ve started doing the same, even though it feels kind of weird.

4) Bucket showers really aren´t as bad as I thought.

5) I am constantly taking buses over here. For one because my family doesn´t own a car but the buses are also really inexpensive. A 15 minute bus ride is 16 cents! I don´t understant how they are still running because they go through these crazy bumpy roads.
Also, on mother´s day, I hopped on the back of a truck with about 10 other people to get to mass downtown. This is a very common way of transportation here since few people outside of cities own cars and so they really just pack on the back of some truck to get somewhere. 

6) There´s a real sense of community where I live. People just come and go into the house all the time. Everyone seems to be a neighboor or ¨vecino¨, as my host family greets them.

7) I had my first AHA moment the other day while driving throught the mountains with my host dad and his boss. The view is soo incredible up there. No picture would ever do it justice. With andean music blasting through the speakers, I really felt like this was one of the many reasons why I´m here!