The Challenges.

I´ve been thinking about how to write this post for a while now, I wasn´t sure how to do so without being misunderstood. I knew before coming here that I would be faced with challenges and pushed outside of my comfort zone. I actually wanted this, because I know it´s necessary for me to grow as a person. What I guess I didn´t realize is that facing the challenges and living outside of my comfort zone is quite hard and sometimes exhausting. I know for a fact that it´´ll all be worth it in the end, but for the moment I´m struggling. One of the biggest personal challenges I think I´m facing is to not be as close to my host family as I would have liked to. I really expected to build very strong realtionships with the members of my host family but this hasn´t happened. Talking to the other Intercordians I realized I´m not the only one to feel this way. It´s kind of hard to explain because I absolutely adore my host family, they´re truly amazing people, especially my host mom and dad. I just feel like a guest of lot of the time and that´s not how I´d like it to be. Like how they always give me the best of whatever food they have or how they won´t let me help them work in the fields. It makes me uncomfortable at times. But by now, I´ve learned how to deal with it.

Another personal challenge I´ve faced has been working at the day care. I feel like I´m not doing much there to help out. The kids are also at an age where it´s hard to build actual relationships with them because they´re more interested in running around all the time. I´m glad I get to watch the work of a social worker and teach english night classes. It kind of makes up for how useless I feel at the day care.

Then there´s the simple fact of constantly being outside of my comfort zone. There are times when there´s nothing I´d like more than to be cuddled up on the couch at home in the presence of my mom and just feel comfortable. But then some simple special moment happens, like a kid giving me a hug or my host dad calling me his daughter or spending time with my fellow Intercordians, and everything becomes alright. I hold on to those moments real tight because they´re what keeps me going. 

A challenge which I think is faced by most Intercordians here is to be seen as the ¨white foreigner¨. It makes me sad to see some of the people here associate my skin colour with a higher status of some sorts. It´s subtle and not shown by everyone but when I do get that feeling, it really don´t like it. They know they are a hard working bunch though, because I´ve heard them joking around about how doctors, lawyers and engineers wake up late in the morning and get to the office at 9am, while they (the people from the ¨campo¨ or countryside) wake up before the sun to start working. I can´t help but agree with them. Seeing how hard working these people are has been really eye-opening. Every day I see older women hauling some huge bag of corn on their backs, people taking their cows from one place to the other, children carrying their younger sibling on their backs. Last Saturday my whole family went up the hill to tend to the fields. They left at 5am and came back at 6pm. That´s a huge day´s work out in the sun. It´s inspiring to see all of this, and it makes me want to become a better person. I have a lot of time to think while I´m here because my only real distraction is books. I think about what kind of person I want to be and what I can do to achieve this. I´ve become so much more sensitive to the different socio-economic situations of people. It´s one thing to read or hear about people who lead different lives than us in the North, it´s another thing to actually live with them. There´s no way to actually understand it than to live it. It´s hard but very rewarding.

I guess what this whole post is to try to make people realize that this whole 3 months isn´t about having fun all the time, but instead it´s a complete learning experience. I´m learning more being in this small community in the Ecuadorian Andes than any university class I can take. And every day I remind myself of the truly amazing popportunity I have to be here, because it´s easy to forget in the midst of all things.