Constant adjustment

For us, living in Ecuador is all about learning how to do everything all over again. And it’s not just the language or the culture, although that certainly presents its own daily obstacles. I’m talking about the minutiae of everyday life, the stuff you do that you don’t even realize you’re actually doing. I’d thought some things to be universal, that humans held a set of commonalities built into our DNA. As it turns out, you can’t take anything we do, not the smallest detail, for granted. Let me explain.

Waiting in line. I don’t remember the first time I tried to buy something here, but I learned soon enough that something was a little off, at least according to my perspective. I do remember stopping to get a bottle of water one day at a little bread store. The person running the counter was helping somebody else, so I waited behind, as I thought would have been standard practice. A minute later, some guy shows up, walks right up to the front, and just speaks his order like I was invisible or something. Even worse, this guy was served as soon as the counterperson was done helping the previous customer. What the hell? I was pretty annoyed, but I was new in the country, and I figured maybe there might be better ways to represent the US than by getting into a fistfight with the first person that looked at me cockeyed.

When entering a busy place, at home anyway, I’m used to lining up behind the people who are already waiting, letting them have their turn, and then doing what I came to do. After a few weeks in country, I was beginning to think that maybe my experience with the line cutter wasn’t an isolated incident. It would happen everywhere. People just don’t wait in line here. You walk in and go right to the front. Getting customer service anywhere in Ecuador is like trying to get a drink from a really busy bartender; it’s all about jockeying for position, boxing-out the competition, and using your outside voice while shoving your money in whosever face is running the place.

Luckily for me, I’m tall, and I tend to stick out down here, so now that I know how the game’s played, I don’t have much trouble getting what I need. But learning the system meant enduring some pretty frustrating experiences. I’ve already written about the post offices here, but the lines at the branch in Quito were out of control. There were benches for waiting and everything. They even told us they would call our names when it was our turn. What it basically came down to was everybody crowding around this little window screaming his or her name every ten to fifteen seconds until somebody responded. Needless to say, we wound up waiting for a while.

Another nightmare scenario was our first trip to the bank. I forget why didn’t just use the ATM, but for whatever reason we needed to speak to somebody. Upon entering the bank, you actually see a bunch of lines, people lined up waiting for service, which is encouraging, but ultimately misleading. There were maybe seven or eight lines all leading to various tellers and desks. Once we figured out which line we were supposed to “wait” in, we noticed how after about twenty minutes or so we hadn’t moved much closer to where we needed to be. Could we have been farther away? It’s very possible. People just kept cutting. A person would walk in and right away cut four people in line. Then those people that just got cut would cut another five people. There were no confrontations or anything; it was all very passive-aggressive. It had all the characteristics of a line – people, waiting, standing single file – but with the constant shuffling it was anything but.

It all came to a head one day while I was waiting to buy something at some random store somewhere. I was waiting and blah blah blah this lady comes in and just orders ahead of me. That’s it, I can’t take it anymore! I turn to her and go, “excuse me, I was waiting here first, you just cut me,” trying to sound just pissed off enough to let her know I was serious without going overboard and sounding like some maniac. Hopefully I could handle this myself, without the police having to get involved. She just looks at me, confused, and says, “Well, you were just standing there.”

And that’s when I realized that I just hadn’t understood the system. Here, you’re expected to just walk in and order. Suddenly a fog lifted; things got immediately better. There were some minor details to iron out, like, I wasn’t sure if you were supposed to let little old ladies order ahead of you. I mean, with my size I didn’t want to be a bully. Unfortunately, any hesitation is a sign of weakness, an invitation for everybody else to cut you right then and there.

Now when I enter a place, I feel like I’m finally getting the respect and attention that I deserve, that I wouldn’t even get in the States. It’s great; I just walk in, walk through everyone right to the front, and demand my order in a loud voice from whoever happens to be serving. And it’s totally acceptable! Out of my way grandma, I’m here, and I need to be taken care of, right now.

Hand signals. Here’s something else that I thought was universal: trying to give someone a very basic message from far away using your hands. For example: hey, come here for a second, or no. Again, nothing should be taken for granted. It started when I’d see people down the street, and they would hold up an arm and wave only their hand, palm facing away and down. Then they would wave just that hand, all the way down and up again. I hope I’m describing it well enough for you to picture it correctly. I guess it would be similar to a person on stage receiving a standing ovation and trying to signal for everybody to please sit down, expect only with one hand, not two … and more wrist action.

Anyway, I just didn’t get it. Was I being made fun of or something? How should I respond? Should I even respond? Being at a complete loss, I figured it was kind of similar to someone waving hi, someone like a two-year-old, but still. So I just started waving back. I didn’t take to long to at least figure out what this hand signal didn’t mean, which was to say hi. For some reason, some reason that I still don’t understand, it’s a signal for you to come over. I’m used to palm facing up, with fingers motioning towards the signaler as the standard means to call someone over, but who said that was universal, right? So picture me for the first few weeks here, and every time somebody tried to get me to come over, I’d just be standing there waving back, smiling like an idiot before I eventually just walked away.

Another hand signal they do is sticking out the pinky down and thumb up, and then shaking this side to side. This is supposed to mean no, but only if you’re asking for something … I think. Like if I’m trying to flag down a ride, and the driver gives me one of those, I know I have to keep looking. If I’m looking for a drink, this sign will mean they’re all out.

There are still more signs that I have yet to figure out. Sometimes I’ll say hi to someone and they’ll just kind of point in the opposite direction. So I’ll just kind of stand there and smile. Once in a while somebody will point up a finger and move it around in a circle. Again, I have no idea. As frustrating as not knowing the very basics of everyday life, thankfully I haven’t lost it enough to test out the universality of one of our most infamous hand signals.

Moving out

Joannah and I have finally moved into our own apartment. We painted, bought appliances, and just about finished unpacking. What a difference it makes to have some personal space. Our host family was really great, but Jo and I were sharing a room where, laying down on the bed, I could easily touch all four walls. Plus, on any given day, our adoptive parents would lock up the house at 7:30 and go to bed, leaving us trapped in our walk-in closet. It’s great not to have to whisper to each other all night long.

The other huge bonus of having our own place is having our own kitchen. I’ve mentioned earlier that our host mom is great cook, but we were both getting a little sick of having rice and potatoes on every plate. Also, pretty much every dish is preceded by a bowl of scalding hot soup. Don’t get me wrong, soup’s great, but I’m used to eating the occasional bowl usually sometime during the winter. The 80-degree temperature just makes the soup seem somehow unappealing.

Back in the US, Jo and I were used to eating light breakfasts, a bigger lunch, and a decent sized dinner. Here, breakfast is huge. Not like a five-egg omelet huge, but like a mountain of rice with a whole fish huge. I would be struggling to digest my food when I’d look at my watch and realize that it’s lunchtime already. If breakfast here is huge, lunch is huge squared. After the giant soup, you’d get another few pounds of rice, maybe three or four whole potatoes or some other starch, possibly some chicken, meat, or another whole fish, and beans. Really good stuff here, but with little variation, the almuerzos (lunch) sometimes felt like a chore.

The reason that lunches are so big here, I think, is because it’s basically supposed to hold you over until breakfast the next day. Dinner here isn’t really a meal at all. Usually we’d have some coffee and bread, and maybe a little rice. I’m sorry, but by 6 or 7pm I’m out-of-my-mind hungry. A piece of bread and some instant coffee are just not going to cut it. Jo and I would feel really bad sneaking out of our host family’s house afterwards to forage for food, but it was between that and listening to empty stomach while sitting in our tiny room for the rest of the night. I swear, some nights I would look at Joannah and I thought I was seeing a nice roasted chicken asking me why my mouth was watering.

Things weren’t that bad, I mean, we always had the soft-serve guy to hopefully look around for, but right now we are just so much happier. We’ve cooked meals that we hadn’t had in so long: tacos, hamburgers, salads. I think this is probably the first we’ve eaten vegetables since we came to Ecuador.

Which is kind of surprising seeing as how fresh produce is so readily available. Every Thursday in our community, all of the communities from the whole county set up shop to sell their fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats. Not only do they have everything, but they have everything for really cheap. Mangos are around eight to ten for a dollar, avocados the same. We’ll spend at the most, five bucks, and we’ll have more than enough for an entire week’s worth of meals. It’s so much more than just an open market; people come from very far away to sell anything you can imagine. There are really great snacks that aren’t available for the rest of the week. Someone usually roasts a whole pig. There’s this guy who sells hard-boiled quail eggs (which Joannah hates, but I think are great.)

Trucks pull up and unload totally random crap, from baby shampoo to sneakers. These guys will stand on top of their cars with megaphones, trying to convince you to buy their stuff with the same intensity of someone leading a mass protest. They are relentless; I rarely hear them stopping for a breath. Moving from one item to the next, they have such an intimate knowledge of every product. “Buy this baby shampoo! It’s extra soft and extra delicate for your baby’s soft skin!” He’ll open it up, pour some on his hand, smell it. “Ahh! How lovely! Such a wonderful aroma! And everything is 100% natural, absolutely no chemicals!” It’s like watching the late Billy Mays trying to empty out a CVS after a cocaine binge, in Spanish.

What we gained in personal freedom we lost somewhat in privacy. People from all over our community feel inclined to constantly check up on us … making sure we are still eating now that we’re on our own, listening, but not believing us when we tell them that a sandwich (no soup) is enough for lunch, telling us that we missed a spot after sweeping the floor. Plus, a lot of people assume that, because we are health volunteers, we must be doctors. We had this old guy at our door showing us a bunch of medical records and x-rays asking us for a second opinion. Despite the constant visits, we are glad to be getting to know more people from the community.

Everything is great now that we’re on our own. I’d love to stay and chat some more, but there’s someone at the door with a nail protruding from his foot. Joannah, scalpel.

Going postal

The postal service in Ecuador is a lot different than what we’ve been used to in the US. Pretty much any Ecuadorian that I’ve asked has never even received mail, or even known where the nearest post office is. Joannah and I have had stuff sent to us. Our experiences might be indicative as to why the people here don’t even bother.

When we were still trainees back in Cayambe (about one hour outside of Quito, the capital), some packages came for us. The Peace Corps staff gave us a slip of paper instructing us to pick up our mail at some post office in Quito. Easy enough, right?

All throughout training, we were given numerous lectures about how dangerous Quito can be. Don’t walk around with tons of cash, only travel in taxis at night … basic stuff. And they explicitly warned us not to travel to certain areas. If we got robbed in these certain areas, Peace Corps would not reimburse us for any stolen money because, well, they told us not to be there in the first place. It turned out that our post office was right in the middle of one of these restricted areas. (Nothing bad wound up happening in said restricted area; I just thought it added a nice touch of suspense.)

Normally during training, the staff would have most of our mail forwarded to the post office in Cayambe, making hazardous trips like this unnecessary. Who knows why ours didn’t get sent. Maybe our package seemed suspicious. Anyway, we got to Quito and hopped in a cab.

The instructions on our slip of paper were very explicit. The post office is only open to receive packages on weekdays between 12 and 2pm. You must bring your passport as well as two additional copies. Two samples of blood will be collected upon entering the post office. Ok, ok a lot of rules, we get it.

We got there a few minutes early, and didn’t have to wait long in line. The guy behind the counter took our forms, made us pay some money for them holding on to the package, and gave us a receipt. So we took our receipt, and waited for the guy to go and fetch us our package, but he wasn’t even getting up out of his swivel chair. What the hell? The people in the rapidly growing line behind us were getting antsy.

Handing in your papers and paying for your package wound up being only step one in a multi-stepped mail retrieval processing system. After the line we sat in this room with a bunch of hard wooden benches while we waited for our names to be called. Our name was called and some guy took us to a room with tons of packages. He found our package, ripped it open, (it was candy!) took some notes, and taped it back up. I grabbed the package, thanked the guy, and started walking out.

But he stopped us. That was only step two. A two-step process would have been way too easy. I mean, maybe in some other city’s post office that would fly, but this is Quito, the capital, a major city with a major post office with a major pain-in-the-ass multi-stepped process. You can’t just take your package and go after step two. Back to the benches we were sent.

We were called in to some customs office. Some customs guy told us that because our package contained goods that were foreign in nature, we would have to pay a tax. We looked at each other and cringed. After coming all this way, after waiting for so long, would we have to abandon our precious candy at some customs office in Quito? The customs guy calculated our tax: 37 cents.

Whew! That’s it? Great! Here you go, I’ll just reach into my pocket here … oh look, I’ve got tons of change! All right, 37 cents it is. Now if you’ll just open your hand and take the 37 cents that I’m trying to give to you, we can just take our package and be on our way. So just take the money. Why are you looking at me like that? Wait, what are you telling me? You’re not the one who takes the money? Step four, there’s a step four? Shit!

Step three wound up being having that customs guy add up the bill. The paying would take place during step four. Customs guy printed us out about twelve pieces of paper. All we had to do was take these papers to the bank down the block and pay the 37 cents. The lines at the bank were very, very long. You would think that the ridiculously-small-customs-tax would correspond with an equally ridiculously-small-customs-tax-paying-line, but that wasn’t the case. Pretty much everybody that came in the bank after us tried to cut us in line. I told them they could back-cut, but frontsies were out of the question.

I handed the bank lady our 37 cents. But there was a bank fee. It was seventy-something cents. We were later told that the whole point of step four being off-site at a bank was to prevent customs people at the post office from overcharging and pocketing a profit. So now, instead of having random corrupt postal employees ripping people off and making a few extra dollars, they centralized the corruption, and now a huge bank is raking in significantly more money in the form of many collectivized micropayments. I had steam fuming from my ears as I handed her two bucks.

She smiled, handed me my change, and printed me off another dozen or so pages to bring back to the post office. We waited some more on the benches, handed a giant stack of papers to another postal employee, waited while this employee typed a bunch of stuff in a computer, signed our names, and finally … finally we were given our package. Just short of 2pm, where you know they would’ve locked up for the day had we not gotten back from the bank in time.

On the positive side, the candy was delicious.

When we got our site assignment, Peace Corps told us that there was a post office in a small town about an hour away from us. This is where we would be sent our malaria medicine and whatever else. About a month after we moved, my mom told us that we had two more packages on the way.

Nobody at our site had even heard of a post office nearby. When we got into town, we started asking random people if they knew where it was. Some people told me in Quito, about eight hours away. Finally someone had the information we needed, and directed us to a side street not that far away.

We eventually found the post office; only, it wasn’t really an office as much as it was a table set up in front of an apartment. The lady who ran the table turns out to pretty much be the post office for our site. She’s really nice. She gave us her home phone number and told us to call her whenever we need mail and she’s not outside. She even took our phone numbers too.

And one day she called and told us that we had a big package waiting. I could have sworn that my mom told me that there were two coming, but maybe I couldn’t understand her Spanish. We took the bus into town, gave her a call, and she handed us a package (more candy!) along with another slip of paper informing us that our other package was .1 kg overweight and was therefore detained at a larger postal facility in nearby Latacunga. We were to bring this notice as well as two copies of our passports to blah blah blah godammit!

Due to a nationwide strike, the busses were out of commission for a while, and it was another month before we had an opportunity to catch the six-hour bus to Latacunga. Needless to say, it was a pretty good excuse to get away for the weekend.

This post office also had very explicit hours of operation, and I arrived 9am on a Monday morning by myself (Joannah was off on another errand) ready for anything. Luckily, Latacunga happens to be a much more user-friendly city in terms of mail. Two steps, tops. I paid my fee and was told I just had to have my package examined and I’d be on my way.

Out comes a member of the Ecuadorian military to personally inspect the package. He put down his giant semi-automatic gun and ripped open the top. Why couldn’t this one have just been candy? Out pours the contents of the girliest package anyone has ever been sent. Pumice stones … nail files … makeup … lotions. Staring at all the stuff, he turned and gave me a look of what had to have been a mix of bewilderment and disgust, and then back at the stuff. He picked up a five-pack of Tide To-Go pens and asked me what they were. I tried to tell him as casually as I could – in my very best Spanish – that they were special markers used to rub stains out of your clothes if you made a mess while you were out of the house. I managed to get out of the post office without the nice soldier having to reach for his machine gun.

Seeing as how the mail here can be problematic, I’ve come up with a new system if anyone wants to send us anything else while we’re down here. Just label the package with our names in bold, clear letters. Then, wait for a really strong southern wind. Now, build some sort of hot-air balloon, small enough to reassure anybody that, no, there aren’t any runaway kids aboard, but big enough to keep our package afloat. Thanks in advance, and I’m sure we’ll get it in no time.

Also, the post office in Quito didn’t actually make us give blood samples. I was just kidding.

The soft-serve guy

One of the highlights of any day here is when the soft-serve guy comes around. Think Mr. Softy, but instead of an ice cream truck, it’s a really old pickup truck. And instead of the Mr. Softy music that let’s you know he’s getting closer (or farther away,) you can tell when this guy is near by the sound of the diesel powered soft-serve machine. When I say diesel powered, think of a chainsaw. It’s ridiculously loud. When the soft serve comes out, the whole truck starts shaking violently. Whereas Mr. Softy has pretty decent brand-name recognition, the soft-serve guy’s pickup has a giant picture of those two babies from the Flintstones and the name “Bam-Bam” – not “Bam-Bam Soft-Serve,” just “Bam-Bam” – written on top. It all seems very arbitrary; I don’t really get it. We just call him soft-serve guy.

The soft-serve guy has the power to make or break any given day, regardless of how well that day has been going so far. This has to do with the fact that: a), his soft-serve is just delicious, and, b), you never know when he’s going to show up, if he’ll show up at all, or how long he’s going to stay there, if he’s even there in the first place.

Just imagine me, here in Ecuador, having a terrible day. I’m just about ready to beat somebody up, when I turn the corner and there he is. Yes! “What flavor do you have today?” I’ll ask. Like it even matters, it’s not as if I’ll turn anything down. Plus, he usually only has either strawberry, or rum. Twenty-five cents later, I’m euphoric. Running into the soft-serve guy is seriously one of the best things that I can hope will happen to me any day of the week.

But hoping I’ll run into him is the best I can do, seeing as how he runs a mobile operation without steady office hours. Which is really unfortunate if I’m ever just sitting around thinking about how great some soft-serve would be right about now. It’s never going to happen. He can pop up anywhere. Sometimes he’s driving through our community, but I’ve seen him as far as an hour bus ride away. Trying to look for the soft-serve guy is like trying to find a specific song on the radio. What are the chances?

Just as he has the power to lift me out of any crappy mood, the soft-serve guy can ruin even the happiest of days. Sometimes it’s worse than others. For example, this one time I was looking out the window on the bus and I saw him pass us going the other direction. It didn’t ruin my day exactly, but it definitely stung. What’s really bad is when you see him driving away from you down the road.

Shit! I just missed him! I’ll start to run after him. If he stops to sell some soft-serve, maybe I can catch up. And for a while it’ll be this weird sort of dance, where I gain on him, then he drives further away. I’ll get closer, but he doesn’t notice me so he keeps on driving. Eventually I just have to accept the fact that he’s gone, and he’s not coming back for me. This sucks because now I’m really far away from where I started and I have to walk all the way back. Plus, everyone’s staring at me for sprinting down the street, waving my hands like a lunatic. To top it all of, I don’t have any soft-serve. None. I could see it, almost taste it, but all I have is an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach that I know won’t be gone until tomorrow. Now that can ruin a day.

But even that wasn’t as bad as the worst soft-serve guy experience I’ve had so far. This one day I was sitting outside the house when I saw the soft-serve guy right down the block, totally stopped. I could have so easily just bought the soft-serve right then, and had a fantastic day, but Joannah was upstairs, and I felt guilty eating it without her.

I had to act fast. If I tried to get her to come down, the soft-serve guy would probably be gone by the time I came down. That’s just how it works. You’re lucky if you run into him in the first place. If you found a twenty-dollar bill on the ground, you wouldn’t run upstairs for backup.

You’re probably thinking, why couldn’t I have just bought her the soft-serve and gave it to her when she came out? Impossible. For one thing, I would have had to hold both cones in the same hand while I used my other hand to give him the fifty cents. Since the soft-serve is so fresh, the two would have gotten stuck together, making it really difficult to pull them apart. One of the best parts about a soft-serve cone is the way it comes out so perfect, every time. It’s how ice cream is supposed to look. Even if I could somehow get the two unstuck, the whole aesthetic would have been ruined. Also, it would have just been a huge mess. Better for us both to each be handed our own cone.

Ultimately, I decided to run up and get her. It was a toss-up, really, but I didn’t have any more time to deliberate. When she heard my shouting from the stairs, “Hurry! Soft-serve guy!” she ran down really fast. We were out the door maybe forty-five seconds later. Unfortunately, as you probably guessed, the soft-serve guy was nowhere in sight. Everywhere we looked, people were enjoying soft-serve.

This was about three weeks ago. Joannah and I haven’t spoken since.

So this one time at the morgue ...

One time our host mom was gone all day. When she finally did show up that night, she wasn’t looking too happy. Apparently, her friend’s son had died in a motorcycle accident the night before. Our host mom had spent the whole day with her grieving friend. A few days later, she starts telling us all about how when there is a funeral in the community, everybody pulls together and helps out. Some people give animals, some make food, and everybody pitches in to pay for the funeral.

So after she tells this, I naturally assume this has to do with the guy who died just a few days ago. When I asked her, though, she got this really confused look on her face. “Remember,” I said, “the guy who crashed his motorcycle? The day you spent consoling your friend?” (Although, I should note, in my attempted Spanish it probably translated more literally to, “Remember, sad friend’s motorcycle kills son?”)

“Oh yea,” she remembered, “he’s fine now.” Apparently – and she told us this so casually – they thought that the guy was dead, but he woke up in the morgue after a day or two. Joannah and I just stared at each other, definitely thinking the same exact thing: holy shit, if we get into some sort of accident, and we’re not exactly responsive in the hospitals, they’re going to drop us off in the morgue! How long would they wait for us to revive before they start asking our neighbors to chip in for a coffin?

The guy actually wound up dying a little more than a week later in Guayaquil, (Ecuador’s largest city, about five hours from us.) There was another day of grieving. Then our host mom started the collection to pay for the funeral. True to her word, they raised enough to haul the body back to the community and to cover all the expenses. After the funeral she spent the whole day in the graveyard with her friend.

That night at dinner I asked if the mom was very upset. Yes, it was a ridiculous question to ask. It’s like asking the parents of a newborn baby if they are happy now that the baby’s born. But my Spanish is not all that great, so sometimes it’s either say completely ridiculous things or just sit there and stare. Anyway, the answer was no. The mother wasn’t upset at all. In fact, things are much better this way. Everybody’s happy. Apparently the son was a drunk (that’s how he got into both of his motorcycle accidents) who would steal from his mom and beat her up too. I’m not sure if this is a happy or sad ending, but the moral of the story remains unchanged: if you get into some sort of an accident here, and you can’t wake up, they’re sending you to the f´n morgue!

Rats

We have way too many rats in our host family’s house. As I am typing this sentence, a rat is staring at me right outside our bedroom window. At first, we would hardly ever see them; now they have become a nightly nuisance. It’s not like the place didn’t have rats and all of the sudden now there are rats. I’m pretty sure they’ve been here long before our arrival. There are plenty of open places in this house where they can run in and out as they please. Also, there are a lot of fruits and vegetables lying around for them to snack on, making this a pretty, well, I don’t want to say a welcoming place exactly, but a generally hospitable environment. I get why they are here. What I don’t understand is the change in their behavior around us over the past month. They used to be so discreet – like ninjas, really – that at first I didn’t have any reason or concrete evidence to think they’d be a significant part of our lives here. But things are different now. I have a theory about why they gradually decided to make their presence felt.

What it boils down to, I think, is that the rats eventually figured out that Joannah and I pose absolutely no threat whatsoever to their existence and/or continued well being. I’ll start from the very beginning. Like I already explained, for the first week or so – other than the little specks of dirt in the kitchen that I thought maybe might be mouse droppings – I had no reason to suspect rats. Then, one night when I was reading in bed, I spotted something outside the bedroom window. It was a mouse, possibly, I thought, unclear because as soon as I looked up, it ran away. Due to lack of any screening in the window, we decided to start sleeping with the windows closed.

After that, we started hearing things at night, noises coming from the floor above us. These sounded a little bigger than mice. And we have plenty of experience with mice. In our apartment in the Bronx, there were tons. They are gross, sure, but they are only about three inches long. Once in a while there would be roaches maybe just as big. Plus, mice are totally afraid of you. They do everything mousely possible to make sure that they are rarely, if ever, seen. I don’t like mice, but I can kind of deal with them.

I couldn’t always kind of deal with them. In fact, some people reading this might have a hard time believing that I just wrote that I can kind of deal with mice. Joannah, for example, would probably give you a slightly different point of view. She might tell you the story of the first time we saw a mouse together. It was our junior year at college, and we were staying up late in my apartment. This was my first apartment and I had never seen a mouse before. Anyway, we saw a mouse in the apartment, and I freaked the shit out. I would have been perfectly content to spend the rest night cowering in Joannah’s dorm room, but Fordham University has some ridiculous “you can’t sign in guests to your dorm room past 3am” rule. Forced to make a decision under pressure, I did what any rational person would have done had they been in my position: I made Joannah get in my car and we drove to her parents’ place in Long Island where I cowered in the fetal position all night waking up every ten minutes with the sinking suspicion that the mouse had, however unlikely, somehow stowed away in my car and made its way to my current location. (Microsoft Word’s suggestion about that last line: unusually long sentence, consider revising.)

Praise Jesus that I happened to have a roommate who was able to take care of the situation after that. Jim borrowed a mousetrap from our landlord Neil, killed the mouse, and even cleaned up the splattered mess. What’s funny is that this mousetrap was one of those plastic ones that you just had to pop in place. In theory, I guess these contraptions could be considered “reusable,” although, I honestly can’t think of anyone who would want to manually clean up pieces of dead mouse and mouse blood just to save three bucks on something you can buy at any hardware store. Which is even funnier because Neil got mad at Jim for throwing away the mousetrap.

It would be another year until I had my next run in with mice. I had just moved into a new apartment right before my senior year had started. My two new roommates and I had dumped all of our stuff in the living room and had decided that we would wait a day or two before we started unpacking. The next day I saw a mouse run out from under the pile. This time I would be ready, brave, strong. I bought some mousetraps – single use – and went to sleep in my own bed, in my own apartment, albeit still cowering in the fetal position. The next day I woke up early, eager for some results. Sure enough, there were two mousetraps, and two dead mice. Finally, the tables had been turned. I felt like I had conquered my fears, like I had completely redeemed myself from last year’s humiliation. I got a really long broom to sweep up the first one, but as soon as I touched the mouse, it started going crazy. As it turns out, this guy got caught in the trap by the tail, wounded and immobilized, but very much alive.

Again, I freaked out. At this point, driving home wouldn’t solve many problems. For one thing, the mouse would definitely be there whenever I got back. It was just running around in circles stuck to the trap. Since my old roommate Jim was a year older than I was, he had graduated the year before and moved back to Baltimore over the summer. He couldn’t help me out of this mess. This year, I had one roommate Mike who I kind of knew, and the other one Ben, who I had just met the day before. It was 8am and nobody else was awake. I could have either woken up Mike, who would have probably thought I was a total nut job, and then told Ben I was a total nut job, or, I could wake up Ben to take care of things, thereby leaving my reputation with Mike hopefully, partially unscathed. Either way, I figured, I had no chance of explaining things in a non-crazy way to Ben, a guy I had just met.

To my surprise, Ben was already awake in his room watching “Modern Marvels” on the History Channel in his underwear. As it turns out, Ben is somewhat of a morning person, and was willing to help me out, although he was pretty pissed about missing his show (I think this episode of “Modern Marvels” was explaining the history of the doorknob or something.) I stayed in the corner explaining what had happened and pointing at the mouse. Hopefully, I thought, the two of us can think of a solution. Ben heard me out for about half a minute, then picked up an empty 16 oz. Poland Spring bottle and started beating the mouse to death. This was not a quick death. To this day, I’m still kind of surprised that he hadn’t chosen a blunter object. After it stopped twitching, Ben simply picked up the mouse, threw it in the trash, and went back to his room. I felt not as brave as I had ten minutes ago, and Ben never got the full history of the doorknob.

However humiliating this may have seemed, I try only to see the improvement shown since my first mouse encounter. Strengthened by experience, I felt like I had fortified my resolve in the war on mice. Over the next few years, I would go on not only to successfully kill mice by myself (with trap), but also to successfully have someone clean up the dead bodies after I successfully checked if said bodies were in fact, dead.

All of my experience is completely irrelevant now that I know we are dealing with rats here. Like I said before, the rats have started to show up more often, and with each visit, have shown decidedly more courage. The first rat that I had spotted briefly outside my bedroom window started showing up again, on a semi-regular, and then on a nightly basis. At first it would run away if I looked up, after a while only if I made any sudden movements, not much later only if I clapped my hands or made a sound, and finally, only if and when it felt like running away, which couldn’t even be considered running away anymore, really, more like just leaving.

This all supports my earlier hypothesis. The rats were testing me from the beginning. With each encounter, they realized that I am completely powerless of doing anything to harm them. Sure, the rat’s nature is to run away when threatened by something bigger, but the truth of the matter is that I am incapable of posing any threat, and that if these rats wanted to, they could be taking the offense, aggressively running me right out of this house.

Our host mom told us that one time she took some rat poison, put it on some fish, left it out overnight, and killed fifteen rats in one night. I really, really hope she doesn’t do this because, as much as I hate the rats, I really can’t imagine the nervous breakdown that would result from me waking up and finding upwards of a dozen rats lying belly up, scattered throughout the house.

We are (hopefully) moving into our own place in a few weeks, and not a minute too soon. Please don’t get me wrong; I love our host family. The mom is an amazing cook. We are having such a great experience here and learning so much. But the rats act like they own the place, and pretty soon they’ll be charging us rent. They’ve run in and out of our bedroom three times since I started writing this entry. Also, a giant moth just flew in the room. On the plus side, the fetal position is unquestionably more comfortable than I remembered.

ONE MONTH MARK IN SITE!!!! Woooooooohooooooo

September 20, 2009

I cannot believe how quickly it passed. The days here are very long but the weeks go by so quickly. We are still in the stage where we are trying to figure out how we fit in this new place we will be calling home for the next two years. So far it has been a series of ups and downs. Some days everything seems so natural and comfortable. While other days, I feel completely off the mark – like an outsider constantly looking in. Some days I love the casual pace at which everything is done. While other days, I get frustrated with the lack of urgency and rapidness that is so common in the States. Some days I love waking up to the sound of the roaring river and the views of the palm trees and mountains. While other days, I miss waking up to the sounds of car horns and traffic and the view of the brownstones from our old apartment in Astoria.

During the intergration process into a new culture, there are some things that you change about yourself voluntarily, some things you are forced to change, and other things you refuse to change. I guess everyone draws their own line when it comes to integration into a new culture – what norms they are willing to accept and what norms they are not. I think I am still trying to figure this out. Sure I am willing to laugh at the fact that there are days with no running water, but I most definitely will still be bathing everyday – even if it means just jumping in the river. I could happily deal with weeks where the electricity can be unreliable, but I have found myself freaking out when I couldn’t find my moisturizer.

All sorts of random opportunities for sharing of ideas, habits, and norms arise. For example, today I decided to give myself a manicure (weekly manicures are definitely something I don’t plan on giving up while in the Peace Corps) and had started the process of removing my old nail polish while sitting outside. (We have fun little critters that have taken charge of our room and sometimes I feel our lives (Rob’s post covers most of this), so we spend a lot of time just sitting outside of our house during our free time.) Within minutes my host sister and mom were intrigued with what I was doing and asked if I could give them one too. I happily agreed. One by one women from our community pulled up a chair and began chatting away. The conversation was light and happy. We talked about all sorts of random things. We talked about silly things like the importance of putting on a base coat and top coat when getting a manicure, and there was, of course, a bit of gossip shared about other neighbors. We talked about life in Ecuador and life in the States and the differences between them. We talked about ways to improve my Spanish and ways for me to teach them English. It was a fun and lazy Sunday afternoon. I got to speak about my life back home and at the same time was able to connect to the women in my community.

Ok, well before I start rambling on any further, it is getting late which means that the rats will be coming in full force soon. Rob has a crazy theory that the sound of typing on the laptop attracts the rats because it makes them think that their rat buddies are in here tapping away on the floor… I personally think it’s crazy and that the rats will come regardless of whether we are typing on the computer or not… but who knows…

Will write again soon… and I promise on our next post we will get some pictures up!

-Jo