Since I wrote that last post, some things have gotten a bit harder here. The main thing that happened was that Luke Rogers, who I sang with in Shades last year, died in a boat accident last weekend. Shades has been a wonderful support network over the last week, but it's hard to be away from them all, because this is such a painful loss of a dear friend.
When I studied abroad here two years ago, one of the main things I learned was the importance of family. I mean, I've always loved my family tremendously, but I used to feel like I could run around and be away endlessly--a modern, transient kind of approach to life. But when I spent months living with Ecuadorian homestay families, experiencing for myself what it's like to live at home into your 20's, always staying local and connected based on family, as opposed to travel or work ambitions, it became really important to me to make sure I was home enough. I began to make a conscious effort to spend time with my family whenever I got the chance, and my brother's wedding at the end of summer was an amazing time to celebrate among those we have known and loved for most of our lives.
It's sort of sad and ironic that I have returned to Ecuador, where I learned that very important lesson, at the expense of being close to the people I love. Shades is a family for me too...as I've told some people, it's not like I'm enamored with a cappella music as an art form (gasp!), it was more that I so enjoyed the time I got to spend with my friends in Shades. So to lose someone like Luke, who we were all so close with, and to be away, back where I learned how to cherish spending time with those I love...it just seems a little backwards. But anyway, here I am, still struggling to figure out what's keeping me here, knowing that this is a challenge that I guess I'll inevitably grow from.
Anyone who's reading this should probably have gotten an email from me with my contact info and my itinerary for my return trip to the US for med school interviews, but if you missed it, here's the itinerary again:
Oct 5-6 - Chicago
Oct 7-9 - NYC
Oct 10 - Ann Arbor
Oct 11-14 - SF
Oct 15-17 - LA/SD
Oct 18 - back to Quito
Let me know if you'll be in the same place as me at any point. I'd love to see you. I miss you and I'm sending some Ecualove back home.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Saturday, September 13, 2008
La comodidad de la familiaridad
Ecuador feels really comfortable. It's funny, I feel like this whole time I've been bracing for this big epiphany that "wow, I'm in Ecuador, crazy!" But it hasn't come. I'm not sure why that is, but here are some thoughts.
The most obvious reason is that I already know this place. I'm familiar with the cultural norms, I know how to take buses and not get mugged, and I even know many of the Quechua names for Ecuadorian foods. Plus my Spanish is pretty good, definitely lacking in the vocab department, but sure to improve. So that's one likely explanation, that I'm comfortable here because I've been here before, and rather than feeling that big exciting splash landing in a new and crazy environment, it just sort of feels like a home away from home. Which is nice, I think.
The other is that I've been with gringos a lot, which also means speaking lots of English. I 'm sharing an apartment in central Quito with two other fulbrighters, one of whom is here with his fiance, and while living with fellow gringos is certainly less energy-consuming, it also means spending less time connected to my surroundings, which for me is Ecuador and speaking Spanish. It can be a little tricky to make Ecuadorian friends as a gringo, but thankfully, my housemate Nina has an Ecuadorian boyfriend named Nacho, and we've become good friends since he's around the apartment a lot, so that's nice. Also, I get to spend time with Ecaudorians in Spanish in a couple classes at a nearby public health program (one course on Global Health and another on Health Systems), and I'm doing a lot of reading in Spanish about Ecuador health care systems in preparation for my research project. But all in all, the gringo factor might be part of why it hasn't yet hit me that I'm here, because much of the time it doesn't necessarily feel so much like I'm in Ecuador.
So anyway, given that I feel quite settled and comfortable here, it's actually influenced how I look at my work. In terms of how health care systems work, Ecuador has become a model that functions very differently from that in the US, but through understanding and analyzing those differences, I have been able to put the US system into a kind of global context. My study is very comparative. I'm comparing Quito and Guayaquil's health systems. To understand how they both fit into the national health system, in addition to considering how the new constitution might change things, I'm comparing Ecuador to regional counterparts, like Chile and Colombia. And then on a global scale, I need to consider European, Canadian, and US systems as models of successful and failing approaches to health care. So anyway, the fact that I'm comfortable here in Ecuador has made my work more accessible, but also more relevant for me in the long run, cause it's pushing me to understand a different model in a sociocultural context that I am familiar with.
All in all, things are settling in nicely here, and I'm having fun and enjoying what I'm studying. I guess we'll juts have to wait and see if that "wow!" moment ever comes.
The most obvious reason is that I already know this place. I'm familiar with the cultural norms, I know how to take buses and not get mugged, and I even know many of the Quechua names for Ecuadorian foods. Plus my Spanish is pretty good, definitely lacking in the vocab department, but sure to improve. So that's one likely explanation, that I'm comfortable here because I've been here before, and rather than feeling that big exciting splash landing in a new and crazy environment, it just sort of feels like a home away from home. Which is nice, I think.
The other is that I've been with gringos a lot, which also means speaking lots of English. I 'm sharing an apartment in central Quito with two other fulbrighters, one of whom is here with his fiance, and while living with fellow gringos is certainly less energy-consuming, it also means spending less time connected to my surroundings, which for me is Ecuador and speaking Spanish. It can be a little tricky to make Ecuadorian friends as a gringo, but thankfully, my housemate Nina has an Ecuadorian boyfriend named Nacho, and we've become good friends since he's around the apartment a lot, so that's nice. Also, I get to spend time with Ecaudorians in Spanish in a couple classes at a nearby public health program (one course on Global Health and another on Health Systems), and I'm doing a lot of reading in Spanish about Ecuador health care systems in preparation for my research project. But all in all, the gringo factor might be part of why it hasn't yet hit me that I'm here, because much of the time it doesn't necessarily feel so much like I'm in Ecuador.
So anyway, given that I feel quite settled and comfortable here, it's actually influenced how I look at my work. In terms of how health care systems work, Ecuador has become a model that functions very differently from that in the US, but through understanding and analyzing those differences, I have been able to put the US system into a kind of global context. My study is very comparative. I'm comparing Quito and Guayaquil's health systems. To understand how they both fit into the national health system, in addition to considering how the new constitution might change things, I'm comparing Ecuador to regional counterparts, like Chile and Colombia. And then on a global scale, I need to consider European, Canadian, and US systems as models of successful and failing approaches to health care. So anyway, the fact that I'm comfortable here in Ecuador has made my work more accessible, but also more relevant for me in the long run, cause it's pushing me to understand a different model in a sociocultural context that I am familiar with.
All in all, things are settling in nicely here, and I'm having fun and enjoying what I'm studying. I guess we'll juts have to wait and see if that "wow!" moment ever comes.
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