A Veces, Los Profesores No Vienen en el Primer Día de Las Clases

My first week of classes finished today! I have Spanish every day of the week (Monday through Friday) from 9-12:30. I haven’t had a Friday class since high school and 3 hours every day (we get a half hour break for a “cafecito”) is intense. The diversity of my class is incredible. With only about fifteen students, we represent at least ten countries and span about twenty years. This is great because there’s no one common language so we have to speak Spanish, and it’s challenging because I’ve never heard Spanish with a French, Korean, Haitian etc. accent so I’m learning to learn Spanish in a couple different ways. Another big difference when compared to my usual college classes, is that most of the students are taking the class because their spouse or significant other is Ecuadorian or because they are missionaries living in Quito. I got a “cafecito” with one of the missionaries as forced class bonding (thanks to our professor) and it ended up being amazing to hear about his reasons, and the other reasons he knew of in our class, for coming to Quito and being in Spanish classes. I mostly really like the class; my professor is funny and gives useful advice and helpful homework. She corrects us constantly, which gets annoying when you're trying to get an idea out, but is, of course, very helpful. She has a little thing about Americans though – she told us the first day that the Americans would have a hard time integrating into the class and today when we were talking about recipes from our countries, she put off the US recipes for as long as possible. Then, when she did ask, she made a comment about how pizza and hamburgers weren’t really dishes. I proved her wrong with my delicious English Muffin recipe. Ha. (And thanks Dad). It is also apparently completely okay to assume racial stereotypes. Some of the “jokes” that have been made have sent my Pitzer brain reeling. My classmates are fun, if not a little cliquey, there’s a group that sits in the front of the room and talks to each other in Russian while the professor or students are talking, so naturally that’s driving me crazy. Yay learning to go with the flow!

My other class at La Católica is Sociology of Latin America (Sociología de Latinoamérica) to be referred to as Soc or the English name. This class starts at 7am. The trip to school takes a little over an hour when there's traffic and about an hour when there's not, so it's an early morning. Six of the eight the Pitzer students are taking this class, so we all met up a little before 7 on Tuesday, the first day, and entered the classroom. There were a couple Ecuadorian students, but no professor. As time went by more and more Ecuadorian students trickled in, but no professor. We waited for probably an hour before deciding to get some food in one of the cafeterias. Later we found out that, “sometimes professors just don’t come on the first day!” from the international student coordinator. This is also something my Amurican(!) brain couldn’t quite comprehend. When our professor didn’t come Thursday either they finally told us that the professor had had a family thing and would be back next week. Thank you, PUCE, I woke up at 5am on two separate occasions for something you could have told me days ago would not be happening.

Tuesday ended up being a rough day in general. I was feeling those promised culture shocks for sure. I wanted the English language and American food and for people to stop looking at my weird hair color, and also a hug from my mom. Things are just fine now, eating some ritz crackers and M&Ms also helped, not gonna lie. The biggest thing for me thus far is learning to balance everything they tell you in their safety talks with the actuality of what is happening. The bus has especially tough for me. For one, it’s hard to pick where to sit. Do I sit in the back so I can definitely make it off when it gets to my stop? Do I sit in the front so the bus driver can see whatever is happening near me? Do I sit by the window to protect my stuff and avoid having random guys’ crotches in my face? (Seriously: note to bus riders, you do NOT have to be that close). Do I sit in the aisle to allow for an easy exit if someone weird sits by me or decides to pull out a huge knife (actual story from safety talk)? Decisions decisions… 

My experiences on the buses, a couple of which I’ll share, haven’t made it any easier to decide where to sit. On Tuesday a guy decided to help me onto the incredibly crowded bus (totally fine) but then keep his arm around my waist for at least five minutes, which feels like an eternity when a strange man has you essentially in his possession despite you saying “gracias no mas” several times and because of how crowded the bus is you have nowhere to go (not totally fine). On Thursday an older, creepy, man (but not old enough to be harmless) tried to stick his head between Ami’s and mine and ask us where we were from and how we were. When we looked away and didn’t answer he grumbled before lighting up a cigarette (yes on the bus). Thankfully he got off a couple stops before we needed to. The streets can be weird too. On the street on Tuesday a guy tried to get me to help him in a practiced version of bad Spanish (the way a native English speaker would speak if they were pretending to not know English) and although I walked away pretending not to speak any Spanish, it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Getting around on my own is definitely the thing that makes me most nervous.

All of that being said, great things have been happening too. I tried sheep intestines on Wednesday, and although that wasn’t great [at all!!!] it was fun to have my host family laughing at me for disliking one of the Ecuadorian favorites. I’ve had a lot of interesting talks with my host family this week during dinners, which has been great. Wednesday, on the bus, an 18-year-old studying at another university heard Ami, Caroline, and I speaking in English, so he asked for our help with his English homework. He’d been studying it for about two weeks. He really wanted us to just do his homework for him, but we had a good time chatting and trying to make him learn plurals vs. singulars himself. Caroline, Ami, and I all have different versions of this story, which is probably my favorite part about that happening. I will say that when I started helping him, Ami and Caroline made a joke about putting this story on my blog – little did they know I’d already been thinking about what I was going to say. Finally, on the way home today a stray dog chose me to be his buddy. I’ve walked to the bus stop and home a couple times on my own and it’s fine, but I prefer having company – wait quick thing. I really want to learn how to say, “I don’t speak English” in French because whenever I’m walking alone guys like to try to talk to me in English: “Hi friend, how you doing?” or “What’s up friend” *sneering and giggles ensue* etc. and although I know I should (and do) just ignore them, I dislike this quite a lot and I’d love to spit out something in French just to spite them. ANYWAY! On my way home, no one talked to me or got too close to me because this little dirt covered stray dog with his wagging tail was with me the whole way.

I'm also beginning to learn the more subtle differences in the Spanish language that you don't learn in class because your teacher just wants you to understand conjugations (which of course are highly important as well). I've gotten a handle on the difference between the verbs "to bring" vs "to take" and "to talk" vs "to say" etc. I also found out today that the reason give me funny looks when I ask them whether they go in a "coche" or the bus is because, while "coche" means car in Spain and other Spanish speaking countries, in Equator "coche" is a stroller for babies or a grocery cart. Thus, I've been asking a ton of people about driving their grocery cart... whoops! 

Here's to understanding more and more as the weeks go by.