As weird as it sounds to say it, I'm flying home later today. After four months in Ecuador, I have barely begun to process how I've changed and all the things I've learned this semester. At some point in the future, I'll be updating with more serious insights, but for now, it's time for a list of the important life lessons I've gotten out of this experience.
1) You haven't truly been on a motorcycle until you're hitchhiking up a cobblestoned and gravel road going up a mountain with three people on the back.
2) Real cheddar cheese is a sorely underappreciated thing. Especially on nachos. Relatedly, nachos should never involve eggplant.
3) Wearing an alpaca poncho may make you look like the world's biggest gringo, but it will also be the softest, warmest and most comfortable thing you've ever put on. Totally worth it when you're living in a wooden shack in the cloud forest.
4) When they tell you during orientation that the altitude will affect your body's ability to process alcohol, they are not kidding. Chupa con cuidado.
5) Every male in Quito between the ages of 15 and 30 knows exactly one English phrase: ¨Hey baby¨. The best way to deal with this situation involves your middle finger.
6) It doesn't matter how high-wasted your pants are, how much you tucked your shirt in or how much bug spray you're wearing. The wasps that live in the canopy tower will still find a way to sting you on the ass.
7) The best response to the overwhelming beauty of sunset in the Galapagos Islands involves warrior pose.
8) What happens on the chiva stays on the chiva. What happens on a park bench next to the chiva also stays on the chiva.
9) Harvesting oats for 25 hours by hand is exhausting, and working on a farm with Ecuadorian farmers will make you feel like the laziest person in the entire world.
10) When in the course of your journalism project to tour gold mines you get stranded in a town three hours from home and have to spend the night at a crazy old Russian man's house, you may want to make sure that he hasn't fathered a child with his own daughter first. Fortunately, nothing bad happened.
11) Just because someone is your host dad doesn't mean he won't charge you $80 to drive you to two interviews.
12) As much as American TV news seems to have embraced the ¨if it bleeds, it leads¨ philosophy of journalism, at least they generally don't go to the scene of a recent car crash to show graphic footage of bodies being removed from the wreckage and then interview the sobbing parents or siblings of the dead person on site and air all of this live at 7am while you're eating breakfast.
13) There's something about spending a month commuting on harrowing mountain roads mostly by sitting in the back of pickup trucks or standing in the aisle of Greyhound buses that makes you appreciate life a lot.
14) Ecuadorian clubs play a combined total of 7 songs. All of them are by Pitbull.
15) Spending two and a half hours going around a circle with your friends and telling everyone how awesome they are is one of the best ways to spend an evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment