Ready for a long read?

It is only my fourth night here in Quito, but it definitely feels like forever. So much has happened and is going to happen. My family and I are getting along really well and compared to the first day when i spoke absolutely zero spanish, i can at least understand or get the general gist of what the mum and dad are saying and i can actually talk back and hold a conversation, if obviously somewhat rudimentary. It feels like the more spanish I learn, the more french I forget, but that doesn´t matter. What matters is being able to speak to my family, get around by myself and help me at my organisation. I´m now thinking in spanish more and saying new words to myself all the time and speaking as much as I can to my family because it´s not just about being interested to learn the language, as it might have been in france - here it´s seriously about survival and making daily life possible.

I feel like this entire experience so far has been all about fully extricating myself from any comfort zone that I might have had. That zone is so far away from me now, I can´t even see it anymore. Today, being the homebody that I am, I just felt like sleeping in for ages, hanging around the house, maybe using the internet, reading etc. But instead, because I can´t explain why i might not want to go shopping for clothes since that´s one of my least favourite activities, I just had to go along with it and I went with mi mama and her sister who wanted to take me to buy some shoes. I don´t like shopping enough as it is, but to do it under pressure with the mum and aunt with me, was not something that i thought would be ok, but it turned out to be fine. Anyway, they took me to Payless Shoes which is probably one of the few places here that would stock my size. I found some nice shoes for going out, since I only have my havaiana thongs and hiking boots, which are not very appropriate. They then took me to the old quarter, which is really interesting and I did take photos, but will have to post them later. Anyway, the old quarter has this huge clothes market and just to keep it simple, I said I needed a new jacket or jumper (it´s funny, la palabra (the word) for jacket en espanol is chompa - i thought that the mum actually knew the english word for it, but turns out it´s the same in espanol- i guess except that it´s for a jacket, not an actual jumper, but whatever - close enough). Seriously, every female here in Ecuador is really small because none of the stores had anything that could fit me and when i did try on jackets, they sleeves ended at like my elbow or something, which they all found quite amusing. From store to store, the mum would ask if they had a size for me, and the store person would turn to me and look me up and down and have a definite ¨no¨which was such a great feeling. Ah..i love being tall and gigantic compared to the rest of the population - makes me feel all "special". In the end, I resorted to buying a guy´s jacket, which was fine.

I expected clothes here to be cheaper, but in the shopping centres anyway it´s the same price basically as America or Australia. Shirts and skirts for $50USD, shoes for $80. that really surprised me. even the clothes in the market weren´t as cheap as maybe i had expected, although i guess it´s not exactly that expensive. the jacket i bought was $20, so that´s ok I guess.

Anyway, getting back to that comfort zone thing - last night was the same thing. Gabriel took me out to meet some of his friends at the club and bar district, which is also obviously the tourist, backpacker and gringos area. That whole experience took me totally out of the zone, but in a good way. I ended up having a really good time and at least going out is cheap, unlike buying clothes.

It´s funny being an Australian here because nobody knows anything about it. I guess it´s like how nobody back home knows anything at all about Ecuador. I´ve had people ask me what language we speak there and if we spoke French as well. Also, if most of the people there are black or white etc. I gave my host family my aussie souvenirs of a dish cloth with the map of australia and aussie animals on it and also a stubbie holder with the aussie flag on it, and they loved it because it´s just so foreign. they´re displaying the stubbie holder on the mantle with a little cup in it (they couldn´t find anything to fit in it) and they´ve hung the cloth up on the wall. It´s nice.

Whenever I meet anyone here I get two questions and now when i get asked them, i just laugh because they´re so random and I have no idea why they are the first two questions I get asked. Number one is whether I like ¨reggaeton" and the second is whether I like whiskey. Random hey? Reggaeton isn´t even ecuadorian - it´s just this type of caribbean reggae music - not really sure how it´s different from reggae. i think it´s got a faster beat and you can dance to it and I´m guessing it´s really popular here in Ecuador. I have no idea how to explain the whiskey thing. It´s not really a common drink or anything as far as my family tells me (although they did ask me that questions - maybe they think australians drink a lot of whiskey? i´ve got no idea).

Yesterday I met up with the Children International volunteer coordinator and he gave me information about what I´ll be doing and where I´ll be going and what the organisation is all about. Turns out that this is like working on the other end of World Vision - actually it´s exactly the same. Children International is a child sponsorship organisation and so there are 30,000 kids being sponsored here in Ecuador by probably Americans and so I´m going to be in the medical clinic that Children International offer to their sponsored kids. For those who know that I was originally debating whether to go with an organisation that set me up with a local clinic, set up my accomodation, etc etc and was going to cost me about $4000, and whether to go it alone and figure it out the cheaper way - it actually turns out that if I had paid the $4000 and gone with that organisation to set everything up for me, Children International is who they would have set me up with. So I´ve totally circumvented that whole thing and just happened to hook myself up with the very clinic I would have paid thousands of dollars to be connected with. Crazy and very satisfying that I did do it this way and avoided that huge cost and ended up with the same result.

After having our meeting at the main office in teh city, Christian (the director) then came out with me to the clinic, which was a really nice and necessary thing to do because the clinic is 1hour from Quito and requires me to take two buses, one of which doesn´t even have stops - you just have to hop on and hop off whenever the bus feels it can stop. It´s a crazy journey - the bus screams down these steep roads full of pot holes and narrowly avoids people on the street and other cars, but it makes for an interesting transit. So we arrived at the clinic and it´s a really poor area - it would have taken a photo of the place, but even with Christian there I felt uncomfortable about bringing out my camera. I´m sure it´s fine, just as long as I don´t show that I own anything of value and display my volunteer badge because Christian said that they respect that. He then introduced me to the two doctors that work there and the two dentists. There are also four other administration people and they were all really nice and didn´t seem to mind that I couldn´t speak spanish yet. They just seemed really happy to have anyone come and give them a hand.

Christian told me that actually in one week, on 2 July, another girl from Canada is going to be coming out to volunteer at the same place and so I´m looking forward to that, to meet another foreigner who is going through the same stuff.

After meeting everyone, we then headed back into the city and back home. I´m really glad he did come out with me because otherwise I would have found it very difficult to find it out all on my own. Everybody here is really friendly and helpful like that. Gabriel and my family are really concerned about me and make sure that I know where I´m going and they want to know where I am and if I need a ride home or a ride there etc. On Thursday night, we all went out because they wanted to drive me around Quito and show me the sights. It was really nice of them because obviously these sights aren´t that special since they live here, but they all came out to show me around. They then drove me to Children International´s head office even though it was 11.30pm on our way home, so that on Friday morning when I had to go there to meet Christian I would know where to go.

Well I´m fairly satisfied that this posting has been detailed enough and long enough. the curse of being a typist - it means my verbal diarrhoea is never curtailed.

One last thing - I decided it would be a good idea to get started with spanish lessons immediately - i mean, why wait? Gabo was really nice and went ahead and got the info for me, called up the school and booked me in, then came with me to the school, made sure everything was all right and so thanks to all that, i´ve been set up with a private teacher and have already had four hours of lessons already and will do more and more each week.

Ok, i think that´s enough - signing off for now. Will try and post photos at some point soon.