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Date: Jan 11, 2011
Maybe I have Seasonal Affective Disorder and the abundance of sun in January just set me wild. But on Wednesday afternoon, as I walked up the steep hill that lead me from the community playground to my house (or my host family's house, rather), I felt an inexplicable bubbly happiness that surged from the bounce in my steps to my mile wild smile. I know that sounds cliche, I think it's a little ridiculous too.
Later in the afternoon, as I came back from Jipijapa with my host mother, I met Sandy at the play ground for a mural brainstorming/doodling session. Her host relative/friend, Jorge, also came to hang out with us and a slew of giggly girls. While drawing, we chatted with Jorge about his work in the bakery and on evening fishing boats. We traded card games and as a fruit truck rolled by, he encouraged us to try a guaba, which looks like a string bean on steroids. He cracked it open and inside, there were circular (bean shaped) pellets that looked like pieces of cotton candy. He demonstrated how to eat the cotton-like skin off the big black seed inside. It was one of the most unique fruits I've tried, but I liked it. While on the subject of fruits, Jorge told me that his favorite fruit was fruta china, which is a melon that is often eaten in China. I had no idea they could be found in Ecuador. It's conversations like these that make my trip so exciting and fulfilling. We just sat in the park and talked about our lives and I learned and enjoyed our conversation so much. It was really interesting to listen to him talk about his learning about Chinese culture through Kung Fu movies and make these cultural connections that I had never know existed. It was also just really nice to have the time to relax and share with people in the community and bond through chats. I felt like I was in another world.
The same applies to my host family. Given my obsession with all things related to food, a lot of conversations with my host mother and host sister-in-law took place in the kitchen. Sometimes, it was fun just to sit and watch Shrek in Spanish or telenovelas with them and chat about our lives. It was through conversations like this and their welcoming smiles that I came to feel like a member of the family in such a short amount of time. On the first day, the way they eat the S sound in their speech until an entire sentence might as well be one long word made it hard to understand them. However, on that Wednesday afternoon, as I let myself in and greeted my host sister-in-law and my host mother, who replied with a soft smile, hola mi hija (which sounds like mija), vamos a comer, I felt like I was coming home.
My new family:
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