I have been attempting to blog for the last 5 days. Every time I sit down at a computer I feel as if there is just too much to express and not enough time to focus my thoughts. I finally wrote an e'mail back to my good friend Polish Mike back in Chicago and felt that my e'mail to him was exactly what I have been trying to say for the last week or so. I have copied the exact e'mail here for you all to read. I did not edit or change anything because I feel I was honest in the email so why change it for my blog?
Hello USA,
Yeah buddy I've been in Ecuador for over a month now, crazy huh? This may sound strange but I still think about our last time hanging out together. It was so chill. I miss being chill so much. I miss eating pizza, drinking beer, sitting on my deck and going to movies. Life here is so different it's hard to realize it sometimes.
This first month went off without a hitch. I loved it, loved my community mates, loved the food, people, everything. But now reality is starting to sink in and things are starting to become less lovable. This was expected of course, but you cannot prepare for such a feeling either. Its hard to describe. The funny thing is that I know when I move back to the US I am going to feel exactly the same, maybe even worse.
Food and things are super cheap down here. The air is horribly polluted because of all the exhauste from buses and cars. We cannot walk anywhere alone due to saftey precautions. We can't drink the tap water due to parasites. We can't be out past 12am, which is fine. And I, along with some of my community mates, have decided not to drink due to the social and culteral implications that alcohol is associated with here.
Its funny because life here is just living. I am not doing anything crazy, at least I dont think so. I walk to work in the mornings with a coworker. I work with 5 year olds until 12pm. I go home change into my teachers uniform and then take a bus for 30 cents to my afternoon job as a high school English teacher. After that I travel back home on the most crowded bus of my life and either cook dinner, go to the internet cafe, read a book or visit a neighbor. I really have no free time or time to myself except for when I'm on the bus. It's difficult to go from my life in Chicago where I had a lot of free and alone time to always being around people. Constantly.
But its all worth it because I am learning a lot about myself through these people. I am getting to know my limits better, I can recongnize my limitations with annoyance and anger, jealousy, things like that ya know? Its hard to describe because its something internal. All that is certain is I will leave Ecuador a very different person than when I came, but perhaps only I will realize the change.
I have been very reflective these past few days. I hope that this e'mail isnt a downer. Your internship, tell me more about it. Working with mentally ill people is such a challenge and yet really rewarding when you can actually connect with them. Oh man.
