Advertisement
Published: April 2nd 2005
Thought I´d write a little about the places and families Ive been with the past two months. First of all applogies this is pretty long, and ive made no attempt to edit it, so youve been warned. As I said in the first blog the first guy schmoozes with Bill Clinton. After a week there I moved house so I could learn more spanish because I was just speaking English with the people I was living with. The set up was the family lived in the flat upstairs and we were herded into as tight a space as possible so the ex finance minister of ecuador could make a preety penny (or so it seemed). If anyone out there wants to do a homestay make sure you enquire what the circumstances are, ie are you a part of or apart from the family.
The next place I moved to was a woman and her son who lived a lot closer to the hub of Quito (the mariscal area). All seemed well, they didnt have any dogs (as Im not the number one fan of dogs) and they spoke spanish rather than english so all seemed well. The only thing that was noticeable straight away was that the woman seemed very scared of life. Her day would consist of (if she left the house to work) getting up in her guarded apartment leaving the guarded apartment checking and double checking she left the guarded apartment locked to take the lift down the guarded lift shaft to the guarded car park where she got into her car and requested the guarded gates to be opened so she could drive (probably in a constant state of alarm) to her work, which is probably guarded. So basically she was a woman full of worry and this worry was reinforced by her daily rituals. Every time I travelled somewhere she would warn me about the dangers that theres robbers everywhere and I should always take care, rather than focusing on fun things.
I was made to ritually wash my hands when I returned home and before eating because ´theres lots of bacteria on those buses´ and if you touch any of those street kids you must thoroughly wash your hands when you return as they are thoroughly riddled with germs (probably right about the street kids to be fair as they have no access to toilet paper they just reuse whats in the toilet paper bin beside them, and I hold no belief that they ever wash their hands). So this habit was a little foreboding but tolerable.
The weirdest moment in the house was one day when I was looking for cheese. As a little background to this on the first day the mother in the house showed me all round the kitchen like it was my home, ´here´s the bread bin, heres the fruit, here are some plates, you can help yourself etc´
So one day when it was lunch time I decided to search for some cheese in the fridge to make a sandwich, the only other person in the room being the cleaner. I opened the fridge, there was no cheese, I closed the fridge. I left a little disappointed at the lack of cheese but nevertheless I left thinking that searching for some cheese was a normal thing to do. BUT, when I returned to the kitchen half an hour later, the mother in the house had returned and it transpired that the cleaner had ´dobbed me in´ for searching for cheese, and the mother unleashed a bitter diatribe about what I should have done which was apparently to ask the cleaner to open the fridge door for me (something I am perfectly capable of doing) whilst I looked from afar to see if there was any cheese if there was I was to ask the cleaner to remove the cheese from the fridge so I could continue in making a sandwich, if there was no cheese I could ask the cleaner to close the fridge again. Which struck me as a rather classist, nay, rude thing to do, when the cleaner had her hands full cleaning the kitchen already. The mother kept asking me what I had been searching for, and I kept saying cheese, but she kept on asking as though I´d had some more sinister motive for opening the fridge.
Anyway, I just found the house depressing and I didnt really get much practise for my spanish as I always ate separately from the rest of the family, alone. I would occasionally sit with the mother with whom I had nothing in common, and we would occasionally and awkwardly catch one another´s eye and she would smile a smile without any effort to use her eyes so she just looked sad. And I just felt a little sorry for her, that she was seemingly so worried by life. Anyway eventually I asked the organisation if I could move, and I got a new house. And on the day I was to move another slightly weird thing happened. The toilet that I used in the house didnt have a lock on it, so any time I was in there and I could here footsteps I always made an effort to make some sort of signatory noise that the toilet was occupied. And on my final day in the house I was doing what men do after they´ve eaten a meal, and I heard footsteps so I promptly made my signatory noise, but to no avail the son in the house (whom I rarely talked to) opened the door and I thought ok fair enough he made a mistake so I said sorry and I thought maybe he´ll say sorry and we can laugh and joke about it later, but he didnt say anything and took between about 3 and 5 seconds to close the door (in this particular situation, that´s a long time), fair enough I thought maybe hes hazy because hes got up late (which he had), but as he was closing the door he was looking at me in the mirror through the crack in the door, so all in all I had to put that down as a weird thing to do, but luckily I was leaving.
I arrived at my new house in the afternoon and the lady that welcomed me in was cheery which was a good start. She offered me the lunch that she had prepared and she went out, sound I thought, sound. Later I met what I thought was her daughter as she looked a bit ecuadorean, and spoke like one too, the only thing that made me think she might not be was she was pretty tall, and she spoke a touch slower than ecuadoreans normally speak. But it became patently obvious when she told me she was working for ´maine international exchange program´ in a thick Maine accent, which took me aback somewhat. But fair play her spanish was obviously pretty damn good.
So I was living with a a couple and a girl from maine. The husband in this set up never leaves his room apart from to go to work, but he didnt make me want to take prozac which was good. Anyway the first day was cool, and my new bed actually had springs rather than just a pseudomattress of foam which just breaks your fall a little when you go to bed. But, the peculiarity of this guarded household was that the guard´s technique to ward of burglars was to blow a whistle. Every hour. A whistle. What a tit. So everytime I was about to fall asleep that guard would blow his whistle, to yet again ward potential felons that HE had a whistle.
Anyway things were ok in the house for a while, the conversations werent great if we sat down together they would always ask if I had brothers and sisters and what they do and what I did in England. But they either just didnt listen or just forgot and that was the only conversation that we ever, ever had. Apart from when I was asking if I could have more food or generally bread for sandwiches, and the mother would always make an excuse that she couldnt because the shops dont open early enough, so I asked why she couldnt just buy more bread the day before to compensate for this inconvenience, but apparently this wasnt possible. And more generally it wasnt possible because it was too expensive to buy bread. But might I say at this point that I was paying $360 a month for everything including all meals and even stuff like toothpaste and soap was supposed to be included. And the value of the food I was eating was roughly about 3 or 4 dollars a day. which leaves about 200 dollars unaccounted for which Im sure could buy a loaf of bread extra every two or three days. Also although I lost about 6 pounds in two weeks in her house she kept on saying things like 'ooh, you´re looking fat today' and 'look at those cheeks' to try and live in a fantasy world where I was actually putting on weight due to my spartan diet, which was just silly.
Anyway, I started looking for other places to live because I couldnt be doing with paying that much money (and that is a lot here obviously in England with the currency of kings it is a pittence) and then having to buy more food because this lady didnt want to buy more bread. And whats more I am as sure as I can be that the cleaner robbed 5 dollars of me (I am a strict budgeter and like to count money so I always count double count and then write down the amount of money I have in any one area, then check it again, and one day I lacked five dollars. I thought for a second maybe I miscounted but in all honesty I probably didnt, I wasnt actually counting to catch out any one stealing rather just for myself but nevertheless its a good habit to keep up), anway I told the lady I was a little perplexed by this but I think she thought I was accussing her, and she tried to give me five dollars back. Anyway, Im sure the majority of cleaners are fine, but my experiences with them havent been great.
Anyway now Ive moved again and Im paying a quarter of the price before and I can buy all the food I want and it still works out about half price. Im living with a reincarnationalist catholic, a communist and a columbian, and life couldnt be better. Boom.
Thanks for reading. And thank you all who have sent personal messages, all are appreciated.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.059s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 6; qc: 45; dbt: 0.034s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
anonymous
non-member comment
:D
Good to hear from you :D Please let me know a contact number for you as I don't have one at the moment :( Good to hear things are better now :D - Stefan