Sundays are for Family

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Yesterday (Sunday), after spending the morning at a museum with our host mama and some classmates and their host mama, Ally and I had some free time. After we ate lunch with our family, they had a few things they had to do on their own, so Ally and I went to a park nearby that we had gone to on Saturday as well. Although the park was fairly busty on Saturday, on Sunday it was a whole different type of busy. There were families everywhere you looked around. They were either walking around, riding bike, playing soccer together, eating, doing the peddle boats, and much more. It was a beautiful sight to see. As I learned in the Insights Guide & Culture Smart books, family and collectivity are strongly emphasized in Ecuador, and that was largely reflected in our afternoon at the park. Although there were some people on their phones occasionally, that was not the primary focus of the interactions we experienced. The families were present both physically and mentally. Coming from a culture where the focus is primarily on self and the individual level, it was quite a different experience. Although in the United States individuals do spend time with families, there is typically a major distraction with technology. If children or people of any age are not spending time with family, or even if they are, they may be inside on technology, and not actually engaging in meaningful interactions with others. As an HDFS major, who spends a lot of time thinking about the family in every aspect of life, and its role of influence, it was intriguing and refreshing to see family interaction that varies from the interactions I may typically see in the United States. Although I can not put the family interaction culture in a box and say this is true for alll families in Ecuador, or all families in the United States, it was interring to be able to experience and view these interactions.

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