Ecuador and Sitzerland- two different places!

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Ecuador is a different country with different traditions. It's so nice to take part of it as a volunteer and traveller. I love to obsere everything!
People here in general are really friendly and always try to help you. I guess they don't like to say 'no'! Once in a panaderia two friends of me were ordering a coffee, but obviously they didn't have any. The waitress didn't want to admit that and always said like: ice tea would be better for you.. Look here we have all this refreshments.. And to an other question for coffee she said like yes it's possible but need a bit more time, ice tea would be ready from one to the other second.. And I bet she would have gone to an other cafeteria to buy some coffe if they didn't finally decide for the wonderful icetea.. The same in the bus, when you ask someone if they can tell you where to leave the bus for a specific place, you have always the whole bus shouting and showing to you where it is. And each time we were tramping almost everyone who passed stopped to see if he ore she can help us anyhow.. Of course it's also because we're women and obviously from europe, but still it's estimative!

Something else is that you use here for everything more time as at home in our country.. People here for example don't have a printer at home. So if you want to print ore copy anything, you go to a papeleria. And this sounds easier than it is. Often there is no paper ore no ink, so you have to jump from one papeleria to an other till you wether find what you're looking for ore till you give up.. It needed me once around four hours to make fifty copies.. Ore today I walked around two hours to find coloured paper and in the end I took different colours than I actually wanted.. An other example is as I needed to buy honey for the 'Lebkuchen' we did with the kids. After 2.5 hours looking for it in several supermarkets and on the big open market I finally found one stand with honey. People here sell what they have and buy what they see.

Apart from a printer they also don't have a vacuum cleaner at home. They clean floors with brooms and actually don't care how much dust is there, cause the floors are cold and that's why they walk around in the house with shoes anyway. I alwys walk around in socks cause for me it's strange to wear dirty shoes in a house and this causes strange sights and broken socks.. But back to the vacuum cleaner, I really needed one because I want to clean a room in the school which I want to convert in kind of an atelier for the kids. And this room is sooo dusty that only a broom doesn't help anything. I was asking everywhere if they know someone with a vacuum cleaner, unsuccessfully! After around three weeks I met someone from Quito who owns one and I told proudly to an other volunter: "Hey I finally found someone with a vacuum cleaner!! He will lend it to me!" And she just started to laugh and told me how strange this sounds.. Only then I realised how different it actually is from our situation in Switzerland and how much I'm already used to the circumstances here...

An other big difference is that it seems like people here eat everything which would never find it's way to a plate in our country! It's nothing rare here to have heads and feet of a chicken ore all sorts of innards in ones soup! I remember one of the first days at school, where they all get a warm meal in the recreation. It smelled really strange (in my opinion) and as I entered the kitchen and eating place I saw all this cute small kids biting appreciative on some pipe-like parts and pieces of a stomach from whatever animal.. In such moments I more likely pretend to be a vegetarian!Others also told me how their family served soup with the feet of chickens! With us it would only be good to have a special taste in it, but here they eat the whole foot and spit out the little nails of it. On some 'food to go' stands in the street you often see whole pics cooked, where you choose which part you want. In the beginning I hated this sight of any kind of animalparts in several places. But you also get used to that. I mean how exemplary is it actually, to use really everything of an animal if you slaughter it for that reason.. Now I realise on myself how picky we europeans are! It's a shame how much meet we're throwing away, only because we're not used to eating it and have enough capacity of useing only the best parts.. Like I said, I realise it on myself, I just can't eat feet ore hearts ore eyes.. But just to mention it, I tried a bug lately. There are some bugs here, called 'gotze' and look like "meienkäfer" and they only appear every second year, to a particulary time and a particulary clima.. So as I visited an other volunteer in her community and family, they got up around four in the morning to collect them.. Afterwards they take off the wings of the bugs (they're stil alive) and throw them in the frying pan. Togheter with toasted corn people here eat them as a snack.. That was such a strange special moment I couldn't say no as they offered me some proudly. I tried two and it tasted much different than I expected. It was really crunchy and dry, the consistence reminded me somehow to "blätterteig".. Sadly the taste not at all.. 😊

An other special day was the 'dia de los difuntos' ("totensonntag") at the 2.november. Here it's a holiday and they all eat toghether with the whole family and visit the decedents on the cemeteries. It's a tradition that they all bake 'guaguas de pan' (vergleichbar mit Grittibänzen) and 'colada morada' a drink made from corn flour and different fruits, especially blackberries. I went with my hostfamily to the hous of the mother's parents where all relatives of them were as well. I remember how she told me the day before that we'll eat 'Churos' and I was like: yeah, I love Churros, it's also common in Spain! thinking of the sweet desert thing. So on this family day she brought me a big portion of Churos- what turned out to be little snails!!!- and said: a big plate for you cause you told me you like it so much! Oh dios, I thought to myself! I've never eaten snails before, especially because I defenitly think their more disgusting than spiders ore any insects, and now a whole family is watching me in expectation of eating a bunch of this slimy things! I couldn't help to laugh loudly about this situation and told them about the delicious Churros I meant. They had to laugh as well but to not disappoint them I suck as well two snails out of it's house.. And I promise you, that was the first and last time I did so!! Later this day we went to the cemetery. There were a lot of indigenous people who ate on the graves, to share the food with the decedents. This is a strange tradition for me. It was somehow cute but more likely strange to see them putting fruits, bread and even cups with coke on the graves, what was eaten by dogs later on.. For me a cemetery wouldn't be a place to hold big feasts, but that's exactly what I think is fascinating about other traditions- seeing other people doing things which are absolutely normal for them and not at all for you..

An really unforgettable memory was as we could join a affiance of two young indigenous people. We first sat together outside of the old house of the boy with his family and friends. They played wonderful spontaneous music with guitars, flutes, panpipes and mandolins. Then they served us soup and shared their beer and an other hot alcoholic drink with us. It's so cute, here they always walk around with a bottle of beer and a glass and offer everyone a sip of it. They wouldn't just drink their own without sharing! And the very last sip is always for 'pacha mama' what means mother earth. So they always empty the last part of the drink to the ground. As we all were sitting there, enjoying the evening in a group of friendly ecuadorians dressed in their traditional clothes I felt so happy to experiance all this! After a bit they started to tighten a lot of chicken on the feet to a long stick. They all tried to get rid of the string and were fluttering around. It looked horrible. But as if this wasn't enough, to fix around twenty chicken updide down on two sticks, they started to do the same with guinea pics. The poor small animals screamed so loud and struggled unsuccesfully, while hanging upside down, fixed on the two backfeet to the stick. The indigenous people brought more and more of them till finally 19 guinea pics hung there in rank and file.. All this sticks plus huge bowls of fruits and vegetables, kilosacks of rice and potatoes, cokes and beers, were presents for the family of the girl who got married. They carried all this presents into a huge truck which they especially organised for that evening, sat into it as well and drove all together to the girls house. There we carried everything to their 'livingroom', danced a bit to the lovely live music and spoke shortly to the people. This was such a special and unique memory which I will never forget! Somehow it was sad that we didn't bring our camera, but on the other hand are this experiances of which a photo isn't capable to express how it really was..

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