That moment when...

Yes, apparently my life has enough funny moments to write this entry another time... :)

THAT MOMENT WHEN...

Your mom picks up the telephone downstairs to see if you brother is talking on the phone with his girlfriend and proceeds to listen to part of it. I thought listening in on conversations only happened in the movies...

Your cousin tells you that your brother is not actually in a rugby class at school. He just tells everyone that so he can spend more time with his girlfriend...

You have gotten so tan that your brother calls you negrita. On multiple occasions. (This by the way is completely politically correct here and a term of endearment, like gordita, or flacita which probably sound like insults as well to you. But just believe me on this one and be amazed that i'm getting tan here... hahaha :)

After telling you that your family is not going to eat meat for a week, your sister proceeds to serve tuna with the dinner. So maybe you misunderstood and she meant just not red meat. But then every day you eat some sort of meat like chicken or carne. I think she's confused on the concept...

As you walk between bus stops you see a fire on the lawn across the street. But nobody seems to notice or care. Interesting...

You see a taxi that is missing its front bumper and decide that there is no way you are going to get in that taxi. unless its a really really good deal.

You realize you always try to say hello and goodbye first because you only have a limited number of ways to greet people and if they steal yours accidentally you are screwed. And here it is always the case that someone will say hello/goodbye with 3 or more phrases, so there is a very good chance you will not have a response that's different than theirs

After 2 months here of riding the bus almost every single day you realize you are the only white person on the bus. 99% of the time. plus one for assertiveness.

You spend all of your Friday night out with friends and have a trip with your program on Sunday, so you plan on spending Saturday studying for mid-terms. But many things happen. First, at 8:30am (early because you were up way past 2am) your sister comes into your room to tell you they are going to the market to buy crab. She says "duerme no mas," which here means continue sleeping (i know right? seems like a contradiction, but "no mas" means continue, not stop). But because you are really tired, you misinterpret her words and think she is telling you to stop sleeping. So you get up, and you end up going to the market (only later do you realize your mistake and understand why she was surprised when you woke up to come). Well, you are told the trip will take 40 mins. 3 hours later you arrive back in your house, but with live crab! So you assume you now have time to study and later we'll have crab. perfect. Wrong again mate! It is time to kill and wash all the crabs (pictures soon to come). And then unbeknownst to you, all the family of your bro-in-law comes over for almuerzo. a few hours later you finish. bueno, its 4pm. you still have time to study. Wrong again my friend! after five minutes of studying, your family drags you (literally, physically) out of your room to play the Ecuadorian version of the board game Sorry!. And when you protest, they lock you out of your room. Yes, literally. Keys and everything. So you think, okay, i'll play one game for an hour, and then i'll work. Wrong once more! The Ecuadorian version of Sorry! also is on Ecuadorian time. After 4.5 hours, you quit because the game is nowhere near ending and are allowed back in your room only because your brother takes your place int he game. I don't think i have ever had anyone lock me out of my room to stop me from studying before. But then again, almost everything here is a first for me...

You go with your brother to the pharmacy because your brother-in-law has the flu. The first thing that happens is that you are walking down the street and your brother tells you to walk slower, and you are like why? oh, there's just three (armed according to your brother) robbers on the same street up a bit in the shadows walking as well. Great! Good thing you are smart and go a different route. The story continues...You go to 2 different pharmacies and they won't sell you the drug your bro wants because you need a prescription (which means it must be really strong if you have to have a prescription here in Ecuador because nearly everything is over the counter and self prescribed). So he calls his friend who's a doctor and asks for the name of the drug. Sure enough, the name of the drug is enough, and although your brother tells you its illegal to get it without a prescription, the next pharmacy sells it to you telling you they don't administer the shots here; you have to do it on your own. What medicine is it you might ask? Oh it was just penicillin. nbd. With the needle and the the little bottle thing of medicine just like the doctors procure in the doctors office. (All you doctors out there are probably falling out of your chairs right about now.) So with medicine in hand you walk home, without any robbers this time thankfully. And your brother administers the shot in the butt.  Good thing your brother is in med school. I'm pretty sure you can die if you administer a shot wrong with an air bubble or something. Oh and if it wasn't enough to do it once, you buy more the next night and repeat. wow. yeah...


This is probably my favorite because it came after a long, arduous day and made me chuckle: you jump on a bus and after standing there for a minute, realize that yes, the man 3 feet away from you is actually holding a live chicken in his arms; it is not his bag. nobody else thinks anything of it.

Well, that is all for today folks! Hope you at least smiled a bit. Have a blessed day!!! :))))