CofC Ecuador Travel Blog

We didn’t get much sleep with all the people walking around and arriving late, but we got up and had a wonderful breakfast of fruit, fresh bread, and scrambled eggs. The fresh fruit juice was a hit at breakfast and dinner. 

At our orientation meeting, our hosts from Andean Study provided us with some great advice on understanding culture and what to expect with our host families. Culture was defined as anything that encompassed thoughts, beliefs, religion, history, food, language, school, personal space, and how things are done. He gave us an ethical example. In the USA, our doctors have an ethical responsibility to tell patients that they have a terminal illness. In Ecuador, the doctor tells the family and the family members decide whether to tell the loved one or not. I am not saying anyone has been diagnosed with a terrible illness, this was just an example of a cultural difference. 

Another aspect was interdependence rather than independence. Here the nuclear family is very important and it is not unusual to have children in their 30’s and 40’s living with parents at home. It is a mutual arrangement that benefits both parties. 

Girls are to be home earlier than 2:00 a.m. and boys can stay out until 3:00 a.m. I think all of us are so tired from the travel and semester at school, that we won’t be coming in that late anyway. 

They also mentioned the level of comfort. We are use to 10-15 minute hot showers. We will have 2-4 minute luke warm showers. Some of the showers will have electrical heater that we have to plug in before we take a shower. The electrical plug and heating element are on the pipe above our heads!

For the next three days we will be working with students in the schools and taking tours of the city. I’ll update you all later on these items.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 4:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.