8 Octubre 2009

So a short reflection on things I have gained an understanding of here in Ecuador. I never gave much thought to how difficult it is to leave your country, your family, and your home to live in another place for more than just a vacation. Specifically I’m referring to the exchange students we had, most in particular Isabel because I lived at home with her. I never understood nor tried to understand how hard it must have been for them, especially at a younger age. I’m having a hard time explaining it in words, but I looking back so much makes sense – I can feel the emotions she must have been feeling, understand the difficulties she faced. Her constant frustration, feeling lost and isolated, looking for people to relate to and activities to do… At the time I didn’t give it any thought, just figured that she was fine because our family was so inviting and because we had the assistance of speaking German that everything must have been great for her. And I really wish I had considered her experience from her point of view more back then because I think that was something I was supposed to get out of having an exchange student. But I was so focused on how she was affecting my life and how it must be so cool for her to get to study for a year in America that I didn’t think about the difficulties of displacing your life for an extended period of time. And obviously she made that adjustment and seemed to enjoy her time with us. Given my experiences here, this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. I feel like I’m learning something I should have begun to understand through the experience of having an exchange student, but this time I’m on the other side trying to explain the emotions and experiences to my host family here. And it is very frustrating sometimes trying to explain it in another language to people who haven’t even left the country much less taken the chance to live somewhere else. I find myself thinking “you can’t understand” when I talk to them because of the frustration of trying to explain something so complicated. My host brother and I talked about this last night because another friend has decided to return to the US this week. He was saying how we are supposed to be here for 2 years and how it doesn’t make sense to get here and just go home without finishing. He wasn’t able to understand that a lot of people really love the idea of Peace Corps but the reality of it is that it is very difficult to live in another country almost completely isolated from familiar people and things, in a different culture, struggling to speak a new language. The closest agreement we came to was that when he spent a night at his girlfriend’s house an hour away he missed being in his bed and having his things. He seemed to think it was the same which was frustrating as I tried to explain the fact that he was at least in the same culture and same language, but at least he is trying to understand. Anyway, I just wanted to share my reflection on my experience here in relation to the experiences of our exchange students as this was not a concept I had considered in the past. I know it’s a little jumbled to read - forgive me my English skills are decreasing gradually :)