1) Traffic.
Getting in a car here is about the scariest thing I do. To start with, only the front seats have seatbelts. The backseat might have the shoulder strap and be missing the buckle, have the buckle and be missing the strap, or have neither part. Cars drive very fast here. Stop signs (a red octagon with the word "para") don't actually mean stop to any true Ecuadorian. Instead, you honk your horn twice. If no one honks back, then you assume it is safe to drive right through the stop sign without slowing down. If someone does honk back, then you slow down a little, but not very much. And if you can see around the stop sign without slowing down, then you don't need to honk at all.
2) Food.
Food is amazing, and there is a LOT of it. There are more kinds of fruit and vegetables than I have ever seen in my life, including at least 5 different types of bananas, not counting plantains, and at least ten different types of corn. For breakfast I usually have a bowl of cut up fruit with yogurt and granola, or a smoothie-like drink and a grilled cheese sandwich. Recently they've also been serving me french toast. Lunch is the big meal of the day, and usually consists of two courses, a soup, and then something else with meat. My family is a little less traditional than some, which only means that we don't eat rice with every meal, only with about half of them. My family constantly asks me whether I like the food, and if I want more. One day, they asked if I liked avocados, and when I said I loved them, lunch the next day included 1 and a half avocados PER PERSON, as well as a potato soup, salad, and shrimp. How little I eat has become a joke to them, and they didn't believe me when I said I eat more then my mom and sister at home. Luckily dinner is not a huge meal because I am generally still full from lunch. We all have tea or coffee or hot chocolate (they looked at me like I was an alien one night when I said I just wanted water, so I have learned to always ask for tea when I'm full) and then a bread roll, and maybe a piece of cheese.
Today for breakfast, my host parents took me for a special treat--chancho, or ordenado. In English: pig. We drove for about ten minutes and then stopped outside a restaurant with a table/kitchen area right on the sidewalk, and then a bunch of tables for guests inside. On the table of the kitchen area were three fried pigs. I mean whole pigs, with heads and feet still attached. In making up our plates, the chef merely sliced some pig off and put it on the plate, along with potatoes, corn, and half an avocado. The fried pig skin is especially a deliacy, although one I saved for last, and then said I was full after a few bites.
3) Computer Keyboards
Are different here. I have finally figured out how to do apostrophes, parentheses, quotation marks, and question marks, but I still can't figure out the at sign. Every time I want to log on to my email, I have to find an at sign somewhere else, and then copy and paste it in. I also can't figure out how to put accents on letters, although it must be fairly easy since Spanish words need accents all the time.
4) Buses
Buses here are insane, but incredibly useful. Most of them cost between 15 and 25 cents. If it's going to be a long ride (over half an hour), it might cost up to $1.25. Though there are a few defined bus stops, they don't really mean anything. If you want to get on a bus that's passing by, you stick out your hand and wave at the driver. When you want to get off, you ask the driver to stop. The second the last person steps on or off the bus, it lurches away, which means I'm frequently lunging for the nearest handrail so I don't fall over.
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