Well, my first week in Ecuador has been amazing! I have learned so much of Ecuadorian culture in the past few days, and I have been able to relate the majority of my experiences and observations back to our class material/discussions. One thing that has stuck out the most to me has been the harmony relationship with nature my host mother has. As I said in my previous blogs, my mom adores her plants. Our home is fairly small, yet my mom has a very large garden in the backyard that consists of a wide variety of plants and flowers. When I first arrived here and got a tour of the house, my mom spent a lot of time showing me each plant. Additionally, my mom always says how much she adores each plant whenever we leave the home, and she also spends over 2 hours per day tending to and nurturing the plants. Her love and appreciation for her plants and nature in general has been very present, and she is an integral part of nature where she is conscious about giving back to nature and her plants for what she takes from nature. I also saw this harmony relationship with nature when we visited the Salasacas en route to Riobamba. The Salasacas only use natural colors, no chemical colors, to create the various colors of the wool used in making their handicrafts in order to protect Mother Nature. They get the natural colors from things such as cacti and various bugs. These harmony relationships have got me hoping that someday people living in the United States will have less of a mastery relationship with nature where they think they are separate from nature and can control it and have more of a harmony relationship.
Another thing that has stuck out to me the most is the gender roles here. I noticed these primarily on New Year’s when many young men took to the streets dressed up as women asking for money. This is a New Year’s tradition in Ecuador: men dress as a widow mourning her old man/old year and ask people for money. I found this placing women into the gender role of being weak and in need of assistance when they lose a spouse. This may in fact be true, but the tradition does not have women out there dressed as men mourning and asking for money, so it implies that the role of women is to be the weak and dependent ones not men. I have also observed the gender roles in my host family where my dad goes off to work every day and my mom stays at home and takes care of the house. My mom is also the only one to do the cooking in the house; when I ask if I can help her cook, she says no. There is definitely a strong gender role where the mothers do the domestic stuff and take care of the house.
Identity is another huge thing I have noticed. Identity has significantly impacted my communication with my host family in the beginning. In class, we discussed how perceived stereotypes of another person’s identity can have a big effect on the communication. I have noticed my host family had a few perceived stereotypes of me since I am an American. For example, on New Year’s Eve night, they were all very surprised I joined the entire family in dancing, and that I actually wasn’t too bad! They were also surprised that I was eager to try their traditional New Year’s dish although it was extremely different from American food. These stereotypes can be dangerous to intercultural communication, but I think my family has gotten better because they now see that I am very open to learning their culture. We also discussed in class the two types of identity: primary (stays the same throughout life) and secondary (identity affiliation that changes over time). I identified the most with “student” which is a secondary identity, and my mom and dad both said they were a “mother” and a “father” first when I asked them who they are. These are primary identities. I found it interesting that they identified first with these, but it definitely shows how Ecuadorians tend to be more collectivistic in culture whereas Americans tend to be individualistic.
Finally, a concept from class that I have been able to see in my daily experiences is effective and ineffective communication. Effective communication is where the message is received to the receiver the way the sender intended, and ineffective is where the message is not received as intended. In a few of my previous blogs I discussed how I had trouble communicating with the driver that picked me up from the airport and also with my host parents. This trouble was due to my lack of Español which ultimately lead to ineffective communication frequently. There were numerous times where my driver made a funny face to me because he did not understand what I had said, and there have also been numerous times where I have made a funny face to my host parents because I have not understood what they said. These moments of ineffective communication have not necessarily been negative, but rather they have been bumps in the road of intercultural communication.
