Today was our second day of class, and I have to say I love having a daily routine here in Cuenca. Our host family's home is only a 15 minute walk from the CEDEI school so it is very easy to go back and forth from the school. I really enjoyed our orientation part of the trip so far so I'm really excited to see if I like the classes at CEDEI as much. The language barrier with the family was a little difficult at first, but the family is so nice (and the kids speak English) so it hasn't been a super difficult transition. Although I do think I ate something strange on New Year's Eve because I was sick for a good part of the day on the first. Now that I am feeling a million times better, I do not feel as though I am in the "crisis" stage of culture shock anymore and am growing to like my time here more and more.
In class today we continued our discussion on identity and talked a bit about the economy. One of the main ideas that came up in our discussions was the idea of power, and that when one group of people gains power and becomes dominant, it marginalizes smaller groups of people. This is something that has happened to the indigenous people of Ecuador. I noticed this especially when we visited the Mindala Workshop last week. The man giving us the tour discussed with us that the government will not fund museums for indigenous people. He showed us several pottery examples, some that were thousands of years old. I was sad to see that the divide between indigenous Ecuadorians and those of a more Spanish decent still exists. This was also prevalent at the equator. This is another site that does not receive funding from the government.
We also talked a great deal about identify in class. We discussed how identity is dynamic and is capable of changing over time. One thing we have noticed especially with our host families' older generations is that the mom is in charge of all of the cooking and house work. The gender roles have been socially constructed dictating what women are responsible for doing. However, I have also noticed that in this newer younger generation more and more women are joining the workforce and having a career outside of being a homemaker. For instance, one of the cousins in our host family is studying to become a doctor, which was not nearly as common a few generations ago.
When we visited the La Capilla del Hombre museum in Quito last week, I also noticed a great deal about Identity there. While there were many identities represented at this museum, they all had the underlining theme of giving a voice to the marginalized groups of people all over the world. Most of the pictures represented people with dark colors, skeletal like features with large heads and very slender sickly bodies, as well as facial features that ranged from depressed to struggling. It was really interesting to see how these concepts we talked about in class connected to things we have already seen on our trip so far as well as the different opinions our class has. Tomorrow will be another bit more touristy day as we are going ziplining and to the baños. I am so excited to see what those will be like, so hopefully it will be a Saturday well spent!
