There have been only a couple adjustments that have been hard for me here in Ecuador. The main one has been the food customs. For breakfast, it is common to only eat bread or a piece of fruit. Breakfast is fed around 7 a.m. and lunch is not until 1 p.m. This is a long time to only have a piece of bread in your stomach. Once my host mom asked me what I normally eat for breakfast in America, she has been making me scrambled eggs every morning. I am so incredibly thankful.
Another food custom is to eat dinner very late, normally around 8 or 9 p.m. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day, so it keeps them full until dinner. I wake up at 6 a.m. every day so I normally want to be in bed by 9 p.m. instead of eating at that time. My family eats dinner, talks around the table, and then goes to bed.
A third food custom that is hard for me is the amount of meat they eat. Even when I am in the United States, I prefer not to eat a large amount of meat. The main dish is always meat for both lunch and dinner. It is often cooked by itself and very plain. Thankfully my host mom knows I don’t eat much meat and doesn’t take it offensively when I do not eat much of the beef, chicken, or other types meat that I’ve not heard of.
An adjustment that has also been hard for me is the shower here in the house of my host family. Every morning, the shower is what normally gets me out of bed. Here, I don’t want to get up because the shower is so difficult. The only water temperatures are either scalding hot, or ice cold. Needless to say, my showers are quite short.
In order to deal with these adjustments, I have tried to keep a positive attitude. I have accepted that this culture is different than the United States. Even though they have different customs, I try to remember that this will probably be the only time in my life that I will be in Ecuador experiencing these differences. It is important to keep this point of view because it is easy to have an ethnocentric view of our own culture. It takes a little adjusting, but it is possible to adapt.
