Adventure is out There

It’s been three weeks and I have yet to make any public writing to somehow show everyone back home how it’s been going here… oops. Sowwy.

I wasn’t too great at blogging in South Africa either and I guess that hasn’t really changed. Neither has the fact of people asking me “How is it?” “What’s it like compared to South Africa?” Blah blah blah… and the truth is I can’t compare the two. Even though I do almost every day, but the experiences are so different that it’d be wrong for me to say “this is better or that is better.” Meh. But I’m going to do it anyways.

I think the biggest adjustment was having to throw away my paper in a waste basket instead of throwing it down the toilet. There’s been so many times when I’ve accidently thrown my paper into the toilet and the moment it happens I scream from regret and look at the toilet bowl with tears because now I have to fish it out. I’ve finally got the hang of it after having a nightmare of me flushing the toilet and overflowing the whole bathroom with water. I made sure it wouldn’t ever come true. Before it seemed a little gross, but hey you get used to it when you see poop marks in the trash can as you’re brushing you’re teeth or going pee. It’s the EcuaLife. Another shock is how they fit so many darn people in the trolleys. They’re packed like sardines. The only people who have it easy are our guys since they’re taller than every Ecuadorian, they actually getting breathing space. But the rest of us are breathing through armpits or inches away from kissing strangers.  

My favorite thing about this city is the city. I love being able to look out my window and see all the buildings and city lights. From my home we can see the clouds roll in and out and sometimes we get peaks of the surrounding mountains and hills. The elevation difference was a huge problem the first couple days we were here. Half the time I couldn’t breathe and had constant headaches walking up our summit of a hill. Even climbing the four flights of stairs I’d be close to fainting. I guess that’s what happens when you live 10,000 feet in elevation and there is no such thing as oxygen here. But now I can actually do an Insanity video without dying, so hey you get used to it.

Those we’re the first couple things to get used to here but now that classes had started things are a little different. Let’s start off by saying I haven’t been in school for over 2 months and getting back into the school grind… SUCKS.

  Okay so here’s a regular day in Quito Ecuador:

Wake up cute as a button

walk 20 minutes down my hill for Intercultural Communication

learn for 3 hours

walk 7 minutes to the trolley stop

pay 25 cents for a ticket

wait in line for the trolley

PUSH, BITE, AND SHOVE to get on the trolley (and I mean literally)

clench on to my backpack and hope that no one is touching me the wrong way since there is no such thing as personal space

get off after 10 minutes to my stop

walk another  10 minutes through the “gringo” area also known as Plaza Foche also known as the party area where there’s countless bars and clubs

chill out and have an “Almuerzo” which is the daily lunch menu for $2.50 that includes a freshly squeezed fruit drink, a soup, the main dish, and a desert. (If you can’t tell my favorite part of the day is getting full off of $2.50)

and lastly get to Spanish class and learn for 2.5 hours from the cutest Ecuadorian woman while there’s party music playing in the background from the Plaza.

  And that’s majority of the day.

By the time we walk/trolley/taxi back home it’s 5 or 6 o’clock and half of us are exhausted, but there is still always room for fun whether its shaving crosses on the guys’ chests or cooking awesome dinners or even just laughing and having a great time talking.

When people back home ask how the group of students here are I just say they’re awesome. It is a HUGE change from South Africa having 53 students to this group only being 32. But I really do like it. It was a lot easier learning everyone’s names and being able to talk to everyone. I’d say the most difficult part is living a couple blocks from each another, which makes it hard to hangout especially at night for the girls. Compared to SA where we were all neighbors and spent most of our nights in one another’s rooms until the early morning. And also the fact that hardly any one will come over to my apartment since it is the farthest and steepest to get to (holla to the Summit Struggles). Also because the wifi in our apartment hardly ever works so we spend a lot of our time at other houses. OH and to make better relationships too I guess.

Sometimes I find myself getting frustrated when people think even this group is big… OH shoot if only you knew how difficult it was to ship 53 students around South Africa and try to make close friends with every single one of them. I think by the end of the semester in SA we all knew we we’re a family but there was definitely people we clicked more with and grew closer to. For me it was the beautiful Crazy 8 girls. We bonded because we felt we didn’t fit in with the rest of the rest of the students. And who would’ve known those differences would’ve made us so close. I hope they’re doing well back home and assimilating back into our world in the U.S. along with the rest of my South African family. I know many of us had a hard time going back home, and even now I struggle with things that changed me last semester. But here I am abroad again. When people ask why I did it again, my answer is always, “why not?” Sometimes I doubt my strength and regret not being home during this crazy time planning my brothers wedding. I question whether this was the right thing to do and if I was really ready for this. But then I look around and I realize I’m supposed to be here. I know people might think I’m being bitter but I know for the students here they’ll soon understand. They’ll understand my frustrations with our engraved individualistic perspective from our home culture and they’ll understand the difficulty to assimilating back into that lifestyle after such a life changing time.

The point is that I really do love this group. There is a huge variety of us from different backgrounds and lifestyles but somehow we make it work. Yeah yeah I think we all get pretty frustrated with one another at times, but that’s nothing out of the usual when you’re stuck being with over 32 people for 4 months. You learn to adjust and you learn how everyone ticks and you either learn to love it, or avoid it. I have no doubt that all of us will become a family just like we did in South Africa and some of us will get closer than others and become life long friends.

I’m learning to be patient with others and really have to stick my self in a different perspective when I get frustrated with certain comments. The same comments that ticked me off with people in the beginning of the South Africa semester. But the honest truth is that we’re all in a new environment and everything is different, and soon enough WE will be different.

I think that’s probably my favorite thing as I’m getting to know people here and listen to what it is they’re struggling with. It’s neat to see them transform and go through the same things I did while in South Africa. Getting accustomed to a new environment and having to take and deal with public transportation in all it’s forms. The honeymoon phase is gone and now the frustration stage is beginning. Everyone including myself will start to get upset with differences and want to go back to the old 1st world ways. We’ll start to miss home and ask ourselves why it is that we’re here. Well actually I ask myself that every day, but sure enough we’ll all know soon.

Well I’ll tell you why, but it begins with a story. A long one. 

Last summer was a rollercoaster. I was “in love” and I was motivated. The first time I heard “Wake me up” was in my home with a special guy. He had said a new song by Avicci came out and we listened to it for the first time together. The first emotion I got out of it was happiness. It became a love song for me. Here I was with this guy I liked so much and soon we were going to be separated studying abroad. The lyrics spoke what I was feeling,

Feeling my way through the darkness

Guided by a beating heart

I can't tell where the journey will end

But I know where to start

I wanted time to pass so I could be with him again and relive all that we will soon encounter in our adventures apart. He was the first to leave and while he was gone that song reminded me of him, and it brought me joy.

About a month in it was almost time for me to go to South Africa and two weeks prior to that I went to the Fourth Estate Summit. A weekend convention at UCLA created by Invisible Children. It was my dream and I was in my element. There was where I heard “Pompeii” for the first time in a video they played at the Summit. The video showed our efforts and actions in bringing home LRA soldiers with “come home fliers.” They were fliers thrown over the dense jungle in helicopters so that when LRA soldiers came across them, they would see that it was safe to come home. The chorus dropped the same time that they threw the fliers out of the planes

[DRUMS!]

But if you close your eyes,

[Pause. BAM! Fliers everywhere!]

Does it almost feel like

Nothing changed at all?...

 and that same moment staff members were throwing real fliers from the balconies onto the audience giving us a real experience. Chills made my body shake and all I could feel was inspiration, it brought me love, it gave me joy. 

Both of the songs combined made me happy and they became part of my “pump up playlist for Africa." Well then it was time to leave for SA. In South Africa I had hardly heard my two favorite songs and I guess you could say I got a break from them. It was a rare thing to hear either of those songs on the radio, but when I did they always seemed to have played at the right moments. When I started to feel sad or concerned or just insecure with my actions and thoughts… Wake Me Up would play. I would burst into a full on single dance party and be the only one singing it in the vans, and that’s how everyone learned it was my song. When it would play everyone would already turn to me to see my reactions, and I’d already be standing up with my arms flailing all over the place. No matter where I was; metro, van, street, anywhere.  

Service sites started and I spent majority of my time with 11 other people serving at a ministry called Walk in the Light. It would play on the car rides there and back and it started to grow on my friends. Soon enough it became “our song.” Wake Me Up wasn’t a love song anymore, it was a life song.

I tried carrying the weight of the world

But I only have two hands

Hope I get the chance to travel the world

But I don't have any plans

I was nothing without my team at WITL. They were my family and we were each others’ strength when the things we saw got really difficult to process. We were traveling the world together and having our lives changed by the challenges of poverty, sickness, and new cultures.

Everything I learned at the Fourth Estate Summit was still in my mind and soul during these encounters, and everything that was said on this trip mirrored the same ideas. Like the Good Samaritan. When you’re faced with something difficult and you see someone suffering, you are now responsible for that person. You can’t just turn around and leave. His problem is now your problem.

How am I gonna be an optimist about this?

How am I gonna be an optimist about this?

Philip was that for me. He was paralyzed from the waist down due to a car accident and was infected with TB. TB is curable with medication, but the first time I met him we were told that he wasn’t taking his pills for weeks and it was because he was “lazy” or didn’t care, and was “stubborn”. It made me uncomfortable the way people talked to him, like as if they were angry with him. I tried going a different route and asked him questions on whether he wanted to get better or not, and he would reply “yes mam.” But you could tell it was a half-hearted answer. When it was time to leave I tried joking with him by pointing at him and saying “you better take your medication Phillip!” I thought that was going to be my last time seeing him.

We worked at WITL a little less than a month and in those last few weeks Phillip was still in my heart. The second to last day we received notice through Phillip’s cousin that he had written a note and tried committing an overdose suicide. My team and I prayed for Phillip but it still didn’t feel sufficient enough for me and when I walked over to our WITL office to see if there was anything more I could do, I saw his cousin there sitting and talking to Phindile and Bruce, our leaders/creators/directors at Walk in the Light. I knew I was interrupting something but stayed just to comfort Phillips cousin and tell him everything will be alright, and I felt that it would.

The next day, our last day, at WITL was a weird one. We were sad to be leaving a place where we spent so much of our time and emotions, but we were happy and glad to have been blessed with such an experience. Every week a few of us took turns to go on “home visits” where we would go walk into the community and talk with families or friends we’ve gotten to know over the weeks. I had already finished my visits and I wasn’t supposed to go but once I heard that they were going to visit Phillip I jumped and pleaded if I could tag a long. Of course Phindile said yes and we were off. When we walked into Phillips home he was there bent uncomfortably over his wheel chair in front of the TV. They woke him up and some of the first things they did was show Phillip videos of himself incoherent and drugged the day before when he tried overdosing himself. I asked him how he felt about seeing those videos, and for once he had no answer. Pastor Sipo started talking to him in Zulu telling him that God can only do so much for his sickness, and that God isn’t going to cure him. Phindile had told me before that Phillip didn’t believe in God and struggled in his faith. I found myself cutting into Sipo’s conversation and I knew what I wanted to say was right, it was true, and it needed to be said. It was an itchy feeling that I couldn’t keep in any longer.

I told Phillip that God doesn’t work directly all the time. That God works through people. I told him that Phindile and Pastor Sipo have been visiting him for so long because they are doing God's work and they’re not going to give up on him. I told him that they are the voice and are speaking for God, so instead of trying to wait for God’s direct action he needed to look at what was right in front of him and see that THAT is God’s direct action. He really didn’t say anything but when I glanced at Phindile I remember her nodding in approval, and that made me feel better after cutting into Sipo’s talk. We then said our goodbyes and started getting ready to leave, but I still didn’t feel like we did anything to reach Phillip and my fear was to leave WITL without knowing whatever happened to Philip. I turned around and headed back to Philip. I untied my Fourth Estate bracelet and I put it on his wrist. I secretly thanked God that it fit him perfectly as I tied it, and I told Philip that it was my lucky bracelet and something that I NEVER took off. I showed him the liberty triangle on one side of the charm and told him the significance behind that symbol. Then I showed another charm that said “Stop at nothing.” I said that whenever I felt like giving up on life and I lost hope I looked at this saying and it drove me.  I said “Phillip you can’t ever take this bracelet off.” Phillip replied with “yes mam.”

 I didn’t know if whether or not he was going to listen to me or if he was even going to keep the bracelet on, but I felt better leaving him this time. It was sad realizing we would never be back at WITL for that trip and for once the car ride back home was silent. We were welcomed by the nurses cheering us up the drive way with smiles and signs telling us how much they loved us, and of course it made us cry more. But sure enough as I was walking by one of the chalets guess what was playing? Yeah you guessed it, Pompeii. And instead of crying I just smiled and sang.

Eh-eh-o eh-o

Eh-eh-o eh-o

Eh-eh-o eh-o

Eh-eh-o eh-o

A few days later every service site had a presentation due in our community engagement course. My team and I spoke about our site, our experiences, and our favorite moments. My friend Kim surprised me by saying to the whole class that her “30 second moment” or most heart felt/influencing moment was seeing me give Phillip my bracelet. Yeah, you already know my embarrassing butt started crying in front of the whole class. Ugh. Well anyways it was almost time to wrap up our presentation. Kim and I spent all night making a video to present for our class and the rest of our WITL family. And of course it was only appropriate for Wake Me Up to be in it, along with other songs that related to us. When the video was over half of our class was in tears. Not because it was sad but because they got to experience how close of a site we are and how each one of us looks at each other like family. Later that night we would have a farewell dinner with our service sites and our professors in Pietermaritzburg. It was there that I got my answer. Bruce said that the next day Phillip let WITL take him to the hospital without any trouble, and Phindile added that he was still wearing my bracelet.

Now that I’m home these two songs follow me where ever I go and some may say they’re worn out or over played. I disagree. These songs are reminders of these past 5 ½ months and they’re unwinding to tell a different story to me. I am getting ready to leave on yet another adventure in another country on another continent. At first I didn’t believe I could study abroad again because of academic issues. I was afraid that it would affect my prospective major and I would have to add another semester or year to my graduation. Well a few days ago I finally met up with the Global Studies director and told him that I wanted to change my major to GS as I asked about all my concerns regarding classes and the affects of studying abroad in Ecuador.

The meeting ended with him signing a yellow document confirming me as a Global Studies major as well as a four year plan including 4 abroad semesters. FOUR. What I loved about the meeting was how well we were able to talk and understand one another. Before the meeting I was afraid he would want me to abstain me from leaving this next semester, to keep me on track. Instead that was the last thing he wanted and made it work so that I could still do my LA term fall of next year and then another Global term fall 2015 possibly in an Asian country! He said I’d be one of the few going down in APU history for studying abroad the most in college, and it won’t cost me a cent more than my normal tuition.

FINALLY my life has some direction and FINALLY I see why I am here at this university. I was smiling from the moment I left his office to when I reached my car in the parking lot. And what’s the first song on? YUP…

SO WAKE ME UP WHEN IT’S ALL OVER

WHEN I’M WISER AND I’M OLDER

ALL THIS TIME I WAS FINDING MYSELF

AND I DIDN’T KNOW I WAS LOST

 I started screaming the lyrics and dancing with a huge smile on my face. When I reached the first robot (stop-light in SA terms) I could see both drivers beside me gawking and all I could do was laugh at myself for being so embarrassing and cry because I was so happy.

I did it. I really did it.