Closing Time

Well, the time has come for me to return home to the States.  I love Ecuador.  It will always have a special place in my heart.  I love my host family and will miss them dearly, too!

The experience of travel has taught me much about globalization in many forms.

It's time to see my family in the United States now, though, for Christmas! I'll be on a plane heading home in less than 24 hours!

¡Disfruta la Vida! - Enjoy Life!

Matthew

The Ecuadorian Hour

                The "Ecuadorian hour" is quite possibly the most frustrating thing I have experienced while here in Ecuador.  If you don't happen to be familiar with the Ecuadorian hour, allow me to briefly explain.  It's a perception of time in which deadlines and strict time schedules don't matter as much as they do in highly monochronic cultures such as the U.S.  What would be considered very late in American culture (20-30 minutes late) is not considered a big deal in many places in Ecuador.  For example, my host brother played two scrimmage soccer games for the University of Cuenca that I have been to so far.  This is when two universities unofficially play each other.  In the first case, he told me the game was at 3:00 p.m.  What time did we leave? 2:58 p.m. We drove a bit and arrived at the stadium at 3:10.  I was thinking, "Man, I hope Pablo doesn't get in trouble for being late!"  What time did the game start? 3:40 p.m. He was one of the first players there.  I was astounded.  I was under the perception that for events of this nature punctuality is crucial, but they weren't bothered by it at all.  The same "lateness" happened for the other game, too.

                One time I was getting ready to walk up to the school.  It's about a 35 minute walk, so I give myself 40 minutes to get there.  I had an activity at 3:00 p.m. that day, so I would have left at 2:20 p.m.  My host brother Pablo offered to drive me to school, since he was going to class as well around the same time.  I was grateful to get a ride as I was pretty tired that day.  I was ready at 15 minutes before 3:00, just like he said, but he was not ready.  I went to find him and he was... in the shower.  So I wait.  He gets done, it's about 5 'til now, so I'm ready to go.  He goes outside with me to the garage.  Turns out my host sister Verónica and host mother Mery are already in the car waiting.  I get in the backseat of the SUV with Pablo.  We don't go anywhere.  As it turns out, the entire family was coming.  So we wait even longer until my host dad Fernando makes his way out with the grandkids, Thomás and Mateo.  By now, I'm about 15 minutes late, and we haven't even left.  We back up and start driving.  We start getting close to the school, and then change directions!!  I mention I have to get to school, and they say they know.  They're just going to pick up a few things.  So we stop at a roadside store.  Verónica gets out and buys some groceries.  She comes back and we continue driving.  At a red light, Pablo gets out and starts shopping, too, while we're in traffic!  Then apparently, he walks to class, because we drive off without him when it turned green.  Then we finally drive to Fundación Amauta.  I get out of the vehicle, completely confounded.  I could not understand how driving could possibly make me more late than walking to school!  This inversion of what should have happened didn't compute in my head.  How could I have been driven to school and end up an hour late?!?  It makes absolutely no sense to me.  The icing on the cake: in a house that has 3 floors, only 2 clocks I can see work.  The one on the 1st floor is 23 minutes fast, and the other on the 3rd floor (mine in my bedroom), is correct.  This perception of time reflects the polychronic nature of many Ecuadorians.  If we're there on time...  if we're not there on time... *shrugs*  "No me importa" (It's no big deal).  And you know what?   Sometimes this is OK!

Ecuador Nightlife, My Host Brother, and Learning Spanish

The nightlife in Cuenca is spectacular and thrilling.  Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights were prime times for us students to go out and enjoy the evening.  Juan Pablo, my 19-year-old host brother, would come home from his classes at the university, eat a bit of dinner, and then walk up to my room and say, "Ok Mathieu, les go!"  This is always humorous, because my name is Matthew, but the "th" sound is very hard for many Spanish-speakers to pronounce, so my name ends up having the French pronunciation of "Mayh-tyuu".  I give him credit though, as the "th" is almost audible, and he is way closer than anyone else in the family to getting it right.  Anyways, we drive around the city, and it amazes me that he is familiar with so many people and places.  Anytime there is a cool view or a neat building, we go check it out.  We go to the bar, the dance clubs, and even the street stores and sidewalk vendors to buy delicious hot dogs at one in the morning.  We usually run into a few people that Pablo knows, and we always have pretty cool conversations.  I love speaking Spanish with all of them.  That being said, most of the young people that are Pablo's age know a decent amount of English.  This underscores the amount of interaction that Ecuador's residents have or will have with people from English-speaking countries like the U.S.  This demonstrates the USA's economic power because the Ecuadorian government has mandated English be taught because of its value (They need our dollars).

By traveling about the cities, I have had the pleasure of being able to hear so many peoples' accents in not only Spanish, but also in English.  I always go out and try to talk to as many people as I can, in as many places as I can, such as in the Galápagos, Intag, Baños, Guayaquil, Otavalo, and of course Cuenca.  Hearing all these different peoples' take on the Spanish and English languages will only further my knowledge of what it means to truly understand a language in all its aspects.  It all gets added to the collection for my future job as translator/interpreter (written & spoken word).  Of course, one of the greatest learning tools I have is Juan Pablo, my bi-lingual host brother who I constantly talk with about everything, including Spanish and English, IN Spanish and English!

Juan Pablo (right) and I (left).

Driving in Ecuador

The way people drive in Ecuador is very different from what I am accustomed to in the States.  When I am driving to and from Baldwin-Wallace College, I use the freeway for most of the trip.  I start in Eastlake, go through Cleveland, and end up in Berea.  Sure, there are plenty of drivers out there who go too fast, switch lanes frequently, and cut me off, but this is nothing compared to the way traffic flows in Ecuador.  I thought I had seen crazy driving in Washington, D.C.  I was sorely mistaken.  In Ecuador, it's much more crazy.  There are regularly 5 cars taking up the space of 3 lanes (and there were lines painted on the road, at least in this case).  They squeeze quite close to one another to make it work, and sometimes their mirrors are almost touching.  Motorcycles fly down the middle of double yellow lines between heavy traffic flow, and occasionally even use the sidewalk to circumvent stopped or slow traffic.  People cut each other off all the time, and most are insanely close calls.  I am amazed at the low number of accidents I have seen with all the insanity I witness on a daily basis.  On the faster roads, it's not uncommon for people to drive in the middle of 2 lanes until someone flies up behind them, honks his horn (or flashes his brights if it's night), and makes them move over so they can pass the slower car.  If the speed limit is 70 KM/h, one should expect to see everything from 40KM/h to 100KM/h.  The signs for speed limits appear to act only as suggestions.  Speaking of suggestions, so are all stop signs.  I don't think I have once seen or been in a vehicle that completely stopped at a stop sign, unless a car was directly in the way.  Most of the time if it seems clear, they just go ahead and take it and never touch the brake at all.  This goes for lights too.  Left on red?  No problem!  There are traffic cams?  No problem!  Yes, I am serious.  This experience of traveling via automobile in Ecuador has drastically changed my view on driving.  When I return to the States, I will probably undergo a culture shock.  Organized lanes, no passing on double yellow lines, motorcycles actually driving in a lane, traffic cams stopping people from running red lights, police that pull you over for dangerous maneuvers, etc.  I feel like it will be so orderly that it will seem unreal to me.  We'll see!

Movies / Películas

Over the course of my stay here at my host family's house in Cuenca, Ecuador, I have watched a decent amount of movies.  We usually watch them upstairs in the living room on their flat-screen TV, although I have also been to the cinema here.  My host brother, Juan Pablo, likes to watch them with English audio and Spanish subtitles (captions).  This coincidental choice ended up being one of the single greatest ways that I could learn Spanish.  Subtitles in movies* are shorter than the actual spoken dialogues for reasons of on-screen space and the average reading speed of the audience (content being more important than form).  This also has other advantages, though.  I was able to watch movies, understand the ideas perfectly in English, and then subsequently understand how to convey those same ideas in Spanish in a clear and concise way.  This is a very exciting way to learn a language!

On the topic of translating ideas, this really comes into play if we take a look at movie titles.  Because movies permeate countries all over the globe, and because the main idea of the movie is paramount, a literal translation of the title is insufficient at times to convey the same intended meaning in another language.  For this reason, titles can be quite different from one another in different languages.  To give some good examples of this, Inception in Spanish is El Origen (The Origin), Source Code is 8 Minutos Antes de Morir (8 Minutes Before Dying), and Charlie St. Cloud is Siempre a Mi Lado (Always By My Side).  The movie Taken actually has two names in Spanish: Venganza (Revenge) in Spain and Búsqueda Implacable (Relentless Pursuit) in Latin America.  This is understandable.  After all, just because they share a language doesn't mean it's the same culture, right?  Words have different meanings depending on where you are country-wise, dialect-wise, and even situation-wise.  It is for this reason that content translation is more important than literal word translation.
 

This is a screenshot from the official Spanish trailer.

 

The spoken dialogue is a bit longer:

- ¡Oye! ¿Qué estás haciendo? (Hey! What are you doing?)

-  Sólo estaba ... [m]irando tu bote. Perdón por asustarte.  (I was just ... [l]ooking at your boat.  I'm sorry if I scared you.)

Sometimes movies are literal or very direct translations, like Limitless (Sin Límites), Not Since You (No Desde Ti), and P.S. I Love You (Posdata Te Amo).  There's even the case of Kung Fu Panda, whose title is made entirely of import words, so it remains the same in multiple languages.  Usually translators are not so lucky, though!

Why does all this matter to me?  ¡Porque un día quiero ser traductor e intérprete de inglés y español! (Because one day I want to be a translator and interpreter of English and Spanish!)

*This is not to be confused with Television subtitling (a.k.a. closed captioning), where the Teletext subtitles follow the original audio verbatim.