As I mentioned in the last post, I was losing focus on the
Present and was only worried about working hard on the Future. Sure, it’s cool
to plan, but when you’re stressed out about outcomes that haven’t even come to
pass yet, then you’re missing out on the gift that we call the Present. So I’ve
gotten my act together and I am enjoying life as it comes.
I mean I leave on the beach, I have love my job, I have
wonderful friends and people that are like family surrounding me and there is
SO much here that I have yet to experience.
So I vowed to myself to get back to that mental space of
being a newcomer, when you everything is neat, awe inspiring and full of
novelty. One thing I have realized about myself is the minute I get comfortable
in a place, I feel entitled and let little things annoy me. That’s not easy to
admit, but I am finding it to be true.
Like back in the Guayaquil days, when I took the crowded
Metrovia to the post office. At first, I thought it was soooo cool and
convenient to have a trolley car that zipped up and down the main streets I
needed were people could load on and off
from little waiting stations. As soon as I got the knack I found that,
that crowded Metro could ruin my mood as I stood there like a sardine in the
blistering heat with elbows pressed in my back and armpits in my face. The
first week, that was a fun “cultural” experience I could write home about, the
next month it’s the bane of my existence. It’s the same with how I can muddle
the paradise I live in with complaints of the loud fisherman outside my window,
or the incessant music blaring into my house as early as 7:30 in the morning.
Sure, you may
read this and say, “no for real that sounds annoying”, and trust is can be.
However, as a newbie, a person that applied to live in another country and
experience new things, those are the kinds of things that make a place exotic,
the stories you write home about. The things that you have either a good or bad
opinion about but you feel truly grateful for both because you have the opportunity
to experience it. I know the day is going to come when I am going to long to
hear the drunk songs of the fisherman lulling me to sleep, or serving as my
wake up call. In the United States our respect for personal space will have me
longing for the no holds barred space efficiency model that is the cultural
norm here in Ecuador.
You can take every incident and either look at it through a
positive light or a negative one. Should I be “happy” about everything that
happens to me and around me? No, not everything is agreeable, however, my
reaction to everything around me can absolutely change. I have started giving
thanks for the bar across the street and the rowdy voices outside my door that
serve as my daily alarm clock. Whether I love it or not, it’s these little
incidents that shape my experience. An experience I once only dreamed about and
one that I am so grateful has come into fruition as an unforgettable chapter in
the story of my life.
The office staff and I organized a football game at the
Aldea and it was so much fun.
As a result the majority of the pictures were the tops of
their heads as the modeled for the camera and inadvertently cut each other out
of the shot , but they did get some far away action shots.
I got a chance to play, but a lot of the time I was caring
for the little ones who wanted to be on the field in the middle of the action
but not really play. One little girl wanted to hold my hand the whole time and
not run. That got complicated but we worked it out. Every time the “captain” of
our team i.e. the maintenance man of the Aldea, saw me, he’d be like “are we
babysitting or playin!?”. So sometimes I had to just leave my little girl and
come back to hear after I was done playing defense.
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