English and its inability to adequately express the emotion of love

Few tidbits from the week:

1. My program director had an interesting quote this week. She was talking about how, when people of two different native languages are conversing, if a word in one language doesn´t have a translation in the other, it doesn´t exist in the reality of the conversation. For instance, there is no word for ¨compromise¨in Spanish - or Italian, French, Portuguese, or any other Romance language, for that matter. It´s something of an Anglo-Saxon concept. But in Spanish, there are two words for love - querer (general love) y amor (romantic love). ¨Whereas English is ridiculous - I love my country like I love my shoes like I love my boyfriend like I love my grandmother.¨ What an interesting thing to think about.

2. I watched a hilarious game show on TV the other day. It was called ¨Que dice la gente,¨or ¨What the people say,¨and I guess it´s basically like Family Feud. People are asked general questions (ones without one concrete right answer), and answers that more people have said in the past get greater point totals.

Anyway, one of the questions while I was watching was, I kid you not, ¨What are Chinese people known for?¨ And - to my shock - the number 1 answer given was, ¨Squinty eyes.¨ No joke. The number two answer was, ¨Martial Arts.¨ I told my host sister, who was completely unphased, how incredibly inappropriate that would be in the US, and she didn´t seem to get it.

This is just one example of how much more openly people talk about race here - my host father calls my host mother ¨Negrita¨(which means dark girl, basically) as a term of affection. It´s really interesting to talk to them about the different taboos we have in the States - because they certainly have their lines of appropriateness that we cross, as well.

3. I´ve been playing pick up soccer a couple times a week, and the altitude is so killer. I´m in Los Chillos, which is a valley just outside of Quito, and is ringed on all sides by Andean volcanoes. Not only are we at about 9,000 ft, but because it´s the dry season in the Sierra right now, there are TONS of forest fires. If you go up on any hill on any side of the city, you can see 5-10 different plumes of smoke in various parts of the Valley. Makes breathing that much harder. However, it´s pretty fun - Friday I scored 7 goals in about an hour. All the machistas are super impressed.

4. It´s kind of hard to keep myself from just hanging out with English speakers - obviously I speak Spanish at home with my host family, but as soon as I get with the other people from my program, we start speaking English. It´s just so easy to fall into - in English, I´m witty, intelligent, and interesting. In Spanish, I´m pretty boring. I can´t really express opinions well and I´m definitely not funny. And the people on my program are so awesome - tons of people who are interested in the same things as me, love to go out, and super open to new Ecuadorian things. Trying to find a balance, for sure.

Love,
Alice