Miss-communication

That's me.

Some of you are probably perplexed that it has been almost a month since my trip to Ecuador, and yet I am still blogging. But, my thought is no one is really reading this, so why not write for my own recollection? My memory sucks at 24, so it's only going downhill from here people. I'm sure Cyndi still checks this. "Hi Cyndi"


I'm a talker and a writer. I communicate. I LOVE it. It's my thing -they actually pay me for it. So you must understand the frustration I was faced with when having to resort to half-ass charades and an awful attempt at the beautiful spanish language when I was in Ecuador.

At first, it did not seem like a big deal. I realized what I was in for, and I knew I had Ashley and Javier to translate. That was the first night. After that, I would just talk english to people -totally forgetting they had no clue as to what I was saying! It was annoying and liberating all at the same time. I finally had a secret language with Ashley, where we could talk at the dinner table and no one knew what, or who, we were talking about (Besides Javier, and I always forgot he could understand). For example, Ashley could say, "I have gas." And I could be like, "Me too, must have been the empanadas," and would not be embarrassed. That was liberating. (Ashley, do not comment on my spelling of empanadas please).

Frustration:
But then, when we were in Bannos looking at beautiful waterfalls, I REALLY had to pee. So, our lovely and very handsome tour guide/cabbie showed me where to a bathroom. I had to go soooooo bad I pushed aside a little girl who was trying to talk to me in spanish. I assumed she was trying to sell me toilet paper, but Ashley had given me some to use.

Turns out...it costs money to use public bathrooms there, and that little girl was trying to collect 10 cents from me to use this particular toilet. MISCOMMUNICATION. When I got out, Ashley was laughing as she explained what had happened. How was I supposed to know. I felt bad, but am rarely confronted with 8 year-old embargo types standing outside bathroom stalls. It was funny. I am uncertain if this is translating well via blog. (Which is embarrassing since I already claimed to be a "great communicator.")

I also screwed up a lot of easy spanish words and quickly got the correction from Ashley who has been correcting my english and grammar since I was in the whom.

In sum, I REALLY would like to go back to Ecuador, but will make it a point to take a language class before. Spanish for dummies DID NOT WORK for me. :-)