La Mariscal

Thursday, May 30th, 2013

Ok so the tour ended up being a huge rip off because we were told that about half the included destinations and lunch were actually not included, but for no particular reason because we had time and we had transportation…and paid an embarrassingly high amount…but I won’t even get into that…We went to a cheesy “museum” for La mitad del mundo. It is cool that water falls straight down on the equator and that gravity gives you a little less strength. 

So the tour was mediocre, but as a group we still enjoyed ourselves and had some laughs along the way and it was fun to pass through the various parts of Quito, which is a city far too big to be tackled in a mere 2 days. 

The botched tour left me hungry to speak more Spanish and get a better feel for the city, which actually came in the form of a somewhat strange opportunity. Brita, another researcher, had plans to meet up with her German best friend’s Ecuadorian boyfriend, Edisón. So we went to one of the many bars in Plaza Foch, which is the heart of La Mariscal district. 

Edisón is a clarinet player and instructor as well. Because of his talent and the lack of adequate symphonies (there’s only 1 in Quito), he was hoping to be accepted to study in Portugal. But the process was taking a while as the immigrations officers seemed to want to find any reason to say no, or continue to give him more questions and paperwork. Despite the setbacks and exhausting nature of it all, he seemed eager and passionate to make it. It was additionally inspiring because he had people around him telling him to do something else—you know, something that makes you rich—but he decided to follow his passion. And it just might get him to Portugal! Ojalá, Edisón!

During the conversation there were 3 different dialects of Spanish going on: quiteño, porteño and aprendiendo. Obviously Edisón was our quiteño muy chévere (“cool”), zsho como la porteña y Brita putting her Spanish 201 to the test (and kicking ass, by the way). Edisón seemed to be getting a kick out of my accent and all the gestures and vocal fluctuations that come with Argentine Spanish. Obviously I am totally open and excited to learn all the new phrases and nuances of Ecuadorian Spanish, but there’s resistance on my part to totally switch over to it because Argentine Spanish just goes so well with who I am and it’s a part of me. Still, it’s always a bit awkward when I use vos, yell “¡che!” or say zsho me zshamo Nikki. But I find myself muttering “¡qué chévere!” more and more so I imagine that when I show up to Buenos Aires in August, people will be more confused as I fuse Ecuadorian, Argentine and generic classroom Spanish all together. In the meantime, it’s exhausting the number of differences there are between Argentina and Ecuador for simple vocabulary words…

Edisón also told us some funny things about el castellano quiteño. For example, they sort of do a ‘ffff’ sound at the end of sentences—“Sí, soy de Quito...fff”. And they looooooove adding the diminutive –ito/ita to every word. “Saludcito!”  So I guess for someone who is extremely hyperbolic, erring the side of GIGANTESCO or chiquitito, I quite enjoy this feature, which seems to be general to Ecuador and not just Quito, although it makes sense for them because -ito is already in the name...

As the night drew to a close, I kept thinking to myself what a great time we were having and how incredible it was that someone Brita and I hadn’t known just a few hours earlier felt like a friend we’d had for a long time. Maybe this kind of hospitality is found worldwide, especially when you speak the language…but this is something that keeps drawing me back to “Latin America” (explanation of quotation mark use will be in a future blog). This sense of intimacy and talking for hours to strangers and turning them into friends feels so organic here. So even though everybody stares at me like I’m an alien, when they actually sit and talk to me, they treat me like family.