As I now enter upon my second week with my home-stay family in north Quito, I am relieved to note that my childhood in the Philippines has cushioned many of the cultural stress elements which otherwise might have surprised me greatly. Ironically enough, I almost felt more stress during the transition to living in a predominantly California girl apartment. West coast culture places a higher significance upon appearance, rap, and many other cool, but different facets of culture. Experiencing American culture from some of my Cali friends’ viewpoints has grown my confidence in the reality that Jesus is central to the Gospel from whatever perspective…and slightly improved my makeup abilities.

I said previously that my home-stay family has of yet produced no extreme eversion to Ecuadorian culture, and this remains true, but the same cannot be attested to the whole of my experiences in Ecuadorian culture. In my first week in Quito, I was surprised to discover a serious degree of sexism present amidst this culture. My first jog within my neighborhood resulted in cat calls and unwelcome looks. My second resulted in a car tailing me throughout the majority of what was intended to be a relaxing jog. After these experiences, I was anger, more than anger I was infuriated that Ecuador tolerated such behavior from their men as acceptable. Women are not objects!!! But then upon further reflection, I noted that I also may be to blame. In the U.S., many of us women tend to tolerate and even celebrate the newest sexy style—accepting in many ways that we are objects to looked at rather than people to be known.

A couple weeks back, my group had the opportunity to hike the neighboring mountain, Pichincha. Though most of our time was filled with heavy gasps for air as we trekked up the winding slopes and few words, it was interesting witnessing the community tighten as the masks fell away. Makeup only goes so far when attempting to summit a 15,000 footer. At the beginning, people (myself included) tried to mitigate their breathing, keeping up the pretense that the hike wasn’t so strenuous. But by the last hour of our eight hour endeavor, all such superficial attempts at superior appearance were abandoned. Between the intimidating scrabbling across rocky cliff faces, the clear group support when one colleague unintentionally slide half a dozen feet down the mountain, and the ridiculous Bernie sprint down the sand dunes, the false appearances of confidence and security had fallen away and in its stead remained authentic care and comradery. In those eight hours, we had journeyed beyond the superficial outer objects and shells of ourselves and began to discover the people within—it was a very beautiful thing.