And Another Thing

Since this is probably one of our only venting sessions I (Tesha) thought I'd jump on and say one more thing about Ecuador/Ecuadorians that frustrates/confuses us. First, let's think about an every day situation in the United States: You’re at the grocery store. You don't have a cart. You're browsing in the middle of the cereal aisle deciding which one you'd like to have for the next morning's breakfast. While deciding you notice out of the corner of your eye that someone else is moving down your aisle with a shopping cart. You are in the middle of the aisle and the person is looking like they want to pass you so you....
a) Take one step and move out of the way
b) Pretend like you don't see them and continue standing directly in the middle of the aisle as to make it very difficult for them to maneuver their cart around you

Now I may be an optimist but I believe most of us would trouble ourselves to take that extra step so the person with the cart could easily pass. Common courtesy right? Not here in Ecuador. Seriously, it's like all people of all ages have the "I'm not going to move" mentality. It happens to us everywhere...buses, malls, grocery stores, sidewalks… At first we thought that they were just giving us "gringos" a hard time but then we noticed that everyone does it to everyone else no matter what their race or status is.

We're getting used to it now; plus we're getting really good at making ourselves a lot smaller to squeeze by people, but it still one of those things that makes you really appreciate certain common courtesies in Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.