I have overestimated society…

A text message conversation:

Me: Thing I have learned: if you go to a bar alone they give you liberal pours of wine
Boyfriend: Certainly with an ass like that
Me: They can’t even see my ass because I’m sitting behind the bar
Boyfriend:  That ass surrounds the bar (something to do with relativity) 
Me: Hey! No need to be mean…
Boyfriend: I meant in a good way!

And then the check arrives…  

Rule No. 1 of Job Searching: You do not talk about job searching

I am in the market for a new job.  I have been neglecting this blog. The two are not unrelated.

While I was abroad this summer, working a job which is a 24-hour-a-day commitment (the workday goes from 6:30 AM - 10:30 PM and it’s not unusual for us to get woken up in the middle of the night by sick students) there was no time to compose pithy musings. When I got back, it seemed too monumental a task to sum up two months abroad in a few paragraphs.

And then I found myself eyeball deep in the search for a new job.

What’s on my mind these days? Looking for jobs, applying for jobs, and interviewing for jobs. I have stories about all of these things, stories that might actually have some entertainment value, with insights into the current job market & economic crisis and the general state of employment and being a 20-something in America today.

The problem is, I do not keep an anonymous blog.  This humble tumblr is the first thing that pops up when you type my name into Google, and I therefore do not know who’s reading. If I gloat about getting an interview for a position I’m excited about, does make the next company less likely to call because I don’t seem as needing of a job? If I then rant about said interview, does that make me look bad to future employers? If I write about job searching and then still do not have gainful employment two months later does it make me seem unemployable? I just don’t know. In this economy, you don’t want to do anything to hurt your chances. So, until I actually get a job I feel like I have to keep my mouth shut. Which may mean a dearth in posts, because I have little else of import on my mind these days. That doesn’t mean I won’t find some ridiculous animal videos to post, though…

And if you’re a potential employer who happens to stumble across this blog: Hi! I’m awesome and will work hard.  You should hire me!

Those minor cultural differences…

I´m spending the summer in Ecuador (Quito, The Galapagos, the Amazon, and the Andes) leading a service learning trip for high school aged students.  Yesterday, I flew from Denver, Colorado into Quito to prepare for the trip.

I´ve been to Ecuador before - in 2009, leading the same trip - so it wasn´t completely foreign, but there are definitely aspects of the culture that you forget about.  On the plane to Quito, I got seated amoungst a large group of Ecuadorians returning home, and was reminded that they (or perhaps all South Americans?) have very different personal-space paradigms.  It started when a large man uncerimoniously smushed his hairy, protruding belly against my cheek as he hoisted his bag into the overhead compartment. No apology, no adknowledgement, just a mouthful of bellybutton lint for me to chew on.  He kept it there for a good five minutes, helping all the rest of his family members hoist their belongings, as well.

Upon landing in Quito, you exit the plane into a long, modern looking hallway.  It seems to go on for nearly a mile, and there are no doors to other gates or restrooms. When you get to that point when your bladder is just about to fill past capacity, you finally descend the stairs into the not-quite-as-modern immigration room.  There´s a single bathroom on the other side of the room, but if you´re anything like me, instaed you decide to hop into the immigration line while it´s still short, because you assume (erroniously, it turns out) that there will be a bathroom you can use in customs while you´re waiting for your bag to arrive.

Baggage claim and customs serves as a further reminder of how Ecuadorians view personal space differentally than we Americans do.  In America, we tend to wait politely for our luggage to come off the carosel (ideally, in my opinion, several feet back from the edge so people whose bags are actually there have easy access, but that doesn´t happen nearly as often as one would hope.) In Ecuador, it feels like you´re a character in a video game trying to find the Golden Egg.  First you search among the piles of random bags, stacked in precariously balanced pyramids.  Then you have to jump over and squeeze between the large luggage carts (because apparently no one traveling into Ecuador arrives with less than 6 large, hard-cased suitcases, most likely tightly seran wrapped for security purposes) to get to the carosel. At first, it appears that there´s only one, long carosel, but it turns out there are actually two! So after ten minutes of waiting at one, you finally realize you´re not in the right place at all and you have to hop back over the luggage carts to the other side of the room.  And careful of all of the other passangers trying to get their stuff! For the most part, niceties are ignored.  You don´t ask for permission to squeeze between people, you just plow on through, and you certainly don´t apologize after bumping someone. It´s easy to pick out the Europeans and Americans because we turn sideways, whisper “permisso” or “perdon” and try to slide slyly between people.  

Once you finally find the right carosel, then you have to pay attention that someone else doesn´t pull your bag off before it gets to you - I´m not talking anything malicious, it just seems that some bags are worth of riding all the way around the carosel and others are picked to be tossed onto the floor into a newly-forming pyramid. Of course, I didn´t know this until I witnessed my bright blue and orange backpack come in off the truck, then lifted up and off by someone else.  I, of course, freaked out, leveled up to super-speed, and navigated back to the other side of the carosel. And there was my bag, safe and sound.  From there, all I had to do was wait in a 45 minute line to have my custom form collected and bag scanned, then find my Chilean co-leader, Javier, who I´d only ever seen in his Facebook profile picture, from amoungst the hundreds of people waiting to meet their friends and family, and proceed to take a taxi (which Javier had arranged in the 2 hours he´d been waiting for me, not realizing it wasn´t a legal cab) to our hostal in the middle of the part of the city I didn´t spend any time in in 2009.  Easy Peasy.

Well, I´m now here safe and sound, and have learned how to identify legal taxis for when the kids arrive (tomorrow!)

If you´re interested in the day-to-day happenings of the trip, my students will be keeping a blog at:http://www.lifeworks-international.com/blogs/allblogs.php I will also try to keep this updated somewhat regularly, hopefully with pieces that are a bit longer and more in depth on one particular issue.  But really, it will probably soon descend into your run-of-the-mill “you´ll never guess what I got to do today!” travel blogs.