Full chévere

I have officially moved in with my Ecuadorian family. I have a brother who is 25, kinda cool because I always wanted a brother. Another cool thing is that he is kinda like the male version of my actual sister back home. He just graduated university to become a lawyer, just as my sister aims to do. He is very polite and so caring. I just talked with him for about an hour about how we feel about injustice and human rights, it was very “full chévere” (some slang he taught me…and yes ‘full’ is used the same way as in English, they just use it to describe everything…full of cool). I would say my family is very full chévere. And my ecuadorian mother is such a beautiful lady, so full of love and kindness. She is a retired social worker who spent her time working with different indigenous peoples, abused women and spent most of time dealing with poverty. She gave me some great books (although they’re in Spanish) about the struggles that indigenous groups have faced here in Ecuador. She already refers to me as her “hijita” or little daughter. I feel lucky to have the opportunity to get to know them better. They have such knowledge on all the topics I’m interested in focusing on in terms of my placement later on in the year. 

Their hospitality and the love they’ve shown me makes me miss my real family, but I’m also so very grateful to be accepted as part of an Ecuadorian family. 

Love you all, I’ll keep you posted as my experiences continue. 

Xoxo

full chévere E