Growing Patience in Quito

Today I have what I affectionately call a Quito Headache. A Quito Headache can arise out of any number of frustrating circumstances, including the following:

• Buses that either don’t come, or come really late, or are completely stuffed with people, and never fully stop while I’m trying to get off and cause me to almost twist my ankle
•  A too big lunch with just enough strange food that I spend the afternoon feeling sick to my stomach
•  Getting no sleep due to car alarms, barking dogs, and guards whistling at invisible ladrones
•  A few too many catcalls on my walk home
• No one shows up to my internship, so I wait for an hour or so before deciding to go home
• When someone finally shows up, they don’t have anything for me to do
• When they say they will meet up with me, call me or email me, they never do

HECUA did warn us that it would be this way; that we would be thrown into a world unlike our own and that we would need to come armed with patience. Quito has been tearing through my supply a bit too quickly, so I’ve been trying to find ways to restock.

How to grow patience in Quito:

• Sleep enough. For me this means being an old woman and going to bed at 10 or 10:30 whenever I can, since the dogs will be at it again in full force around 6am.
• Appease myself with fruit. After a particularly frustrating day, I always stop at one of the fruit vendors and buy myself something. Today I got a huge bag of 20 delicious mandarinas for a dollar.
• Remember that even the hours spent waiting in FENOCIN’s lobby, with their adorable, travieso kitty (who actually managed to rip apart and break my backpack yesterday while my back was turned…) are learning experiences, if only in understanding how hard it is here for organizations that work on social change. 
• Of course, even though we’re supposed to limit our contact with folks back home, a good skype date can always get me back in the right mindset. (Especially when my bro just laughs at me as I rant. Typical.)
• And if that doesn’t work, this always does.