When making my decision to live and teach abroad three years ago, a major concern for me was language. How will I communicate? How will I get what I need? Will the locals understand me? How will I make friends?

Learning the spoken language is obviously one of the most essential steps in getting to know a place and a culture. Spanish greatly influenced my decision to work in Latin America. As an international teacher, I could be earning 2-3 times as much in Asia than what I make here in Ecuador, and with a lower cost of living. But the language and the culture appeal to me. And Spanish seemed more accessible, and “easier” to learn.

Before moving to Ecuador, I was living and working in Denver, Colorado, so Spanish was all around me. According to friends and several guidebooks, Ecuador was supposedly an ideal place to learn Spanish, as their dialect is clearer and slower than, say, the Spanish in Colombia or Argentina. And after my experience studying Spanish in Cuenca and living here for a few years, I can definitively say, with self-admitted cultural relativism, that Ecuador is a great place to learn Spanish. But what about the non-verbal cues that we send during a conversation?

According to William Cruz’s “Differences in Nonverbal Communication Styles between Cultures: The Latino-Anglo Perspective,” (recommended reading, by the way) two-thirds of the meaning conveyed in all social encounters is non-verbal. Cruz writes for an academic journal, Leadership and Management in Engineering, but his tips could be equally valuable for the traveler/ visitor/ new resident of Latin America.

So, I would like to mention a few of the essential non-verbal cues that foreign travelers and residents should be aware of here in Ecuador: greetings,the smile, personal space issues, and direct eye contact. As a disclaimer, these practices vary greatly within Ecuador and the region, so these are generalizations that may or may not apply to your location.

1. Greetings are one of the most obvious points of departure between Latin and Anglo culture. Women and men and women and women touch right cheek to right cheek and make the kissing noise when greeting each other. This is common in most of Latin America. When entering a room, it is considered rude not to greet everyone in the room in this way. And the handshake is of course customary between men and men. But it is not the firm handshake that you may be accustomed to in the states; a lighter, softer handshake is considered more polite. If you go in with a firm squeeze it could be considered offensive. Greetings fall under kinesics, or the “study of body movements and facial expressions as a systematic part of communication” (Cruz 52).
2. The smile also falls under kinesics. In Ecuador, the smile is used frequently (especially on the coast) in personal, business and school situations. Anglos tend to smile less and are therefore perceived as “cold” or unfriendly. But the smile has been a double-edged sword for me. I tend to smile and laugh frequently. And as a teacher, this has backfired on me before by giving the impression that I am less formal and lack authority compared to other teachers.
3. Personal space, or “proxemics” is also a common point of difference between Latin and Anglo cultures. Because Ecuadorians have a smaller “personal bubble” than most visitors from the US, it can be considered rude to step away from a person while talking. Ecuadorians are “close talkers” for sure, so be ready to have your space invaded! Even just waiting in a line at the supermarket or bank, be ready for less space between you and those around you. In the classroom, I have learned that Quiteños don’t have this phobia of touching that we have in the states. In Colorado, I would think twice about even giving a pat on the back to my students. But here in Quito, I can’t imagine a class period that I don’t greet my male students with a handshake, and use an occasional touch to congratulate or calm a student.
4. Finally, oculesics, the study of the use of eyes in personal communication, regularly comes into play. According to Cruz, in Latin culture, “prolonged direct eye contact means you are challenging the person, that you are angry, or that you have a romantic interest in the person.” (53). This has been confirmed by my unfailing focus group of Quiteños students and by my experience here. It’s no wonder that in class, when I use eye contact to engage a student or try to get his/her attention, the student occasionally thinks I am angry and is reluctant to respond.

So fellow bloggers and idealists, are these behaviors similar or different in your current location? I know I only mentioned a few tips, so please add to the list!

“Ya es muy tarde,” the receptionist said to me. Come back tomorrow between 7:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m.

I’m thinking, “The doctor is right here, you are here, you don’t look like you are closing anytime soon. Why can’t you take my blood?”

“Esta bien. Mañana,” I answer instead.

My doctor told me I needed to get some blood work done to make sure I’m not anemic or have any other disease that might be harmful to the baby growing inside me. When explaining where the lab is, he said, “It’s right across the street from the clinic.” Ok, easy, I thought. But then I go to the clinic and across the street is the public health department. Maybe it’s in here. So I go in, wait in line and ask a lady if I’m in the right place. Nope. She tells me to walk outside then turn left and there’s a lab right around the corner. I do this.

There’s a black door to a building practically connected to the public heath center. No sign, but cars. I knock. Nothing. I knock again. I hear rustling behind the door, but no one answers. I tell myself to calm down. This isn’t going to be an easy nine months, especially if I let myself get worked up every time I follow directions given to me by a local.

I see a stranger walking down the road.

“Disculpa. Where is the laboratory for blood work?” He led me down the road I was on to another road. Up about three houses was a sign that read “Laboratorio.”

“Muchas gracias,” I tell him.

It seems the inherent mindset here works on a completely different wavelength. Instructions are always few; plans are non-existent. This doesn’t give a foreign pregnant lady a lot of comfort. I swear if I was Mexican I’d understand the directions and instructions given me. Maybe it’s something in the air my American lungs don’t want to breathe. Maybe it’s something about being born here.

My plan: a lot of patience (which comes so naturally) and maybe a pen and notebook everywhere I go so people can draw little maps for me.

If I’m lucky, the baby inside me will be born with this intuitive knowledge that I’m sure my blood won’t give him or her.

Gena Thomas is a women’s coop laborer and faith-based coffee shop co-manager with her husband in Mexico. For more on her experiences, check out her blog.

But please don’t interpret this as whining. I embrace these incidences for what they are: tests of my fortitude and my optimism. They also up my street credit as a backpacker.

A man on a chicken bus, via Flickr user Geoff Gallice (Creative Commons)

But as I said, I’ve come to expect major discouragements like these to crop up at least once every trip. And as per my current travels in Guatemala, I have not been disappointed. Last weekend found me headed toward Quetzaltenango to try to catch a game of their fútbol team, the Xelajú. I was in good spirits as I had a soccer game to look forward to and because chicken buses are always a fun and hectic experience. At our last bus transfer before Xela, I hopped off the bus with considerable gusto and was elated to discover that our final bus was a charter bus — costs a little more, but you get an actual seat and sometimes there’s even a movie!

But I scarcely had time to listen for the usual dubbed Spanish before I noticed that my bag was unzipped and my wallet and camera had gone missing. My heart dropped.  I jumped off of the bus (with something akin to gusto, only more panic-ridden), and I ran to the last bus transfer point where I watched the last bus speed away and several seemingly suspicious and all-too-happy looking characters stalk off into the distance. I couldn’t tell if my things had been stolen or if my animated leap off of the last bus had sent them flying into the air without my notice. I sighed, and climbed back onto the charter bus with my friends.

But losing my wallet in Xela that day was a best case scenario: I immediately called the bank from my phone to cancel my debit card and I had luckily left my credit cards and a secret stash of U.S. dollars at the house in Solola. Not to mention I was traveling with four friends who were all too happy to lend me money for the rest of the weekend. Though we actually missed the Xelajú game, we still had an awesome time playing foosball at Xela’s Pool & Beer. And in a glorious twist of fate, I won every round.

Kate Bennett is currently researching nonprofit effectiveness in Guatemala. For more about her experiences, check out her blog.

Finding out you are pregnant in another country can be difficult on many levels. Although the news is very exciting, getting the word out poses serious difficulty when Internet and Internet-based phones don’t always work the way we’d like them to. Then there is time-zone differences and soon-to-be-grandparents who cannot wait to spill the beans to other family members.

Photo via Flickr user gabi_menashe (Creative Commons)

We have somewhat prepared our parents with the thought that we’d one day have a child in Mexico, and despite their initial opposition, they are coming around to the idea — and getting their passports in order for a visit.

But it’s trying to get the word out in a personal way that is most difficult. Facebook seems the easiest method, but also the most impersonal. We have a Magic Jack phone, but when we have a coffee shop full of web-surfers, it’s difficult to hear the person on the other end. So we’ve sent lots of emails and “personal” Facebook messages. In addition, we have two worlds to tell: those back in our home country and those here in our new country.

And now we find ourselves asking around: how does this work in Mexico? What’s the best option for foreigners? We have been told that hospitals here don’t allow family members in the room during or even after the pregnancy, but clinics allow you to have whoever you want in the room with you. So a clinic it will be. As we search the coming weeks for the right clinic and the right doctor, maybe the cat will fully be out of the bag, so we can move onto the next-step challenges of all of this excitement.

Gena Thomas is a women’s coop laborer and faith-based coffee shop co-manager with her husband in Mexico. For more on her experiences, check out her blog.

I’ve been collaborating with UNV Coordination Officer Antonio Graziano on a water management project, but he took some time to share his thoughts on UNV and the panorama of volunteerism in Latin America via email.

Q: How did you become involved with the work of UNV? What are some inspiring elements of the work?

A: I became involved because of my previous experience with the United Nations, but above all owing to my experience and familiarity with civil society and volunteer organizations. The inspiring elements are precisely the principles of volunteerism: that which is given freely, with solidarity, liberty, and the commitment and connections that are created through volunteerism. Volunteerism benefits individual volunteers and society at large.

Q: Are there some challenges that you see for the promotion of the “volunteer spirit” in Latin America?

A: To redefine the term and generate a dialogue between the term “volunteerism” and the term “militancy.” To use volunteerism to construct new paradigms, to redefine Marxist paradigms in light of our times, to foster the construction of identity and the mobilization of social movements at the base.

Q: What characteristics can the militant tradition offer for volunteerism?

A: For example, mutual aid networks (e.g. networks opposing domestic violence), human rights advocacy, participation in political parties and civil organizations, etc.

Q: Historically, in what ways do you think that the political changes in Latin America in the last 40 years have affected or defined the concept of volunteerism?

A: An important question. I think it’s difficult to establish a close correlation and express it in abbreviated form. Forty years entails changes in politics, the construction of economic neoliberalism as a new form of capitalism and the construction of new social movements outside of the traditional capital-worker conflict, and re-defining this conflict and other traditional Marxist concepts in order to acknowledge new social conflicts. Volunteerism should be interpreted along these lines. In order that, and because, volunteerism in the contemporary era is influenced by and in turn constructs these concepts.

Next week: Antonio talks about volunteerism in Uruguay.

This interview was conducted by and translated from Spanish to English by Flora Lindsay-Herrera. She is currently a Fulbright Fellow in Montevideo, Uruguay. For more about her experiences, check out her blog.

Andrew, my husband, was having a hard time breathing. I couldn’t stop breathing hard.

My mind was thinking, “What! I can’t do this!” But survival mode drove us home, mixed up the medicine and filled the syringe. To feel official, I grabbed a cotton swab, dabbed rubbing alcohol on it and wiped it on where we approximated would be a good spot. It seemed the last time Andrew got a shot it was around this same area. The directions said as soon as you mix the powder and the liquid, immediately inject it. Andrew was repeating Nike’s famous slogan while keeping his eyes closed. Scared by chemistry and certain words in Spanish I didn’t understand, in addition to my fast-paced mind, I just quickly pierced Andrew’s skin. Surprisingly it went in quickly and easily and I pushed the syringe down, watching the liquid (and my fear of the unknown) disappear.

It was over, and I felt so accomplished. I did something I never thought I’d have to. I did something I didn’t know I had the brains to do. Andrew was not bleeding, and I had another 24 hours before I’d have to do it again.

Gena Thomas is a women’s coop laborer and faith-based coffee shop co-manager with her husband in Mexico. For more on her experiences, check out her blog.

What they really wanted to hear from me was a time-frame and a plan. In other words, they still expected me to have an obligation to something. In fact, I had conjured up a response that seemed to please people more — and it included finding a paying job.

These expectations, however, led me to ask: What “real” responsibilities and obligations should I have as a woman in my mid-twenties?

Three young girls in Granada, Nicaragua

In most of Central America, it is common for young women to begin having children at a very early age. I took some awesome one-on-one Spanish lessons at Spanish School Xpress in Granada, Nicaragua and in one lesson we discussed cultural differences about this topic.

In my Spanish teacher’s words, it is “normal”for a young girl to become a mother very young due to various social norms (e.g. religion and tradition). She will take on the responsibilities of supporting a family and this will likely be the role she has for the rest of her life. I will not get too deep into this complex topic here but the main point we discussed was that although my tutor did not want this life for her two young girls, she was not planning to directly discuss with them anything relating to sex or the alternative opportunities they could pursue if they avoided young pregnancy. It is the path she and her mother took and she “would not be surprised,” she said, if her daughters led the same life.

Now, to apply this same mentality to my homeland, I question why parents in the U.S. often silently (sometimes not so silently) encourage their children to take on more responsibility as early as possible. We assume we should rush through college and directly after find a decent job that ties us down to a location, eventually find a mate, buy a home and start a family… all with the approval of our parents. Why don’t the typical American parents express to their children that there are other options and encourage them to break the mold? Especially if what they said to me before I left is now what they know to be true?

Why can’t my obligations lie beyond our borders, rather than in “starting my life” in the U.S. so quickly?

In the next few weeks, I will be interviewing various individuals in the quarter-life age group: those who are traveling and/or working abroad focused on contributing to society and those who are studying and/or working in the U.S. I will be asking them questions about their future plans, relationship with their parents, and exploring the themes of this blog, value and experience.

If you have any suggestions/questions or want to participate in an interview, please let me know!

Texan Whitney Devin is currently traveling around Central America, seeking volunteer opportunities.

The Chilean English professors use English-Spanish dictionaries pretty often in class. Unfortunately, the ones we have are old. When you pick some of them up, they fall apart. Pages slip out onto the floor, and students frantically run to gather and scotch-tape them together. Moreover, all the dictionaries are covered with extremely colorful graffiti, not appropriate to be repeated in this post. These inscriptions tend to be quite the distraction in class; instead of looking up English words, kids turn their books sideways and upside-down trying to make out exactly who did what with whom.

At a ceremony last month, a be-gloved student carries scissors on a silver platter to the representatives of EnergiAustral, our corporate sponsor, so that they can cut the ribbon separating us from our new texts.

And in library storage, there are 50+ brand-new Oxford English-Spanish dictionaries, languishing in their plastic wrap. But we couldn’t use them until last month.

“Why not?” I asked innocently when I first found out.

“They were part of a large donation,” a colleague explained, “from a private company. We can’t open them until the official ceremony.” This means that for six months – three-quarters of the school year – we continued using fifth-rate resources, waiting for the corporate donors to arrive, give speeches, and take a picture with the brand-new books.

Here’s another: my school actually has a computer lab with thirty brand-new PCs, head phones, microphones, video cameras, and internet access. Incredible. And we can’t use it. Why not? Because due to poor teacher vigilance, the kids trashed it last year: they stole cables, broke a few keyboards, etc. This year no one uses it; it has supposedly been in repair all year. It might be fixed by now, it might not – honestly, I don’t think anyone asks anymore. The general feeling is that the students can’t be trusted to use the lab – so no-one uses the lab.

Inaccessible resources like these are so common here that they have a name: elefantes blancos, white elephants.

A more personal white elephant incident was my discovery that Puerto Aisén owns an Steinway A  grand piano. It lives in the town hall’s cinema, which is unheated and damp (awful conditions for the instrument) and, to prevent vandalism, it sits locked in a wire cage. It is never released, and no-one ever touches it. I played it once when my friend and I sweet-talked Mario, the projectionist, into letting me in for a few minutes, but it was so cold I could barely move my fingers. In any case Mario was nervous about his boss coming back so he shooed us out fairly quickly – he could get in trouble. The piano continues to sit alone in its icy cell.

Working for the Harlem Children’s Zone back in New York City, we had less trouble getting around bureaucracy, red tape, and formalities. Our main problem was that we had no money. Whereas here, the funding and resources – all those white elephants – are out there. We just can’t seem to catch them.

Nereida Heller is currently volunteering in Puerto Aisén, Chile with the English Open Doors Program. For more about her experiences, check out her blog.

Matt’s idea was ingenious. The books Forest Hills donated will be used for many years, but for the current students at Mexico Nuevo, the books have recognizable faces behind them.

Skype, an internet-based program that allows people to video chat for free, became even more exciting a few months ago when three of my former students had a live video talk with three students from Forest Hills High School near Charlotte, NC. My friend Matt, who teaches leadership and English at the school, heard about our need to collect books. He and his leadership class collected over 2,000 books for us so we can begin building a library at our middle and high school in northern Mexico. We decided to set up a chat.

What was extra exciting for my students was that one of the students on the other side of the screen was originally from Mexico. And one of my students used to live in the States. So although they were supposed to be practicing their English, they were able to speak some Spanish. Another of the three students in North Carolina was an exchange student from Germany; the Mexican students asked him to speak some German for them. He did. They giggled. Then all six went around telling a bit about themselves, and asking questions about the others. They talked about music, movies, traveling. They did not stop smiling.

Our school, Mexico Nuevo, was buzzing with talk from the three students who transformed into privileged beings for that 30 minutes of conversation with el otro lado.

Gena Thomas is a women’s coop laborer and faith-based coffee shop co-manager with her husband. For more on her experiences, check out her blog. For more on tech tools in Latin America, check out Amanda Patterson’s “Translation on the Fly.”

La cueca, the Chilean baile nacional, is a ritualized mating dance between rooster and hen. The lady prances back and forth waving her handkerchief (pañuelo) coyly; the huaso (Chilean cowboy) takes manly strides, trying to entrap her with his own pañuelo. There are lots of complicated patterns and steps with names like vuelta, media luna, redonda, escobillado, zapateo, etc. Done well, it is quite beautiful.

When a few of my students and colleagues asked me to dance cueca in the September 18^th assembly, my up-for-anything volunteer mentality prompted me to agree. I told them if they could teach me, I would do it.

In the States, if someone had handed me a hanky and a funny dress, and instructed me to mince about batting my eyelashes, I would have laughed my head off. Battling that reaction was the most difficult part of my three cueca rehearsals. It wasn’t just a matter of getting over my self-consciousness – or even of reminding myself that cueca is normal for Chileans. Rather, the key was to appreciate the beauty of the dance – the theater of it – and to take pleasure in playing my part. My students would be tickled to death no matter what I did, so I thought I’d try and do the la cueca justice.

On the eve of the big day, I found myself practicing cueca at home alone, with my host-family’s black lab following me around trying to steal my pañuelo. As I caught glimpses of myself in the mirror, waving my hanky and stomping my feet, I had a hard time keeping a straight face.

But I got my giggles out in time. The dance went well and I was proud to have pushed through the embarrassment – I even got some good feedback. One of my students reported her mother’s reaction as “La gringa se defendió”  – which I translated to myself as “Warn’t half bad.” I’ll take it.

Nereida Heller is currently volunteering in Puerto Aisén, Chile with the English Open Doors Program. For more about her experiences, check out her blog. For more on dance in Latin America, check out Kent Green’s “We Dance If We Want To (so why don’t we)?” and “Cultural Portals” by Gena Thomas.