TheExpatJournals.com

Though I didn’t think I would post in here again, I have changed my mind. I’m wiling away a bit of time waiting in the Guayaquil airport for my return to Cuenca. 10 airports and 16 days later…

It had been over 5 years since the last time I was in the US. It is truly different now and so am I. It started in the Atlanta airport. I was amazed the metal detectors in customs are now so sensitive, they picked up my bra underwire and the rivets on my jeans. Next, I realized how strange it looked to see so many tall men everywhere. It took a minute to get out of the habit of speaking Spanish to cashiers and into the habit of flushing toilet paper rather than throwing it in the trash. And then I spotted 2% milk and salt and vinegar potato chips!! Woo Hoo! I drank milk every occasion possible, but only indulged in one (largish) bag of chips.

I had a list of restaurants I wanted to hit, based on memories of my favorites. They’re all still there in a city where things constantly shift. So yes, I ate and shopped my way through NYC. There’s only so much time and a girl must prioritize. I did call a couple of friends, ran into a couple more (love that NYC can still be the smallest big city on earth) and stayed with someone who lives inside my heart alongside my son. She’s not my mother by blood, but is by heart. I had one great dinner with 7 great friends who knew I was coming and set it up in advance. I bought clothes, a new computer, a new wetsuit, scuba gear, cheese, maple syrup, white balsamic vinegar and more…about 75 pounds more. Woo Hoo!

It was very interesting that my chosen mom was not at her apartment when I arrived…very unlike her as she is the epitome of responsible. I tried not to be concerned, so I went across the street to the only restaurant I could see her door from and wowie, the owner is from Guayaquil and the chef is from Cuenca. After 11 years in NYC, the chef is returning home to Cuenca in May and still doesn’t speak English. We had a good time chatting. I found I was already missing Spanish, so he was the perfect opportunity to keep practicing. I quickly got back into the habit of English and by the end of the first weekend, it was amazing how much better I could speak English after a little practice. I only half joke in Ecuador when I say now I suck in two languages…Spanish and English.

On a side note…if adults screamed and yelled in public places and especially on airplanes, like kids do, we would be arrested. Sometime, I think when parents don’t seem to mind imposing their screaming little monsters on others in the vicinity, I’ll reciprocate the decibal level and see how they mind it from other than their own little angels. Isn’t it sort of like the ‘your own farts don’t stink’ concept in terms of screaming kids? There’s a Facebook group: “I wish those screaming kids would shut the f**k up!”

And back to my culture shock. How different is it in the US? Well, I always said New Yorkers really don’t know what the US is like because there’s NYC and there’s the rest of the country. So this trip, I can only speak about what’s changed in NY. For one thing…the price of virtually everything has doubled in the 5 years I’ve been away…literally doubled. $5 for a Sunday Times? $8 for an order of onion rings? $85 for a Knickerbockers T-Bone for 2 that used to be $40? How anyone affords taxis in the city anymore is a mystery. Wow. And that all taxis now have little tv screens ala those on the back of seats in airplanes (though a bit larger) with the news, your fare update, temperature, maps, etc along with a built in, swipe your credit card to pay this taxi fare is just amazing to me.

And how blatant the culture is now consumerism gone wild was mind blowing for me. Everything that inspired me to leave the US…the rampant consumerism, the values revolving around only money, everything being about market share…it all came true. (see this post) Beginning in the airport in Atlanta, I was overwhelmed by the number of options … for everything. Walk into a drug store and you’re presented with 10 times the choices there once were for everything…from aspirin to shoe inserts. In the city, everything now looks like a movie set…no dirt, no grime, no edge just pretty signs, neat and tidy and trendy and polished. I was right back then. The kind of edge that used to exist in the city is gone, completely gone. It’s a city of the elite and the visitors. Anyone else is from the days of yore or of the bridge and tunnel ilk.

Very few institutions are still there, but KMarts, Red Lobster, Ace Hardware and the like sure have popped up all over. Another thing that came to pass…NY is no longer NY…it’s now just another mall in America. No more 100 year old bakeries. All the gourmet markets are new. Balduccis is long gone and even Jefferson Market succumbed this year. I didn’t even bother to go in there. Ah sure, a couple have kept the name, but it’s not the same. What new owners have done to those institutions is the same as what has happened to NYC in general…raised the prices and dumped the soul. I hear Al gave up his Yankee box seats this year. I remember him complaining about them being around $22,000 in 1999, but I hear they are now closer to $200,000. That’s about $625 per ticket which is disgusting. To quote Bill Maher, “What the bleeping bleep?”

Now some might say I’ve been in Latin America where the prices are so low for too long, but I’m sorry…$5 for a newspaper, $625 for a baseball game, $6 for a 4 block taxi ride, $11 for a pack of cigarettes, $3500 a month for a simple 1 BR apartment (600 sq. ft), $22 for a small pizza…and I could keep going with examples of what I think is expensive no matter where you’ve been living for the last 5 years. I am not comparing prices to Latin America. I’m comparing prices to NY of 5 years ago and everything has doubled in spite of the recession and in spite of people not necessarily earning twice what they did 5 years ago even in NYC. I find it appalling that humanity truly has succumbed completely, finally and terminally to capitolism. I’m not surprised, but am still disappointed or disgusted or both.

Having said all that, it took me less than 30 minutes in the Atlanta airport between flights for this to sink in. Before, I could never be a visitor in NYC. I was a New Yorker…belonged there, was one of. It was painful to be anything else. Indeed, the first time I tried to leave NY, I simply couldn’t. Sure, my body was elsewhere, but the minute it returned to NYC, I had no choice but to give in and move back. Letting the US culture of consumerism sink in at the airport did a wonderful thing for me. In that moment, I knew this was no longer for me. And what that did was free me up to be a visitor in NYC for the first time in my life. I could now go, enjoy, shop and leave without feeling a single tug at my heart as her skyline disappeared from view. There’s a lot of freedom in that. I’m happy to be back in Ecuador.

Someone asked me not too long ago if I had reached the point of no return yet. I didn’t quite understand what they meant even though they explained to me. Now I understand. Though I had begun to miss some things about the US (English, 2% milk, the ease of things relative to some similar things in Latin America), the very things I didn’t like are no longer merely a trend…they are now the culture. And those things I wondered how I could live without? Well, I live without them just fine. (Apart from cheddar cheese and parmesan which I brought back in abundance and have, thus far, been lucky enough not to be without.). And what I have found in Ecuador, I now know I could not give up in exchange for a culture that truly does now repulse me. At long last, I am content and dare I say it…maybe even happy.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of things I do not like about life here that I do like about life in the US. I loathe the excrutiately slow pace of communication here and appreciate how quick response is in the US. And that’s across the board…from people responding to an email or phone call on a professional level to the cable guy showing up when he’s supposed to. I like that you don’t have to go through the rigamarole of detailed information just to get a receipt you can use for your taxes in the US vs the painful procedure of procuring a factura - as opposed to recibo - in Ecuador. Being someone without family, I like that I’m not alone in the US and don’t like that I am considered a sad case in Ecuador. In spite of rampant consumerism, I must admit that I do like having a selection in the US vs the ridiculously expensive price of import items in Ecuador…like good cheese or scuba gear or cars or bikes or clothes. I must admit I enjoyed daily life in English vs the challenge it can sometimes be in Spanish. It left me free to think of other things when I didn’t need to spend so much energy just communicating. I like that bureaucracy isn’t as complicated. I really like how polite pedestrians are, how people don’t slam into you on the street and if they bump you or need to pass you, they say ‘excuse me’ as opposed to the irony of the culture here where spoken words are so very polite and yet, they are the most rude people in the world on the street. I like the order of walking on a crowded street vs the chaos in Ecuador.

BUT…there’s no Galapagos in NYC. There’s no perfect climate like Cuenca. There are no cheap taxis, no affordable swimming pools and no big back yards for my dog like I have in Cuenca. A doctor’s visit there can break you financially, but not here. Vets don’t make house calls for dogs there, just horses. Handwoven wool items here cost a fortune there. So yes, lots does revolve around the affordability of being here vs there, but it doesn’t stop there. I am not an expat who lives here simply because it is cheaper to live here. I LIVE here as opposed to it merely costing me less to live. I can understand why people move to Ecuador and then wish they had more ‘US’ here, but at the end of the day, I am happy to be able to look at my mental list of pros and cons and know, this is my choice on all fronts and that the sacrifices necessary for living here do not outweigh the sacrifices I would have to make for living there again.

So I got more from this trip than merely a new wetsuit and cheese and clothes. I got validation for my choice and along with that, a mental freedom I didn’t even realize I was lacking until now.