Justin McCandless

I only have a little over a week left in Ecuador, so I'll try to get in as many posts as I can before my trip is over. I realized that I haven't really posted that much on what I do on a typical day to day basis here in Loja, so that's what this post is about. Sans travelling, giant pigs, or anything out of the ordinary whatsoever, here's what I do on an average workday.

My alarm goes off around 7:30, though if the dorms at Michigan hadn't turned me into an incredibly deep sleeper, the roosters, honking cars, and construction in the lot outside my window would have me up way earlier. I then hop in the shower, which I would normally complain about, but my host family's house happens to be one of the fairly rare places in Ecuador with a water heater, and for that I am instead just very, very grateful.

I then head downstairs for breakfast, which is always waiting for me thanks to my family's awesome live-in maid, Irene. Breakfast is typically some bread from one of the many panaderías (bakeries) here in Loja, though it varies a lot, and sometimes I'll have mote (really big white corn) or a hardboiled egg as well, for example. Also, there's always some really good, really fresh juice to go with it. I think I've mentioned how fresh the fruit is here (as well as the vegetables and cheese), and the juice is made in our kitchen in a blender so it's just as good. There are some different fruits here as well, like passion fruit, papaya, mango, tree tomato, granadilla, and way too many different kinds of bananas. Oh, and rounding it off, I always get some sort of hot drink for breakfast as well; either coffee, hot chocolate, or milk. Overall it's a good deal.

Then I grab my backpack with my computer in it and head out the door. I walk to work, which is pretty close, but we live near the river at the low part of the valley so it's all uphill. It's a few blocks up past a gas station, a roundabout with a statue of some soldier guy in the middle, and a bunch of the little stores that are on every corner. Because of the slope of the city, you have a good view from wherever you're at, so I do have some nice scenery of the town and the green mountains on my way. I usually arrive at around 8:30, though nobody is strict about that at all.

Our office is in a house in a residential-ish neighborhood (the old one was about the same way and nearby, this is our new office). I buzz the intercom at the door, which what almost all houses have at the gate in the wall surrounding it. When I walk in I say good morning and give a typical Ecuador greeting to whoever is around (hand shake for men and kiss on the cheek for women). I sit down in the office I share with 2 other people, Ángel and Paola, when they're around, and set up my computer.

I then get to work on whatever I need to do on the website for the day. Which is always determined by me. I work completely independently, and nobody else in the office has any clue about web design. So I basically get to do what I want, within the loose boundaries of everyone's expectations for the website. There are obviously benefits to strictly managed projects in groups (which I must find next summer), but I've definitely taken advantage of the freestyle work environment. I've really, really taught myself a lot about web design and coding while sitting at my desk thinking, "Hmm, what could I ridiculously over design on this part of the website..." But in the end it really benefitted me, and even if no one in the office ends up taking much time in maintaining the easily updated, news feed enabled beast of a website that I wrote and it stays static, it still is a massive improvement over the old website and will make them look much more professional.

Usually sometime before lunch someone gets coffe and some sort of food, and we all go in to the kitchen to hang out and eat. Usually it's bread of some sort, or tamales. There are maybe a dozen of us in the office when everyone is around, so it's not that big of a place. I still don't know a lot of people at work that well, aided not by my shyness or the fact that most Ecuadorians think that there is no such thing as a Spanish speaking gringo. I'm also the youngest person at Arcoiris, though there are a good amount of twenty something year olds. The people I have gotten to know are really cool though, Ángel and Paola of course, as well as Luis whose wife I work for in my other job, and even a few of the younger people.

After this few minute break it's back to work, until around 1:00pm when people start leaving for lunch. I usually get back to my house a little after that, and everyone is usually home and about to eat. As I mentioned before, Ecuadorian lunches are the biggest meal of the day, and everyone comes home from work/school to eat. We always have some sort of soup first, followed by the main course which always has rice, and usually has some sort of bananas and meat. It's good, and always home cooked.

I don't have to be back to work until 2:30pm at the earliest, so after I eat I usually have some time to kill. Usually I hang out at the house with the family, but a lot of other times I'll go walk downtown, or to the park nearby, or something like that. Or maybe even take a nap. It's a nice lunch break.

After that it's back to Arcoiris. Another round of greetings and I'm back to work on the website for the rest of the day. People usually start leaving around 6:00, but for me it varies. When I get off sometimes I'll go to a cyber, talk to my family back home, and mess around on the internet doing stuff I wanted to do earlier but couldn't because I was working. Other times I'll get picked up to go work my second job.

Paola (different than the Arcoiris Paola) will take me over to her and Luis's house. Then I'll set up in their living room and get working on whatever she needs me to do on any of the several sites she is always working on at a time for clients. Her favorite thing to work on is the actual appearance of sites, and she's a master at Flash. I'm much more into the underlying structure and code, so together we make a pretty good team. I'll usually get as much done there as I can and take whatever I still need to do home, communicating my work via email. I should continue to work at this job after I return to the US as well.

Whatever happens after I get done at Arcoiris, I usually don't ever get home much later than 8:00. We eat dinner around then, which again as mentioned in an earlier post is much less formal than lunch. And sometimes it actually is leftover lunch, in contrast to how we do it in the US. After that I might hang out with whoever is around the house, read, or work on some of my non-Ecuador related web design projects. Then I'm usually in bed by 10:30 or so.

So there you go, that's how I've been living for the last few months. Though it's all about to change in a week! The other day Pria and Demetri headed back home, so all is coming to a close (Maria will be the only foreigner left until September something). Today the majority of the family is going to Quito to see my host brother Renato off to his trip to Belgium for a year, so it'll be quiet around here. And then next Saturday I leave and begin my own trip to Quito to make my flight Tuesday afternoon.

I'll continue to write throughout, though. I just got the FTP-less updating of the Arcoiris site working on my own blog, so even during my travels to Quito I should be able to write from cybers. So I've still got a bit of time left, and I have to make it awesome!