keeping in touch with familia

I did not come to Ecuador with the intention of forgetting my family existed. But sometimes I do. I spent this week calling family from the embassy. I was spending the past two weeks in Quito taking a GIS course, and the embassy is on my way to class. Some days I decide to go to the embassy and step on home soil (well…its more like home marble tiles) and call family and friends.

Usually when I call my dad I am received with a warm hello and what is new. We talk for a bit and then he says, “I´ll let you go,” as if I already made any indication that I was in a hurry. “But I don´t have anywhere to be…”
“Who is paying for this.”
“Me.”
“Okay, bye. Thanks for calling.” Click. That is love.

Then there is my mother. Our fone conversations tend to be much longer and all about art school. No, I am not an artist, nor am I in school. My mom does all the talking. I guess you could say she does a good job at making it seem as though I never left home and that she is right beside me. Our calls usually end with me saying I have to go. While this might be embarrassing, I will admit that the calls usually end with me having to go to the bathroom. That’s how much I hear about art school.

Now onto my brother Sahm (pronounced Psalm). With him I had a conversation about how dangerous Quito is. The conversation ended with:
“Be safe. Don´t get a kidney stolen and don´t get raped.”
“How do you know that neither of those things have already happened to me?”
“You would be in Vancouver by now.” Fair argument. When I hung up I ran to the bathroom and checked my lower back for scars and stitches. I am okay!

When I got back to the hostel I suggested that the other intern and I get private rooms.

Another fun part of the conversation was when I mentioned that I was seeing an Ecuadorean guy. My brother immediately gets interested in these kinds of things. When I find something in which my brother is interested I immediately keep it on this topic of conversation, because if I don´t the conversation is dead in 10 seconds due to his unbelievably short attention span. Common conversation topics are economics and Grey´s Anatomy (which I pretend that I watch for his sake).

Once I found out that my brother was interested in something I had to say, I continued talking about the rasta boy. “He is in a reggae band that is actually pretty big.” My brother googled the band and laughed at the fact that I was seeing an Ecuadorean.
“A native Ecuadorean?” he said as if it is something so surprising and exotic when you are in Ecuador.
“Well, he isn´t indigenous but he is Ecuadorean.” For some reason my brother is always impressed with the race of the significant other of anyone!

I remember when he was introducing me to my cousins girlfriend at the time. “Ali has a girlfriend. She´s Persian! He is keeping the blood lines clean.”

My cousin ended up marrying this woman, and then made the silly mistake of making my brother the MC at the wedding. Sahm just had to open the night with “I NEVER thought that Ali would marry a Persian.” He then continued to make their Iranian-ness the theme of the night by blurting out Iranian words (with an awful accent) and pleading the bride to introduce him to some of her cute Persian friends. At one point he stood up singing Happy Birthday in Farsi in the middle of the speeches.

When asked how I knew the bride and groom all I could say was, “I am NOT Sahm´s sister!”

Sometimes I think that the less I call my brother, the less he will rub off on me. One can only hope.

Moving on….

My cousin is pretty much a brother to me (maybe...no, DEFINATELY more brotherly than my real brother) so I feel it is necessary to include him in this post. Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t have exactly the same blood lines. Fortunately for him, it makes him more normal than the other three individuals included in this post. When I feel as though I need to speak to someone who reminds me of home but is normal, I call him. Thanks Ali, you help the family blend into society…especially Sahm (but there is definitely room for improvement).

Anyways, I have been spending more hours at the embassy than I ever thought would happen. But I feel as though it is now my right as a citizen to make free long distance fone calls. Even though I spend minutes of each conversation explaining why I am at the embassy. My parents never thought it would be a common hang out, my cousin thinks I am a super-dork, and I don’t think my brother has ever stepped foot in an embassy.