I'm going to avoid giving you specific advice on quantities of clothing to bring because every person dresses differently. Instead, here are some general guidelines and tips learned from mistakes (and wins!) I made in packing.
1. When packing clothing, have an A-team and a B-team. Your A-team are your must haves: essentials you will wear all the time, special items you can't leave home without, and required clothing for your job. Your B-team are extras: the difference between 5 t-shirts and 10, a pair of pants that kind of looks like another pair you already packed, socks your grandma sent you. Pack your A-team first but keep the B-team close by and ready, and add them to your suitcase if you have a couple of pounds to spare.
2. I already said this, but pack with Pre-Service Training in mind. That doesn't mean pack like your going to the Himalayas; rather, plan for a transitional fall-esque wardrobe. It'll be warm during the day and cold in the evening/at night/early in the morning, and it also rains for half the year. Bring layers that you can strip down and build back up, so that you also have something that works for the Coast. (By the way, sweaters/cardigans are not completely useless on the Coast. The A/C in a Sweet & Coffee can be something fierce!)
3. Know yourself as a person. You're not going to dramatically change the way you dress, so don't bring clothes that are a complete departure from your style. Many people go into the Peace Corps because they are looking to shake up their lives (I know I did), but don't make the mistake of thinking you can forcibly reinvent yourself--it won't take. If you do go through a style evolution, it will happen naturally and be directly influenced by your new surroundings; you can't predict a change like this. Along those same lines, don't invest in all sorts of adventure gear if you're not already a habitual mountain climber/scuba diver/adventure sportsman. You might get invited to go on a hike or two with a large group of people, but these usually aren't the sort you'd need specialty gear for. If somebody does invite you on an outing that requires gear you don't own, it's probably a sign that you are not physically or mentally prepared for something that extreme and should decline the offer. I am not an outdoorsy person, and tennis shoes/duck boots and a waterproof jacket have served me just fine on every hike I've been on, despite the fact that almost all of them culminated in me whining about how much I hate nature.
4. Ladies (and this could apply to guys): bring at least 1 cute "going out" outfit (see: clubbing) for cold weather and 1 for warm weather. Clubbing, or at least going out to bars, is a big part of Peace Corps culture, and you will partake (unless you're just truly an anti-social hermit of the highest order).
5. Also for ladies (or humans of the skirt-wearing variety): bring dresses that can be worn with and without leggings and that actually look cute BOTH WAYS to give yourself a more weather-variable wardrobe that takes up the same amount of space as a single-climate wardrobe. Obviously, bring a few pairs of tights and leggings of various thicknesses to wear under your dresses as well. (I brought 2 sheath dresses, and while they're great for school here on the coast, they didn't look that great with tights so I hardly ever wore them in the sierra.)
6. Bring at least 1 pair of ultrathin spandex shorts to wear underneath summer skirts and dresses. The thigh rub is REAL!
7. I have a few recommendations on jeans. Peace Corps will tell you that you cannot wear ripped/distressed jeans under any circumstances. With perhaps the exception of a few extremely conservative sites, that is a lie. You just can't wear them to school/work, training, meetings with government officials, or church. On the street/on weekends is fine. Many younger Ecuadorians do. That being said, I'm not a fan of ripped jeans unless they are the distressed-and-patched sort, so I'd advise against them on an aesthetic level. I'm sure you will rip a normal pair while you're here anyway. I brought 3 pairs of jeans total: 1 medium wash slim, 1 black skinny, and 1 dark wash wide trouser leg. The first 2 are definitely the ones I wear most often, and I wish I had brought 1 more pair of similar jeans. The trouser leg I brought because I figured they could be worn in more professional settings, but I didn't wear them often because they were too long to wear with flats and I didn't bring any cute boots! Overall, I'd suggest around 4 pairs of jeans for women, with at least 1 being dark enough to pass for business casual and at least 3 being of a solid wash (i.e. not sandblasted, acid washed, or distressed in any way) with no holes, embroidery, or appliques. You can wear these to training.
8. Other Pants
For women: In addition to jeans, I brought 1 pair of tapered suit pants, 3 pairs of ankle/cropped pants, and 1 pair of loose lightweight joggers. I wore the ankle pants during training but I was cold almost every time I wore them; however, they have been a lifesaver here on the coast. I wear them to school more often than anything else.
For men: I'd suggest a lot of chinos/khakis/cotton twill pants. Sadly, I don't think there's a male equivalent of cropped pants that would actually be considered work-appropriate. Also, there's just something about a guy in chinos and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up...
9. For skirts, follow the same rule as dresses: equally wearable with or without tights.
10. Bring more undergarments than you imagine you need. I probably brought about 20 pairs of underwear and 10 months in, I'm already tired of wearing the same damn underwear all the time. Bras wear out way faster if you're on the coast because of all the sweat, so bring more bras than you think you need too. For both, but especially the underwear, you may want to bring some that you don't wear right away but cycle into your wardrobe about halfway through service just to liven things up a bit.
11. Peace Corps suggests that you bring a hat, which is something I would second, adding this: a very basic ball cap that you don't mind sweating into and which you've already bent the bill on to make it comfortable and broken in. It's good to have a hat to cover your scalp from the searing sun. Even though I have one, I never remember to wear it because I'm just not a hat person and I hate the way it makes my forehead sweat.
That's about all I have for specific tips when it comes to clothing. Obviously, don't forget to bring a bathing suit! Never forget your bathing suit!
Monday, November 27, 2017
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Annie's Packing Tips Part 1: General Advice and Shoes
Naturally, I have to start this post by apologizing for what a shitty blogger I am and the fact that I haven't posted on this blog in like 6 months. But this is who I am as a person; I've come to accept it and you should too. Now, let's get down to business.
"Annie, I'm a future Ecuador PCV who's about to depart in, oh, let's say, less than 3 months (lookin' at you, 119). What should I bring? Should I follow the packing list that Peace Corps sent me?"
The short answer is, yes and no. (Typical Mike "It Depends" Donald-type answer.) Some of the suggestions on that list were really helpful, others were straight-up useless. All that you can be certain of is that there is no way to pack perfectly for your Peace Corps service in Ecuador. You are going to a country where cities have both "Hornoquil" and "Friobamba" as nicknames. You have no idea where your site will be, and the possibilities are dramatically different. You are going to bring shit you never use, and you are going to wish you had brought shit you didn't bring. That being said, here's my first piece of advice/musing on travel and life experiences:
1. You are going to be living in Ecuador for over 2 years. How many items (of clothing, housewares, personal belongings, etc.) have you bought in the past 2 years of your life? Probably more than you can remember right now. Ecuador is no different. You're living here; you're not here on vacation or a semester abroad. You're going to have to buy things that you need for your everyday life. The goal of packing suitcases to bring with you from home should be to minimize how much you have to buy here, but 100 pounds isn't really all that much. If you save up some money before coming to Ecuador, you can give yourself the leeway to make some riskier/more unorthodox packing choices by knowing that if there is something you missed, you can buy it here. So tip #1 would be give yourself a replenishment fund. It could be a wardrobe replenishment fund, a hair/skin/beauty products replenishment fund, or even an imported food replenishment fund. It's just nice not to have to use the same 3 outfits over and over again because you don't have enough clothes. It's also nice to not have to use the cheap Ecuadorian shampoo.
2. Speaking of replenishment, my second piece of advice would be to try to plan to either have somebody come visit you or take a trip home within the first 6 months at site. This is the perfect opportunity for restocking on American goodies. If you can plan a restock mission before you move out of your host family's house (if that's what you want to do), you can also save on having to buy housewares here in Ecuador, as anything not made locally tends to be rather more expensive thanks to taxes and import duties. Also, the earlier your restock mission occurs, the easier it is to hold out on buying a brand new wardrobe for your sweltering/freezing/wet AF site that you were totally under-prepared for.
3. Some people might advise you to pack light, maybe bring only one suitcase instead of two. To them, I say, y'all dumb as fuck. You like spending every weekend doing laundry? Or worse, not doing laundry and smelling like a sewer rat? Ok, you do you, but I hope your site is at the top of Chimborazo so you'll never have to worry about sweat stains. And yes, I am judging you on the fact that every time I see you, you're wearing the same damn pumpkin-colored sweater or charcoal v-neck which I can only assume used to be black but has faded due to the fact that you wear it Every. Single. Day. Your 2 checked bags + 1 carry-on + 1 personal item are the only opportunity you have to bring as much of home with you to your service, so don't waste it! Even if you only need a week's worth of clothes, hell, fill your other bag with peanut butter and Hot Cheetos. I'd love to have a suitcase full of peanut butter and Hot Cheetos. Just because you're in the Peace Corps, it doesn't mean that you should have to suffer. And it is well worth the expense and ONE day of taxi and bus terminal hell to get all your stuff to site. This isn't Peace Corps Mongolia; it won't take you 2 days to get from the capital to your site. Ecuador is Posh Corps. Live like it.
4. Pack more for Sierra than Coast/Oriente. You should obviously pack at least a little bit for both climates, as you will be required to experience both, but it is a guarantee that you will spend at least two and a half months in Quito, whereas it's about 50/50 whether you get a coastal or sierran site (Oriente is also technically an option, but as my experience is with TEFL and that's who I'm mainly aiming this post at, it's highly unlikely--like 1 person out of 37 in my Omni got put there). You will also regularly be going back to Quito for required trainings and conferences. Whereas, if you ended up getting a site in the Sierra and had no desire to ever go to the Coast on your own volition, you could potentially make it through your entire service having only ever gone to the Coast once, for less than a week, during a required PST trip. I wouldn't suggest it, though, because the Coast is the best. But anyway, I digress. The point is that if you pack for Sierra and end up with Coast, it'll just force you to integrate faster because people on the Coast dress like it's 54 degrees outside when it's 87. And if you schedule your restock mission early, you won't be sweating through everything you own for too long.
Now, to get into the nitty-gritty of what to pack: This list primarily concerns itself with women and TEFL volunteers, because that's what I am. Understanding your job functions clearly is key to packing appropriately.
Shoes:
I'm starting with shoes because I wear a women's size 10 (sometimes 9½), which is nearly impossible to find here. Ecuadorian women, on the whole, have much smaller feet than I do. If you wear anything bigger than an 8-8½, don't expect to be able to buy shoes here for a reasonably cheap price. For men, I don't know where the exact cutoff is, but I know 12's are out of the question, and 11's are probably very difficult to find too. I probably brought more shoes with me than most people, because I knew I wouldn't be able to buy them as often or as easily as I might back home (also I love shoes).
I brought
I also bought
If I could change anything about the shoes I brought, I definitely would have brought a pair of cute but comfortable booties or mid-calf boots to wear during training. I would have worn boots every day during training, were it not for the fact that the only boots I brought were half-covered in rubber, and thus I felt they were too casual for training and especially for our teaching practicum. Even though I would never wear boots at site, I'd give up the space in my suitcase for shoes that would have looked cute and kept me warm during training. Flats are too cold for 7am in Quito! Additionally, instead of bringing 2 pairs of athletic sneakers, I would have just brought 1 pair of running/exercise shoes and 1 pair of either slip-on tennis shoes or low-top converses--something with a more casual, nondescript vibe and less of an athleisure vibe. Finally, I would have invested in some more supportive, sweat-proof teaching shoes, as I can often spend 6-7 hours straight on my feet. I don't know exactly what I would have worn for the Sierra, but have you noticed that Crocs has stepped up its shoe game recently? I am having my mom bring me 2 pairs of Crocs sandals for Christmas after one of my co-teachers said they were the only shoes she wears to teach, worth even the $70-$100 price tag they come with in Ecuador.
One thing to note about shoe culture in Ecuador: It's very common for women to wear outlandishly high heels when going out at night, as well as when working in an office environment. The streets and sidewalks are fucking terrible for high heels, though, and at 5'6", I don't really feel the need to wear heels when I go out. Certainly when I go with a group of PCVs, we usually don't feel the need to get too fancy.
Last thing: My shoes wear out much faster here than they would back home-partly because I have fewer shoe options to rotate through, but mostly because I walk about 10x as much as I did in the U.S. What would take me 4 years to do to a pair of shoes back home takes me about 6 months or less to do here.
"Annie, I'm a future Ecuador PCV who's about to depart in, oh, let's say, less than 3 months (lookin' at you, 119). What should I bring? Should I follow the packing list that Peace Corps sent me?"
The short answer is, yes and no. (Typical Mike "It Depends" Donald-type answer.) Some of the suggestions on that list were really helpful, others were straight-up useless. All that you can be certain of is that there is no way to pack perfectly for your Peace Corps service in Ecuador. You are going to a country where cities have both "Hornoquil" and "Friobamba" as nicknames. You have no idea where your site will be, and the possibilities are dramatically different. You are going to bring shit you never use, and you are going to wish you had brought shit you didn't bring. That being said, here's my first piece of advice/musing on travel and life experiences:
1. You are going to be living in Ecuador for over 2 years. How many items (of clothing, housewares, personal belongings, etc.) have you bought in the past 2 years of your life? Probably more than you can remember right now. Ecuador is no different. You're living here; you're not here on vacation or a semester abroad. You're going to have to buy things that you need for your everyday life. The goal of packing suitcases to bring with you from home should be to minimize how much you have to buy here, but 100 pounds isn't really all that much. If you save up some money before coming to Ecuador, you can give yourself the leeway to make some riskier/more unorthodox packing choices by knowing that if there is something you missed, you can buy it here. So tip #1 would be give yourself a replenishment fund. It could be a wardrobe replenishment fund, a hair/skin/beauty products replenishment fund, or even an imported food replenishment fund. It's just nice not to have to use the same 3 outfits over and over again because you don't have enough clothes. It's also nice to not have to use the cheap Ecuadorian shampoo.
2. Speaking of replenishment, my second piece of advice would be to try to plan to either have somebody come visit you or take a trip home within the first 6 months at site. This is the perfect opportunity for restocking on American goodies. If you can plan a restock mission before you move out of your host family's house (if that's what you want to do), you can also save on having to buy housewares here in Ecuador, as anything not made locally tends to be rather more expensive thanks to taxes and import duties. Also, the earlier your restock mission occurs, the easier it is to hold out on buying a brand new wardrobe for your sweltering/freezing/wet AF site that you were totally under-prepared for.
3. Some people might advise you to pack light, maybe bring only one suitcase instead of two. To them, I say, y'all dumb as fuck. You like spending every weekend doing laundry? Or worse, not doing laundry and smelling like a sewer rat? Ok, you do you, but I hope your site is at the top of Chimborazo so you'll never have to worry about sweat stains. And yes, I am judging you on the fact that every time I see you, you're wearing the same damn pumpkin-colored sweater or charcoal v-neck which I can only assume used to be black but has faded due to the fact that you wear it Every. Single. Day. Your 2 checked bags + 1 carry-on + 1 personal item are the only opportunity you have to bring as much of home with you to your service, so don't waste it! Even if you only need a week's worth of clothes, hell, fill your other bag with peanut butter and Hot Cheetos. I'd love to have a suitcase full of peanut butter and Hot Cheetos. Just because you're in the Peace Corps, it doesn't mean that you should have to suffer. And it is well worth the expense and ONE day of taxi and bus terminal hell to get all your stuff to site. This isn't Peace Corps Mongolia; it won't take you 2 days to get from the capital to your site. Ecuador is Posh Corps. Live like it.
4. Pack more for Sierra than Coast/Oriente. You should obviously pack at least a little bit for both climates, as you will be required to experience both, but it is a guarantee that you will spend at least two and a half months in Quito, whereas it's about 50/50 whether you get a coastal or sierran site (Oriente is also technically an option, but as my experience is with TEFL and that's who I'm mainly aiming this post at, it's highly unlikely--like 1 person out of 37 in my Omni got put there). You will also regularly be going back to Quito for required trainings and conferences. Whereas, if you ended up getting a site in the Sierra and had no desire to ever go to the Coast on your own volition, you could potentially make it through your entire service having only ever gone to the Coast once, for less than a week, during a required PST trip. I wouldn't suggest it, though, because the Coast is the best. But anyway, I digress. The point is that if you pack for Sierra and end up with Coast, it'll just force you to integrate faster because people on the Coast dress like it's 54 degrees outside when it's 87. And if you schedule your restock mission early, you won't be sweating through everything you own for too long.
Now, to get into the nitty-gritty of what to pack: This list primarily concerns itself with women and TEFL volunteers, because that's what I am. Understanding your job functions clearly is key to packing appropriately.
Shoes:
I'm starting with shoes because I wear a women's size 10 (sometimes 9½), which is nearly impossible to find here. Ecuadorian women, on the whole, have much smaller feet than I do. If you wear anything bigger than an 8-8½, don't expect to be able to buy shoes here for a reasonably cheap price. For men, I don't know where the exact cutoff is, but I know 12's are out of the question, and 11's are probably very difficult to find too. I probably brought more shoes with me than most people, because I knew I wouldn't be able to buy them as often or as easily as I might back home (also I love shoes).
I brought
- 1 pair of duck boots,
- 1 pair of high heels,
- 1 pair of wedges,
- 2 pairs of flats,
- 2 pairs of cute sandals,
- 1 pair of Chacos,
- 1 pair of flip-flops,
- 1 pair of slippers,
- and 2 pairs of sneakers: 1 with more support for running, and 1 with less support for everyday.
I also bought
- 1 pair of loafer-style flats during training, which I regretted within a week after realizing they didn't quite fit;
- 1 cute pair of Brazilian-made sandals (only Brazilian shoes come in my size) when I got to site, which are the most comfortable sandals I have ever owned and which I wear at least 4 times a week;
- and 1 pair of flip-flops, so now I have 2 pairs of flip-flops to rotate between.
If I could change anything about the shoes I brought, I definitely would have brought a pair of cute but comfortable booties or mid-calf boots to wear during training. I would have worn boots every day during training, were it not for the fact that the only boots I brought were half-covered in rubber, and thus I felt they were too casual for training and especially for our teaching practicum. Even though I would never wear boots at site, I'd give up the space in my suitcase for shoes that would have looked cute and kept me warm during training. Flats are too cold for 7am in Quito! Additionally, instead of bringing 2 pairs of athletic sneakers, I would have just brought 1 pair of running/exercise shoes and 1 pair of either slip-on tennis shoes or low-top converses--something with a more casual, nondescript vibe and less of an athleisure vibe. Finally, I would have invested in some more supportive, sweat-proof teaching shoes, as I can often spend 6-7 hours straight on my feet. I don't know exactly what I would have worn for the Sierra, but have you noticed that Crocs has stepped up its shoe game recently? I am having my mom bring me 2 pairs of Crocs sandals for Christmas after one of my co-teachers said they were the only shoes she wears to teach, worth even the $70-$100 price tag they come with in Ecuador.
One thing to note about shoe culture in Ecuador: It's very common for women to wear outlandishly high heels when going out at night, as well as when working in an office environment. The streets and sidewalks are fucking terrible for high heels, though, and at 5'6", I don't really feel the need to wear heels when I go out. Certainly when I go with a group of PCVs, we usually don't feel the need to get too fancy.
Last thing: My shoes wear out much faster here than they would back home-partly because I have fewer shoe options to rotate through, but mostly because I walk about 10x as much as I did in the U.S. What would take me 4 years to do to a pair of shoes back home takes me about 6 months or less to do here.
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