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

• 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. 

The duck boots I thought would be a good idea because they, in theory, combine a rainboot with a winter/hiking boot, but in practice they are less comfortable than a real hiking boot, and as my site is Guayaquil, I would rather wear Chacos in the rain than some hot-ass boots. If my site were in the Sierra, though, I'm sure I would wear them more often. The heels I have worn exactly 1 time since leaving Miami (it was for swear-in), but if I had a do-over I'd still bring them, because I needed them for that occasion. The wedges I wore a few times to look cute, but they started to fall apart so I gave them away. I wore the flats a lot during training, so much so that one pair has almost completely disintegrated (gave them away) and the other is severely worn-down. I hardly ever wear flats at site because my feet sweat in them. All the sandals I still have and still wear regularly at site, though I didn't wear them much during training. The flip-flops and slippers are a must; I wear flip-flops all the time in my house, running quick errands, in hostel showers, on the beach, pretty much everywhere, and the slippers I wore in the house all the time in Quito, because in Ecuador you must wear shoes inside the house (and tile floors are cold). Both my pairs of sneakers were relatively new when I got here, but the ones with less support have really worn out, even though I mostly only wear them on weekends.
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. 

I got a hand-me-down pair of wedges for free from the Peace Corps Bodega (a.k.a. room in the Peace Corps office where volunteers leave shit they don't want), which fell apart the first time I wore them, so I gave them away.

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.