Differences

It’s been a few weeks now since I got back from Ecuador, and the everyday experience of living there isn’t so fresh in my mind anymore, except when I make a concerted effort to recall it. So I want to document some of the differences I’ve been struck with, both while living in Ecuador and after returning to Toronto, differences between living in Ecuador and living in Canada – and more specifically, the differences between living in Quito and living in Toronto.

One of the best things about returning to Toronto was being surrounded once again by ethnic and cultural diversity. Upon returning home, what a pleasure to ride the subway and be surrounded by people from India and Pakistan, from the Middle East, from China, from Somalia, from Eastern Europe, from the Caribbean, from the UK, from Israel, from Italy, from Greece, from almost everywhere! In Ecuador I saw one family in traditional Indian garb and maybe one family that was clothed in Muslim attire the whole two months I was there. In Ecuador, most people are mestizo (whose ethnicity is mixture of indigenous Ecuadorean and white European), indigenous, or white. There is also a relatively small black population, and an even smaller Chinese population. But it’s a lot different from Toronto’s wide spectrum of diversity.

However, Ecuador possesses a great deal of diversity in many ways. One of the most remarked-upon is Ecuador’s ecological and geographical diversity. You can go from the coast to the mountains to the tropical rainforest in a little over a day! Well, more on this later.

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