Mis abuelitos

It´s not a new realization for me that old people are cute. I love old people! This definitely includes my abuelitos (grandparents) here. They are my host mom´s parents, and although they have their own casita (little house) in the historical center of Quito, they´ve been staying at my host family´s place since I´ve been here. My brother told me it was because the abuelita (grandmother) had surgery on her throat, so they would stay while she recovered and then move back to their home. I´ve really enjoyed having them around.

I am not sure how old they are. Abuelita has a youthful face, but a frail body - she has restricted movement of her arms, and she gets around very slowly using a walker. This, combined with her whisper of a voice (I guess from the surgery), makes her seem quite elderly. But, despite all this, she has a young mind! She loves implying that I meet a nice Ecuadorian boy, get married, and live here. She says she knows many young American girls who have done it! And, ¿por que no? When my Ecuamama is concerned about me getting home at a reasonable hour, Abuelita encourages me to go out, have a good time, and dance a lot!

Abuelito (grandfather) is equally adorable. He is definitely older than Abuelita. After dinner, he always excuses himself from the table and hobbles with his cane over to where Abuelita is sitting, and helps her get to her walker. It´s simple and lovely. Abuelito is fluent in both Spanish and Quichua, the indigenous Andean language...and apparently, he knows bits and pieces of English, too, from previous international students! The other evening, I was sitting in the common room reading, and he entered the room. ¨Good morning!¨ he said to me. But I acutally didn´t understand what he said, maybe because I was in Spanish mode and wasn´t expecting English, or because it was in fact the evening, or because it sounded something more like ¨gumonon,¨hehe. Martin (my 13 yr old brother) was sitting nearby, and he said, in spanish, ¨No, Abuelito, it´s Good night¨. Then, a few nights ago at dinner, I was sitting at the table with the Abuelitos. Before Abuelito gets up from the table, he usually says, ¨Perdon.¨ But instead, he asked me what you say in English, so I told him you say Excuse me. He repeated it several times, exoose me, exoose me, exoose me, exoose me, and then he and Abuelita left the kitchen. The next night, after he and Abuelita finished their dinners, he looked up at me and said, with such gusto, ´Esqueeze me!´ Ahhhhh it was soo cute! I corrected him politely, and since then he´s been saying it like a native. And now, he also says good morning and good night at the correct hours of the day. :)


Interesting side note: If you have studied spanish, you probably learned the word grandparents as simply abuelos. It is common Quiteño Spanish to use the diminutive of many words, by adding -ito or -ita as a suffix, which is the basic equivalent of adding ¨little¨ before the word youre using. So abuelitos literally means little grandparents!