Moving to Ecuador with your family

Having lived in Ecuador for over 2 years now I can say the most challenging thing has been how long and inconvenient things take. For example, banking. There are very few drive through windows at banks. So when making large withdrawls or even depositing money in someone else's account (often how you pay your rent here), you are relegated to physically waiting in a god aweful long line for your turn at the teller. Today for example, I went to the bank to withdrawal $800 from my own account. But, because I had opened the account with my passport and not a cedula (the local form of ID), the teller asked me to go up to the second level and have customer service scan my cedula so that my photo ID would be on file. What was supposed to take 5 minutes turned into a 1 hour affair, signing a stack of documents and has now resulted in me having to reregister my online access with my bank. Frustrating to say the least

You think going to the Secretary of State is a pain? Today I went to the Ecuadorian version of the Secretary of State and spent half the day, and STILL have to go back tomorrow to finish!!! Crazy. But such is life here. From everything to paying your light and phone bill to hiring a contractor, things here just take longer. A lot longer. Like double or even quadruple the time. Being frustrated in life can become a daily event if you let it get to you.

Are things here cheaper? Yes. Is the weather pretty darn perfect year round? Yes. Are the views of the mountains out my kitchen window the best I've ever seen? Absolutely. But, when life throws you curve balls, like your daughters appendix rupturing, or your motor overheating for the second time in the middle of nowhere, sometimes it feels like too much.

Being that we've been here two years obviously the pros outweigh the cons but it bears mentioning that life here is not a pipe dream.   If you have a high tolerance level for change and frustration ( and I speak fluent Spanish, that's a huge hurdle for some) then you will do ok here. If not, save yourself thousands of dollars and make a new plan.

Mr. X has well depicted the Ecuador bureaucracy's effects on the Expat in a nutshell.

New arrivals don't always have his advantages of a bi-lingual upbringing and living in Cuenca, one of South America's most Expat-friendly cities.

This simple attitude adjustment can go a long way:

Figure that anything more complicated than buying fruit will take up to five times as long as in North America .. especially the first time you do it.

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Well this laid-back society is a challenge we have to adapt to, and if you can speed up a process somehow then by all means try, but never burn any bridges. If you're patient then great, but if you're not then it's okay because you'll become one, however if you're hapless and don't then good luck. Personally I'm evolving and becoming more patient and pleased I don't fit into the mold of “you can't teach an old dog new tricks.”

I've evolved to the point of not looking at something time-wise, but whether it'll be successful or not. Seriously, look at it from this perspective and life will be better. Usually these obstacles or delays are one off things, and if we quantify the time it takes accomplish most things then in retrospect it's not that significant. I don't think most of us are running tight schedule anyways.

Xoie's experience is all the more reassuring for expats here, she speaks fluent Spanish and yet she's like the rest of us in terms of “bureaucracy.” We can probably conclude that this is also true for locals. So we should be happy that we're not being discriminated against in having to wait for something to get done.