Last night I forayed for the very first time into shopping in Ecuador. Sadly, my favorite (albeit, extremely well-worn and slightly disgusting) pair of dress shoes had broken in half the day before and I was in desperate need of school-appropriate cute flat shoes.
Quito has like seven or so shopping malls, so I figured that shoe shopping would be a relatively easy and enjoyable experience. What I forgot to factor in was how darn expensive clothing is here. After looking into several stores and finding nothing to strike either my fancy or my budget, I headed in the direction of Payless Shoesource. One of my personal goals while in Ecuador is to go out of my way to avoid things that are overly American (such as Payless), but I was struggling to find shoes and I figured it was starting to tick my host sister off the way I was waffling back and forth.
Payless is a moniker that seems relatively straightforward in the States. You go in, buy some not-great quality shoes, and leave having not spent large quantities of money. This is not quite the case in Quito. Here, you go into the store, find a pair of plain though suitable flats that would cost less than twenty dollars in the States, and realize the price tag says $59.99. After you recover from the sticker shock, you realize that you really have no other options and buy the damn shoes. If you are truly lucky, when you arrive at the register, the shoes are magically on sale and you don't end up spending quite as much.
I also bought a backpack to carry my weekend stuff in, but that experience was slightly less traumatizing as I had already been in the mall for awhile.
I never thought I would say this, but I look forward to shopping as little as possible in the next three months. Yay, frugality!
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