Fiestas and lots of photos

...and home-made fireworks and clowns and other less disconcerting things.

Today was a great day. Exam day. Zero lesson planning required. This weekend was marvelous, too! Saturday was the Nativity of Mary and Guapulo (formerly a town until it was eaten up in amoeba-like fashion by Quito) celebrates her birth each year! There is good food: hornado (roasted pig), pinchos (for the life of me, I can't think what they're called...bits of meat stuck on a stick and grilled) colada morada (a thick fruity, alcoholic drink), morocho (a sweet and creamy, corn-based drink); home-made fireworks, lots of dancing, and more masked and costumed people than Halloween. It's such a festive atmosphere! And perhaps gets slightly out of hand...

The fireworks, for instance, were as amusing as they were dangerous. Men ran around with long sticks bearing fireworks and flames of all designs. They sprinted through the crowd, showering everyone with some serious sparks! See here:

    

From our safe vantage point, we could laugh at the people darting in all directions to avoid getting burned. All I can say is they knew what was coming--hence our choice of location. My fellow American Jillian and I marveled at the utter lack of safety precaution. I thought it was absolutely hilarious! There isn't a fear of lawsuit...just a mild concern about catching on fire or being singed. 

A nice coincidence was that I had gone to this very church the week prior. And here I was again, celebrating the birth of Our Lady. The final show of fireworks lasted about ten minutes (we spent much of it hidden beneath the leather jacket of one of our friends) and the parting message after the fireworks show was a birthday greeting to Mary:

"VIVA LA VIRGEN DE GUAPULO"

Prior to the wild and dangerous fire show, we spent some time dancing in the crowd. What an adventure! Men (I think) dressed in gorilla suits and clown costumes came right up to my friends and me and grabbed our hands and danced with us: rather frightening and amusing. It was okay as long as you didn't look them in the face.

(Photo credit: Jillian)

 It was great night in a very restful weekend. I had been hoping to enjoy a peaceful couple of days between my busy weeks of teaching. I sometimes long for a few moments to breathe and take in the world about me.

Particularly in these months following my confirmation, I'm coming to see more and more that la vida es bella! (Also see: La vita es bella, the movie. An amazing film!) The challenge is to constantly be aware of the good. Even on days where I am rushing to get things done, I have little to no money, my feet are blistered, I haven't planned a lesson, I have to power walk the 20-minutes to work, and I am scrambling to make a lunch while striving to maintain some semblance of inner peace...life can be a glorious existence. I say "can be" merely because I don't always let myself live it as such. My loss.

I'll leave it to myself to sort out the good of those supposedly terrible times and instead share with you the obviously beautiful elements of my life:

Sunny Saturday mornings are a perfect time for rug-cleaning with my roommate. Our terrace has an amazing view of the city: tall buildings, tree-covered mountains, and active volcanoes all in an easy glance:

 I somehow have the best classroom at CEC. In my enormously spacious room on the fifth floor, I teach two two-hour classes of twelve students each day. (I have Conversation Club elsewhere). I enjoy teaching more each week! On Friday, a particularly rambunctious (and infamous) student asked me if I had siblings. He explained that I must have younger brothers because of how patient I was! I told him I had one older brother, but two sisters, and he marveled at the news. I was positively delighted by what he and my other students had to say that day. It's by the grace of God that I'm at all passing as a teacher. But for that, I doubt I would succeed. That same evening, two students told me I was the best teacher they had ever had. (What?!) As per usual, I blushed and the whole class quickly informed me of how red I was. So be it.
I laugh as hard in my evening class as I do when I'm with a group of friends outside of work. What a joy! My students are anywhere from 16 to 35, so I maintain a level of peer-like respect and easy friendship. It works well.


I get to cook for myself whenever I want. Breakfast the other morning consisted of handmade corn tortillas, scrambled eggs with onion and garlic, and some scrumptious fresh cheese to accompany a few minutes reading Brideshead Revisted. My favorite Colombian café has nothing on me--except convenience. I could get all of this, plus a cup of coffee, for a ten-minute walk and $2.




And of course, the obvious beauty of my friendships. I have hiked volcanic craters, run a 10K, danced with clowns, prepared dinner, relaxed on the beach, watched movies, laughed, spoken Spanglish, and shared bits of life with an amazing array of souls.

Diversity is beautiful, too (euphemism for: wow, am I white!).



And yet, even with all this beauty, I have times of definite discouragement and loneliness. Blogs can be misleading in showing only the smiles and fun events. The good and bad: it's all part of life! Ultimately, it can be as uncomfortable for an eternal soul to be in functioning here in time as it is for a fish to be out of water (C.S. Lewis said something to that effect). So let's all try to keep flopping closer to the pond.

I think I've been stumbling a bit lately on my journey to greater self-knowledge. And for lack of content, I threw in many photos. At least they're fun to look at!