Due to the slight friend-shortage here, my classes are usually the most amusing moments of my week. CL is always wonderful and valuable, but has an entirely different feel that my oft-rambunctious students. After our Wednesday night meetings though, we frequently get dinner and have lots of fun in our multi-cultural gatherings: we are Italians, Ecuadorians, two Americans, and a Spaniard that often get together.Pictured: we celebrated the birthdays of a couple friends. Padre Antonio, (far right) our jovial Italian priest, prepared us delicious rabbit, boiled potatoes, steamed vegetables, all paired with a nice white wine for dinner. Then dessert was a chocolate cake which looked scrumptious, and a home-made, sweet desert wine. These Italians know how to dine. I'm learning a thing or two from them--including some Italian! It's always fun to prevent Alzheimer's. And communicate in other people's native language.
With our Padre, other Italians, and a few Ecuadorians, we went on a trip this past weekend! We drove the six hours, stopped by the beach for half a day, and then headed inland from the coast, to a very small community. We had Mass (they have Mass every 15 days, thanks to Padre Antonio) and got to explore and share some of the life of the fewer than 1,000 occupants. Because of the African palm oil industry, these isolated parts of the country do have a lot of traffic in and out, on their dirt and gravel roads. Our trek inward lasted about two hours but was worth every minute. I may have been the only gringa some of the people there had ever seen. We saw everything from rickety, wooden houses on stilts (to keep up off the ground--anything to battle the intense humidity) to well-built houses of cement block, nicely painted, with glass windows. People rode on old mules. And people rode on new motorcycles (entire families in fact: five people was the maximum we saw on one bike. So dangerous!). There was such a blend of wealth and poverty. It was fascinating. Once there was an influx of money to the community for the palms, the first things to be purchased were televisions and stereos. And huge speakers. Reggaetón plays at all hours of any day, just like in Quito. Some things just never change here in Ecuador. Inordinately loud music at inappropriate hours of the morning. Some things I will always fail to understand.
Pictured: outside the home of a friend, with a few of us and his family. (A fascinating fact: there are natural red-heads in Ecuador. Their ancestors came from Spain. And they are as ginger as can be! This guy's littlest sister--middle--had the most beautiful auburn hair. I couldn't believe it. There was even a natural blonde in another little town! I want to learn more about the ancestry of these people.)
We spent Saturday night in a small community called Zapayo, which translated means "pumpkin." We were shown to the spare rooms of a woman who ran a restaurant. She had to rescue us twice within the first ten minutes before then preparing us dinner. Poor dear. She did it all graciously, though. My failed attempts to kill the enormous cockroach in our bathroom had us all shouting for help and she sauntered in calmly, wondering what on earth could be troubling us after she had just killed a spider in the other bedroom. It was as comfortable as it could have been. Humidity sure leaves beds and pillows with a certain, shall we say, scent. I recall this from Guatemala, too. Things are forever musty when the humidity is so extreme.
And now I'm back in the city, had a pleasant day of work (even lesson-planned for tomorrow already!) and the clocks just struck ten. I'm ready to hit the hay. I close with a small boast: among my new habits of playing guitar and cooking and working fairly diligently at teaching, I make popcorn and delicious caramel corn. Another experiment not gone awry! What luck!
5 weeks to go!
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