This post is soooo long, but you will not regret reading the whole thing, I promise. Just another weekend in my Ecuadorian life…. Happy reading J
My first couple of weeks/weekends in Cuenca I was so bored. Now they seem to be the total opposite, but I am definitely NOT complaining. The past 2 weekends were busy and I am traveling for work the next 2 weekends. And on top of working starting to move along slowly, I’m starting to feel like a true part of my host family (although they have made me feel right at home from the get-go) and I feel like I am integrating well and getting to know my co-workers. Life is good. Now on to my weekend.
***FYI- as I write this I’m chowing down on a fun size bag of reduced fat cheez-its my sister sent me J They are sooooo yummy and oh how I’ve missed them! And I’m topping it off with a Granola Thin my friend Lauren sent me***
I guess I will just start from the beginning… Friday. Friday, by far, has been the most fun day/night in Ecuador for me thus far. My friend Hannah came into town around 3:30 so she could go to my work party with me in the evening (she is somewhat affiliated with my org). We chatted and caught up with each other’s lives then we started getting ready for the party… American style. I felt like I was back in the States. She straightened her thick head of hair while I showered and blow-dried my hair, all the while jamming out to tunes on the computer, having ourselves a drink, and telling each other funny stories of our Ecuadorian lives. Then we headed to my work party that started at 7.
The party started at 7, but no one showed up until about 9. That’s how Ecuadorians work. At the party were my coworkers, Hannah and I, a group of people from the province of Esmeraldas, and a few other random people. The party started off slow with everyone getting to know each other. An hour or so in I helped Angie and another woman unroll tamales to serve to everyone.
Holding up the wraps from the tamales
Showing off all the nasty tamale gook on our hands
After we ate tamales someone brought out the homemade dark rum. Here in Ecuador it is not normal to have your own drink and sip on it, instead they will mix the liquor with some coke, poor it into shot glasses, pass them around, and then everyone takes it together. And that’s exactly what we did until 11:30 while chatting and dancing. It was so much fun! Of course everyone wanted to dance with the gringas. Dancing here is totally different than the States. Here you do a little 2 step back and forth while never making eye contact with your dance partner. Kinda weird, but its slowing becoming normal to me. You dance the whole song, then sit down, or someone else asks you to dance. We did this the whole evening while taking some breaks every now and then.
With some folks at the party
Doc giving a speech and toast (he's the one in the green sweater with red polo)
Friends!
Oh I should mention that my Ecuadorian friends have been trying to teach me Salsa. And bloody hell is it hysterical. 1. Because I totally suck, and 2. Because I’m a Gringa, and everything a Gringa does is funny. But it is fun none the less. Also, my dance lessons continue at all of our gatherings. Have I mentioned before that dancing is a HUGE part of the Ecuadorian culture?? Well, it is.
11:30pm came and everyone decided they wanted to go do some more dancing. So that’s exactly what we did. We danced until about 2, then finally made our way home.
But not before Hannah and walked around in the pouring rain trying to find some very popular Ecuadorian street food. We were unsuccessful since it was like 2:30am, so home we went with empty stomachs.
When we got to the gate to my house I came to the realization that I forgot my gate key (I live in a gated community and I took that key off of my ring to go to the gym so I didn’t have to carry all my keys). Shit. I had all my keys, but the outside gate key. It’s now like 3am and there is no way in hell I was going to ring my host family and ask them to buzz me in, so I decided I was going to climb the fence. That was successful, but not without a nice scratch down my right calf from the pointy black iron fence. Oh well, no pasa nada. I went to my house, buzzed Hannah in, and we were safe and sound from the rain. Soakin’ wet, but out of the rain and ready for bed with hungry stomachs.
Such a fun night!
Saturday we got up, had lunch at a Colombian restaurant downtown, grabbed some ice cream, and went back to my house and watched a movie. Hannah took off back to her site about 4:30 then I headed up to the Spa. Marcia was there giving one of her friends a manicure so I had coffee and chatted with them while her nails dried. They asked me to help them make a torta mojado de chocolate. Basically it’s a double layered chocolate cake with an awesome chocolate frosting on top and in the middle of the cake. I had no plans for the night so I told them yes. I had to look up a recipe and we went and bought all the ingredients that we needed. The cake took us about 2 hours to make, 1 hour of that time was baking the cake. It turned out soooo freaking delicious. Marcia’s friend Carmen helped me make it. Carmen’s husband and daughter ended up coming over to eat with us. Everyone was raving at how awesome of a job we did J Here is a pic of the cake and us chowing down:
The oh so yummy cake!
chowing down :-)
So that was Saturday, now onto the hectic hectic Sunday….
Sunday morning, Marcia, my host mother, woke up to a phone call from one of the neighbors who live above the Spa saying there was a lot of smoke coming out of the Spa. She immediately woke up my host brother Daniel and off they went to the Spa, about a 1 ½ minute car ride from our house. Sure enough, smoke was pouring out of the spa.
Turns out a candle on a shelf above one of the massage tables was left lit… it ended up dripping onto the bed, as well as one of the machines used to give massages, which was turned off, but still plugged in. The wax burned a HUGE hole into the bed and melted most of the plastic on the machine, which then dripped onto the curtains that were leaning against the machine.
I had no idea none of this happened until about 9:30am when I came out of my room to eat breakfast and Marcia began to tell me the story. She then showed me the burnt curtains with the melted plastic from the machine on it. We were able to save most of the curtains, we just had to cut the part of the curtain with all the melted wax and plastic on it, then we sent Daniel to take all the curtains to the dry cleaners. After breakfast the whole fam and I went up to the Spa to clean.
We got to the Spa and OHHHH MYYYYY GODDDDDD what a freaking disaster. I have absolutely no idea how that place didn’t burn down from a fire. I mean seriously, how the hell was there NO fire?? Just a TON of smoke that covered EVERY SINGLE little thing in the whole entire place. The Spa was a complete burnt mess. There was black dust on everything, and I mean everything…. Every curtain was black, the lime green walls were grey, the red walls were now burnt red, there was a huge BLACK mark on the red wall where the burnt bed and machine were smoking, the floor was now black, the doors and the opaque glass walls throughout the Spa were grey. And me explaining this to you does this filthy place no justice. Because it was WAY filthier than I am able to describe.
So we began to clean. The girls who work at the Spa came down to help, as well. We moved all the furniture and machines outside and took everything off the shelves. We then began to throw buckets of soapy water all over the walls and scrubbing them with brooms and brushes. This was kind of doing the trick, but not quick enough so we brought the hose from outside in and started spraying away. Cleaning the walls took FOR-EV-ER(<--- in the “Sandlot voice”)… my girlfriends back home will be proud of me for quoting a movie! But thank goodness the black spot came off of the wall and most of the black came off the other walls, as well. Now it was time to scrub the doors and opaque walls, along with every bottle and container in the whole place. Don’t forget this is a spa, hair salon and nail salon all in one. And that means there were, excuse my language, a SHIT TON of bottles and other small things to wipe down. Along with decorations, pictures, clocks, scales, chairs, shelves, desks, the list goes on. So we got that done and now it was time for the floor. There was so much water on the tile floor from throwing buckets of soapy water and bringing the hose in. So we scrubbed the floors and started squeegeeing the water out the door Ecuadorian style. I then realized that some of the water wasn’t leaving and was trickling back behind the main front desk where all the wires of the phone, computer, credit card machines, and radio were… which were all plugged into the wall, and we were all standing in that water that was touching all those wires. I freaked out, told Marcia and we turned the electricity off to the whole place until we got all the water out and the wires dried.
The floor was clean so we now moved all the furniture back inside, rigged the burnt bed, put the sheets back on the bed the other beds, reorganized, and got the hell out bc we were all so tired.
FINALLY, the 5 of us were done cleaning about 4pm. Finally. None of us had eaten so Marcia bought chicken and we ate back at the house, but not before a prayer thanking God for watching over the Spa that night. For dessert we finished off m fabulous chocolate cake. The Spa girls loved it!
I really wish I had pictures of the Spa, but I thought it would be completely rude to take pictures like an investigator while Marcia was so upset and mad all at the same time. Upset because of what happened; mad because the girls didn’t blow out the candle the night before.
The day is over. I watch TV with Marcia for a bit, then say peace out and head to my room to relax, play some computer games (yes, computer games), and hit the sack.
I left out the part about how absolutely FURIOUS I was by the end of the day, but that’s another whole post in itself and I am not about to write 2 or 3 pages more. I apologize.
I still am so amazed there was no fire… Marcia is one lucky person.
I wonder if next weekend will top this one? Probably not.
Heather
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