My blogging has slowly become a thing of yesteryear. My bad. But it’s a new year, so new blogs and I am going to really try to stay on top of it this time. I think what happened is my life became increasingly less interesting, more of the same but really just saying that I am fooling myself. I think I could live in Ecuador for 15 years and every new week will shock me in another unexpected way. So what has been happening.
Well for chirstmas I went home to rolling hills Pennsylvania to spend some time with the fam and what turned into a 2 week food and alcohol tour. It was amazing. I made it back to Ecuador about ten pounds heavier, possibly still hung-over, with eggnog on my mind, fabulous. I also got to take the cobwebs off my skies and pummel down the slopes for a day with my family, minus mom who went to work instead. I decided that skiing is the most painful fun sport invented, and that is coming from prior black-eyed rugby player. Why you ask? Well due to my personal altitude of almost 6 feet, my blood in cold temperatures likes to stop moving beyond my knees and elbows leaving my poor toes and fingers to fend for themselves in their white deathly state of icicles constantly screaming for help at that wonderfully rich oxygenated blood that just stares from my knees laughing. If I was 5 feet tall, skiing could be thoroughly enjoyable.
As normal travel back to my site in Ecuador posed its own large dilemmas like a two hour delay on my first flight with exactly a two hour layover for my second flight had me literally sprinting through houstan airport to arrive luckily just in time, sweating my ass off but as luck and a lot of things seem to happen in threes, I not only made the impossible happen with making both my flights, but I had been upgraded to shrimp salad, mixed grill, free alcohol, first class seats on both my flights. It was quite possibly the best end to my two week gluten session. The third luck struck when I was trying to get a bus down to Guayaquil to make it back to my site. I was in Quito at about 11 pm fresh off the plane and searching for a bus, I managed to get one of the last tickets that night on one of the last buses back, sitting in the very last seat that really shouldn’t even be there, but was stuck in the very back in the isle row so I had all the leg room in the world. I am not sure how the stars aligned for me that day but I was not asking questions. I made it back. And it was new years.
I was soon informed by my dancer pants best friend and ecua-novio that I had nothing to wear. Shocked as I have more clothes than every peace corps volunteer in Ecuador combined, but I guess I was not prepared for the extensiveness of new years eve in Ecuador. Whether or not you only have 5 dollars to your name you will spend that 5 dollars on a new outfit for the turn of January. The night process goes like this, Mass is at 9 which is held outside because there are too many people to fit inside (I elected to skip the crowd and spend that time changing my outfit 12 times.) It lets out at 10 wherein the whole town meets up with their significant other or best friends, children etc to casually walk in these new outfits up and down the main drag. It reminded me of old community days but with adults and minus the fair rides. You do this till just before 12, just walking and then turning around to walk back and then again and again. Then comes the real excitement. For two weeks prior to new years families make what they call “viejos” which are large paper mache people or animals ie, someone made a Viejo in the form of my ecua-novio, also shrek, penguins, transformers… they stand between 4 to 7 feet tall, human viejos are dressed in real clothes, paper mache head, if you don’t have a good hand in such artwork you can buy them at local Viejo markets. Well at exactly at midnight they throw the viejos in a pile in front of the house and set them on fire, big bonfire type, while the men grab a bottle of rum or anything alcoholic nearby and start drinking, and the children start to play with the flaming debris. Most people then proceed to have this huge dinner till about 1 am after which you either just keep drinking or go to the dance or both. I personally went to a baptism celebration with ecua-novio and his fam till 4 am and then to the dance until 6 am. My night was so far from my norm new years, which is passed out wasted face by 2am without even a dream of seeing the likes of 6 am or having the human mobility to dance. So it was different, enjoyable, and even further rocked my feminist internal core to vibrations with the cultural rule that only men can enjoy the awesomeness of what is alcohol. But no worries I got mine over chirstmas J
On another note, I started my aerobics class up again and I guess with the images of green been casserole, chirstmas cookies, bagels and their lasting effects on the love handles hovering in my mind, I kicked my own ass, twice, I have been so sore, it feels fabulous. I also gave wings to my raising pigs for money project at the high school with a successful flee market of donated clothes I brought back with me, raising a little over $200. Also having meeting with the parents trying to convince them of how good an idea this is, much harder than I expected. All I asked was for them to send their food trash to school with their kid so we can feed the pig, it turned into a 4 hour contemplation, between 30 parents, over the intricacies of raising pigs, which I really have no knowledge. Also a complete dismissal of all the benefits students get with this kind of responsibility and possibilities of dissections and uses of pig shit. But I think we are moving forward with the idea, and I am just crossing my fingers that some spiritual bunny will come bless me with overflowing knowledge of pigs, or maybe I should just go with google.
Finally I had a really awesome friend come visit me and in all our combined awesomeness, we went to the banos of san Vicente. Banos meaning bath, but in this instance more meaning mud pit. We hitchhiked our asses there, not taking no for a answer so we could bath in some natuarally occurring mud, like all mud is not naturally occurring… but anway, Its this little compound that has this muddy water pool and when you test out the cold water, your toes get pulled into 2 feet deep of caly/mud. It’s a fairly sizeable ugly area, circumference of 10 or so feet, enough for many visitors to enjoy in the niceties of the mud. When you arrive you see women, children, men alike standing in the muddy water, picking up the clay from the bottom rubbing it all over their bodies, face, hair and all. And then sitting out in the sun to let it dry. I was perplexed but soon joined into the excitement, skipping out on the face, and hair. It has a certain sewage smell to it, I guess its sulfur or some other mineral, but nothing I would put in my nose electively. After we turned into human rhinos we washed off the mud and went into the hot spring tubs, this time regular clear hot bubbly mineral water, still with that same subdued sewage smell. After a little more normalcy we went for massages ($4) choice of sabila (aloe vera) or more mud. I picked mud, my friend said he had enough of mud and went with sabila. It was a 15 minute process, less massage more like mud/sabila rub down. They heat it up a little and then just spread it all over your body, while trying to make polite conversation. It was at this moment that all my hopes of keeping this naturally occurring mineral mud out of my nose when to shit and the masseuse rubbed it all over my ears, face and yes some in the nostrils. She then promptly kicked me out of the room, covered, having to carry all my things telling me to go let it dry once again and then wash off. I met my friend outside, he seemed to fair better then me as sabila is clear, just kind of looked like he wreaked his car but the air bag was a gelatin bag instead, with the same disgruntled car crash expression, apparently his masseuse could use some hospitality lessons. We washed off, a 15 minute process, (it was in my goddamn ears) and got a ride back to my site. All in all a great experience but prob not going back anytime soon, I will stick with my naturally occurring ocean for now.
