I know it's been a long time since my last post and while the week after the whole "coup attempt" thing was relatively uneventful school has been getting more work intensive as it is now officially midterm season. Ecuador may not have real seasons but it does have a midterm season. Similar to its actual seasons, it is relatively mild but it still exists and must be take seriously. But enough excuses, we've got some catching up to do. You can now expect several ensuing posts that are now edited! I know, what a shock! So let's dive in shall we?
After the whole political unrest thing from Thursday and the weekend, school was back to normal on Monday. In class we played catch-up so I had my first midterm of the semester in translation. It wasn't too bad. We had an in-class portion and an outside-of-class-but-still-during-the-school-day-portion as well. The latter was a translation that we had until 4pm to do but I had less time since I had to volunteer. It went fine either way.
My volunteer work that was out of ordinary. The class and I went to Tumbaco- a nearby town in the same valley as Cumbaya- to what seemed to be a convent that also doubles as a senior home to cut the 'grandmas's' hair. I was basically useless until two of the girls needed help calming down one lady who seemed to not have complete control over her movements. I just held her arms down so she couldn't hit the girl cutting her hair. It was a kind of sad place but the grandmas seemed happy to see us.
On the way home I took the bus that goes by my house for the first time. When I wanted to get off I had to kind of yell "gracias!" so the bus driver would know I wanted to get off. It was strange.
Tuesday I had a midterm in Cine which wasn't really hard at all except that the sub gave us the wrong directions. Of course she didn’t realize this until Chris made Danielle ask/tell her about it and I was almost done with the part we were supposed to do at home. That test would’ve taken about 30 minutes if we had done it right!
That day there was a performance by a dance troupe from Boston that we had to go to instead of dance class. It was pretty cool and they were all really great dancers. After classes Danielle and I caught a cab since it was raining pretty hard- the lights had gone out twice in Soc class- and it was a really weird ride. First we almost got t-boned by a pickup truck, then a guy on a motorcycle reached in the window and grabbed the drive while both were still moving in traffic! It turns out they knew each other- they may have even been cousins, I don't remember- and they chatted until we turned. Then when we got into Danielle's neighborhood the guy just had her get out in the middle of the street because he was "in a hurry." Then he took me right to my door. It was all too weird so I didn’t pay the normal price. (Side note: some taxis have little tv screens with ads on them but they all have the same couple commercials on them: one for bingo with an impossibly busty woman, and one with this awful dancing cooked chicken being the most notable.)
That Wednesday I went with Emily to meet her new convopartner, Diana and she invited us to a cultural event that she was helping coordinate the next day so we went not really knowing what it was about. It ended up being really long but pretty interesting for the most part. It was basically a program to show how awesome the ethnic diversity program is. There were a couple dances which were pretty cool and a band of music students that were pretty good.
After the program there was a party for the new students and all the Ecuadorians kept trying to get me and Emily and Chris to go. We really didn’t want to go since we had homework to do and we knew it would go on forever. We finally sneaked away and went to El Español to get a coffee and use the internet. We were there until they closed and the guard had to lift the security gate to let us out.
Friday morning I was awakened by a knock at my door at 7:15 in the morning. Guadalupe stuck her head in my room and asked for her upset stomach pills she had given me when I was sick before. I dumbly got up and rummaged around in my closet until I found the bottle and Guadalupe left. I was so confused that I misread my clock and thought I slept through class!
That day Danielle had planned a 'day of beauty' at her house that afternoon so we met up at Juan Valdez cafe with Keunae and walked to her house. Keunae couldn't stay long and after she left Danielle ordered pizza from Papa John's. Listening to Danielle place our order, I noticed she went from understanding everything this guy was saying “sí…sí,sí,…” to completely lost. She asked "what?" a couple times but still looked bewildered. Then she handed the phone to me because she had no idea what the guy was saying. I grabbed the phone- the guy was saying ‘alo? alo?’ because no one was talking- and finished the order. It took a minute to realize he was asking me what kind of coke I wanted- diet, zero, etc.
When I finished Danielle told me that she thought he was saying “¿sabor de la vida?” “flavor of life?” so of course she had no idea what that meant. It turns out he was saying “¿sabor de bebida?” which means “what kind of drink?” We got a good laugh out of that. So did Emily and Chris when they showed up- right after the food.
Even if it was Papa John’s, I was really excited to eat pizza. After lunch I gave Chris and Emily manicures since I learned how in my volunteer class. Danielle’s host niece, Antonia, came in wanting to hang out with the big girls. She’s like 9 and speaks almost perfect English. So she convinced her mom to let me do paint her nails and then she didn’t leave us alone until they left. Not that she was particularly annoying or anything, it was just funny that she was excited about hanging with us.
Antonia really loves the Jonas Brothers- she’s even going to their concert here with a friend- so she made us listen to some of their music. So then Danielle played some BSB and N’Sync saying that they were our Jonas Brothers. Then we just kept watching early 2000’s videos- like Say My Name- and it was hilarious. For us. I’m sure Antonia was bored to death.
Then Antonia and her family left, shortly followed by Chris and Emily and I stayed so Danielle and I could watch the next installment of our Harry Potter several week movie marathon.
That's all for now, but, dear reader, you can expect another post soon.
Hasta Luego,
Caitlin
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