Hola 2016
New Years Eve
Feliz Año Neuvo! New years in Ecuador was a good time. On new years eve we went to a festival in Quito called “Festival de Años Viejos.” I’m not quite sure how to explain it. It was some sort of cross between Halloween and a drag show. Everyone was dressed in some sort of costume and most of the men were dressed as women. Some went all out and wore short skirts, wigs, and stuffed their chests. In certain parts of the city, a group of men would be working the street. They would stop each car and dance for the driver. The driver would eventually pay the dancers a nickel or two and drive off. Mariana wanted us to join in on the fun, so she gave us masks and encouraged us to buy wigs.
When we returned to Mariana’s house, we started building a “Monigote” or rag doll. In Ecuador, it is a tradition to start off the new year by burning away the troubles of the previous year. You can buy monigotes or build your own. They are sold on every corner. We made our own. Mariana and her friend stitched the clothes together while the rest of us crumpled up newspaper. At midnight, we lit the guy on fire and wished away 2015. We celebrated with champagne while watching the sky explode with fireworks.
Bienvenido Jacob
On New Years Day, Jacob arrived. Jacob is from South Dakota. He is a student at my alma mater, SDSU. We had never met, but we have plenty of mutual friends. Jean-Pierre and I went to meet Jacob at the airport. Unlike when Mariana picked me up, we did not have a sign with Jacob’s name on it. I creeped on his Facebook photos so we knew what face to look for. Jean-Pierre and I both admitted to being terrible with faces, but since most of the people coming off the plane were latino, we thought finding Jacob would be pretty easy. There were about five young white guys that exited the customs area and walked past us while we waited. Every time one walked by, I held up my phone with Jacob’s picture on it and Jean-Pierre and I would both compare faces. After a while it seemed as if the flow of people exiting the customs area was dying down. We were starting to get worried. I looked through all of Jacob’s Facebook photos again and noticed a blue jacket in a bunch of them. One of the guys that we had written off earlier had the same blue jacket. The guy was standing about 20 feet from us and looking pretty lost. I called out “Jacob” and sure enough, it was him.
Un Corazón Grande
After returning to the house with Jacob, Mariana informed us that we were heading into the city. I guess I hadn’t noticed, but she had spent all day cooking and boxing meals for the homeless. I found out later that Mariana does this on the first of every month. What an amazing woman! Her favorite taxi man arrived in his truck and seven of us piled in with about 50 meals and a large jug of juice. As we zigzagged throughout the city, Mariana would point at someone on the street and we would take turns jumping out and running a meal out to him or her. Many of the streets were narrow one-ways and every once in awhile a cop would come up behind us and start honking.
Yo Hablo Español
My Español is getting better, but I still have a long ways to go. I dislike that everything is feminine or masculine and the rules about which is which are not black and white. I also struggle with how similar some words are. For instance, I often get “dolor” and “dólar” mixed up. The first one means pain and the second means dollar. People look at me funny when I say something like: “Yo pago 5 dolores por la camisa.” I guess that is maybe why my bartering isn’t working out so well. I also mix up Suizo (Swiss) and succio (dirty). Mariana falls out of her chair laughing when I’m reading sentences from the textbook such as: “Hola, yo soy succio.” My other struggle is with trilling r’s. It is embarrassing. Without the trill, it is hard to differentiate between pero/perro (but/dog) and caro/carro (expensive/car). I have now watched 12 different instructional videos on how to do it but I’m still not close. If anyone has any suggestions, I’m all ears.
Yesterday
Jacob and I were sent on a mission to the corner store to buy some coke (for drinking) and a lime. While I ordered the items, a man leaning up against the building started talking to us in very broken English. He was drinking a beer and sounded pretty drunk. The time was 1 pm. He managed to tell us that he is a doctor and a policeman. He was wearing scrubs so the doctor part seemed believable. He then lifted up his scrub top to reveal a policeman shirt. We were both really confused but continued to try to listen to the guy. He eventually thanked us for chatting with him in English and drunkenly shook our hands.
Later in the day, we told Mariana that we wanted to become Salsa experts. We had been to a Salsa club the night before and it looked like fun. We hailed a cab and Mariana took us to a local dance studio. We probably could have walked but rain was coming down pretty hard. By the way, when it rains, it pours; as we drove to the dance studio, we saw all of the manhole covers were blown out of their positions and water was bursting up from the road.
It was clearly 5 year old ballet time when we arrived at the dance studio; unfortunately, we weren’t asked to join. The lady explained the rates and talked about the group lessons for salsa. Mariana didn’t seemed pleased with what we were being offered. On our way home, Mariana remembered a salsa teaching friend of hers and decided to give her a call. She happened to have some availability and she offers one-on-one lessons in home instead of group lessons at a studio. Long story short, we start salsa lessons this week.
Fun Facts
- 1 cigarette is $0.50 and a box is $8.00. I don’t smoke but I was curious
- The septic system can’t handle toilet paper. There is a dedicated garbage for toilet paper next to each toilet
- Your pet dog is whichever one you feed. Mariana’s family feeds one. His name is Chelsea.
- Cellular data is $5 for 30 MB or $20 for 1000 MB. Gigabytes haven’t been discovered yet
- Snacks at the movie theater are regular sizes. There are no boxes of candy, just small packages or single candy bars
- Star Wars in Spanish is just as good as the English version. I was impressed at how well it was dubbed
- Most stores don’t allow returns
- Some things are amazingly cheap, but imported items are outrageously expensive. A 1 L bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream Whiskey is almost $70!
- Everything here is metric, but gas is still sold in gallons
