If I Could Pack Three Children In a Suitcase...

First day of school for Nuevo Mundo was the first week in April. Jenny and Oscar´s three boys now all attend. Oscar and Luis are in fourth and third grade, but this is Nico´s first year going. Jenny insists that the baby, Maria Sarita, will also go there (oh and that she will also be a missionary and speak six different languages). The kids have to pass a test to get into Nuevo Mundo, and it´s super competitive, but it gives them a shot at a much better education than the one they would get at a public school here. I rushed home from work to see them get on the bus for their first day :)

Oh, and I almost cried. And I never cry...at least not much before this year. Ecuador has made me emotional.

I will probably put this picture in a frame when I go home. I um, really like it a lot :)

PS I love school uniforms.

Las Olimpiadas - Another Reason to Paint Your Face!

I know it goes without saying that I suck at keeping this updated, but I´ll continue to keep saying I´ll try harder to keep it updated probably until the day I leave...

Towards the end of March (yes I realize this is a delayed post) we had a thing called Las Olimpiadas, which was an academic competition between all the afterschool programs. We each had to pick 15 kids to represent our programs, and all events were divided up into three age groups: chiquitos (5-7 years old), medianos (8-11 years old), and grandes (12-14). Picking kids from Semillas was really hard because this happened all during summer vacation, meaning that we had on average, 100 kids per day coming to program. Regardless, we finally narrowed it down to fifteen and we had a blast with them.

Each program was in charge of two events, so Semillas took geography and science experiment. Each program had to construct their own popsicle stick bridge the week before, and then bring it to the Olimpiadas to have it weighed down with rocks; the bridge that held the most won. We also did a geography activity with the medianos and grandes (chiquitos got to color while this competition was going on). The medianos had to put a puzzle together of a map of South America, then go through and label all the countries and capitals. The grandes got a study sheet with facts about the Ecuadorian provinces and regions and had to compete in a Jeopardy-style game. The kids that were selected for Olimpiadas knew ahead of time which activities they would be competing in, so they were able to study beforehand. It was really neat to see how much they studied for this; they really do take the program-representation thing seriously. The other events included math, language arts, memory, and a relay race.

We held the Olimpiadas at John Drury, which is the tech school where we hold Semillas. Because Ricardo also happens to be the coordinator for the church music group, he allowed us to "borrow" the amps and speakers for the day, so we had music going for the whole opening and closing part. Each program had their own color; Semillas was yellow, Manos was blue, and Valdivia was red. All the Semillas staff wore BC Welcome Wagon shirts (thank you BC for so many donations...don´t worry, they´re all now washed and returned to the donations pile), yellow bandanas, gold Mardi Gras beads, and lots of yellow face paint. The kids got into it too, which was hilarious and lots of fun. At the end, all the staff came together and did a dance that we made up in probably abouttt...5 minutes. The kids thought it was funny so it was worth it. There´s a video of it floating around out on the internet somewhere, but I still haven´t seen it.

At the end, all the kids that competed were given prizes, regardless of who won points for their programs. Big kids got lots of school supplies and tennis balls, medianos got backpacks and school supplies, and the little kids got beanie babies and small toys. Every kids that competed also got a soccer jersey. All of the prizes that we gave out were donations from groups that have come down.

Each program also had to sing their program song. There´s a video of us at program practicing it with about 108 kids the week before the Olimpiadas.

It was definitely a lot of work to put all of the Olimpiadas together, and lots of collaboration, but definitely worth it :) I think we had just as much fun as the kids did.

Um yes, I will be returning next year to play Carnaval...and every year after that.

Carnaval is AWESOME! The four days or so before Lent starts everyone throws paint and eggs and oil and water at each other...there aren´t any safe zones and nobody really cares if you say you´d prefer not to get dirty. The president declared "feriado", which basically means that he put the whole country in a state of vacation. We had retreat groups visiting so we were still working the after-school programs, but I had a break from my morning site, which was nice. The whole thing "officially" started the Friday before Ash Wednesday, but the Carnaval paint fest didn´t really pick up until Sunday. I got hit with a bucket of water from Eduardo as I came home from church haha at least he didn´t hit me on the way out to mass.

Jon, Brendan, and I along with Eduardo and his family (Nancy and Wellington), Daniel, Ricardo, and a TON of other neighbors (including one questionably drunk gentleman that sang various renditions of Carnaval songs) piled into the back of a pick-up truck (there were 18 in total) and drove two hours or so to this little pueblo called Salitre. There´s a river that runs through part of the town and everyone swims in the river and all these hut-type things are set up with food and dancing. It was SO MUCH FUN. I got thrown in a pit of mud no less than four times, lost an earring (whoops) and then continously got dunked in the river. There are little packets of powder you can buy that you just need a little bit of water to make paint, so we were throwing that at everyone too. I tried my first cazuela de camaron, which was awesome. Salitre was also the start of my purple hair (yes, you read that correctly). There were people selling bottles of very dark purple paint that was very liquidy (is that a word?) and Daniel and Ricardo kept warning us that it would never leave our clothes or hair. We naturally each bought two bottles.

On the way home, there were people waiting all along the streets near the speed bumps (where the cars have to slow down to cross) with buckets of water and hoses, and people were just throwing water mercilessly on the people in the cars. This was hilarious for us when we were watching this from the river, but then it was our turn to get in the car and drive home. I only got saved because Daniel ended up effectively blocking a lot of the water that probably would have ended up on me hahaha it was funny but then we were freezing on the car ride home.

On Monday and Tuesday we played Carnaval pretty much all day. We got hit by random kids playing in the street, especially the kids that live on the corner. There are about seven of them under the age of seven that got us pretty good one day. It was fun to play it at Semillas with the kids and the retreat groups too because we just filled up TONS of water balloons. After Semillas we also played with the purple paint, so I ended up with purple (I am not exaggerating in the least) hair for about a week. Brendan used bleach to get it out of his hair, but I didn´t hit that point (actually now it´s pretty much all come out of my hair just using regular shampoo).

I must say though that the highlight was Tuesday night when we were so covered in paint and mud and dirt and that purple stuff that we headed to the river behind our house to bathe in the river. This river is dirrrrttttyyyy but it was so much fun. I don´t even really know what the point of bringing soap with us was, but it was awesome. It was a questionable decision at best, considering I´m now sick with a cold and an earache, but let´s be honest, I´ll probably do it again :)

Paz, Amor, y Ecuador

I got a visitor :)

Joey! After not being sure for a while if he´d be able to make the trip to Guayaquil and Duran, Joey was able to make his rotation schedule work out so that he could come!

One hour after he landed, Joey was being subjected to your typical Ecuadorian birthday party, which equates to lots of people, food, and dancing. I had figured that he only had four days here, so why waste any time getting out into the community? Poor kid. He was such a good sport though haha I think he enjoyed himself. Kika got ahold of him, which is hilarious and terrifying at the same time. Kika is one of our neighbors who lives out near Sector 4. She has four daughters, all of which attend Nuevo Mundo, and she is absolutely wild. She always has so much energy and never stops laughing; she is a wonderful human being. Perfect example of Kika´s personality: she found out that Joey works in finance, so she started rubbing his stomach because apparently if you rub Buddha´s belly you get money? And then she told Joey that unless he was dying, he had to continue dancing. Talk about a warm welcome to Ecuador.

Sunday morning we went to mass in the community, and everyone was staring, which is pretty normal, but a bit more than usual, wondering who the new gringo was. Joey got introduced to about a million curious neighbors before meeting all the people in Nueva Generacion, which is the music group that Aide, Ricardo, and Frixon all play in. We headed over to Francisca´s quickly to say bye to Joseph before he goes off to the army (fun fact: he still hasn´t been deployed) and then over to Jenny and Oscar´s house to play with the kids for a bit before Oscar drove us to the terminal to go to Montañita for a few days.

Montañita is absolutely awesome. It´s this bumpin surf town with lots of night life, beach, and expatriates running around. It was hilarious. The first afternoon/night we hung out on the beach and then grabbed dinner in the main part of town. I had ceviche and Joey had a crepe (looks like his phobia of strange foods or just plain vegetables hasn´t changed in the last seven months...hahaha). Stores and bars can´t sell alcohol after four o´clock on Sundays in Ecuador, so all the discotecas turned into movie theaters for Sunday night. We hung around outside one and listened to a reggae band for the night.

The next day we rented an umbrella and chairs on the beach for the day and basically got roasted (oh yeah, remember Ecuador is on the EQUATOR and therefore, reapplying is more than a good idea...). I had a meeting the next morning for work, so we had bought tickets on the last bus out of Montañita to make sure we got back to Guayaquil in time for my meeting the next morning. Unfortunately the last bus left at five o´clock in the afternoon, so our beach time was going to get cut shorter than we otherwise would have liked. At about four, we decided to count our money to see if we could actually stay another night and then take the 5am bus out the next morning. We ran around looking for a hostel that was cheap enough but still inhabitable (found a great one) and then went to the bus terminal and sold our tickets so that we could use that money to buy our new tickets for the next morning. We didn´t have enough money to just buy new ones, and we ended up selling ours to this younger boy, who turned out to be one of my graduated septimos at Santa Marianita. His eye balls almost popped out of his head when he realized who I was (apparently I must look extremely different when I don´t wear my Rostro polo?). We got some great dinner crashed for about an hour before we could get on the bus back to Guayaquil. It was just good, clean, fun.

For the rest of Joey´s time in Duran, we went to Semillas twice (kids were wild, per usual) and Joey came with me to my morning work site on Wednesday. Everyone at the soup kitchen and school and clinic wanted to meet him. I´m pretty sure he´s now facebook friends with one of the doctors (they were chanting YANKEES, YANKEES at me at one point during their conversation...) and we went with Don Juan and Juan Jose (soup kitchen family) to the big market to get the goods for the week. I love these big markets, so it was really fun that Joey got to come and see it too.

I would say that having people visit from home is more than worth it. It was so great to share in something that is so extremely difficult to put into words. It can feel kind of weird at first to have both ¨worlds¨merging, like the life you had before with the new life you have started here, but it was so fun to introduce Joey to everyone and for him to see what I do everyday (let´s be honest, Montañita was pretty fun too). Get ready Mom, Dad, and Tim. You guys are next.

Paz, Amor, y Ecuador

How many celebrations can you fit into a single weekend?

About two weeks ago, we had one of the most jam-packed weekends yet this year. I´m definitely not complaining; it was probably one of the most fun weekends I´ve had all year as well, but sorry that I´m just getting around to writing about it now.

On Friday night, we had Joseph´s graduation party. Unfortunately, we all weren´t able to make it to the high school graduation because it started at 3pm and we all have program until 5, but Jon was asked to be padrino (godfather) so it was really exciting and he and Caitlin were able to make it to the ceremony. Afterwards, we were able to make to the party. They are in the process of adding onto their house, so it actually made for a great outdoor patio area. Naturally, dancing was involved. Diego, the largest two-year-old I´ve ever seen (okay, he might be three by now, but he still keeps the superlative) was bopping around and ¨singing¨to everyone (okay, more like a weird screaming noise). Some of our most controversial neighborhood kids were there too, like the biggest problem makers at Semillas that we all actually adore, and it was really fun to be with them as only a friend, rather than to have to balance that with being in a position of authority.

On Saturday, I went into Guayaquil to the Bahia and the Malecon, to buy myself an Ecuador jersey and to also attempt to find a present for Maria Sarita for her baptism party, which was the next day. I ended up finding the jersey I wanted, and Ricardo found a gift, so that was good. Later on, my roommates and I all went to Gabriel´s house for a birthday dinner for Tierney. (Wooooo HAPPY 23RD BIRTHDAY TIERNEY!) He owns the panaderia (bread store) where we buy bread for Semillas every day, so we see him frequently but don´t get to his house to spend time with his family as much as we´d like. His four girls are lots of fun and require lots of energy haha but they´re always entertaining. His daughters are Drew, Anita, Lady, and Tita, and range in ages from about eleven to four. There´s a video below of Anita and Lady rapping? Who knew they could rap?

Sunday was actually a dual celebration, both the baptism for Maria Sarita, as well as Nico´s fifth birthday. After church we all headed over there to celebrate. A long table was set up in their main room, and all the chicks plus Padre Miguel got to sit down at the table to eat, while all the guys had to either sit against the wall or stand up with their plates. It was very funny. Almost immediately after food, the tables were cleared for dancing (straight salsa and merengue). Don Oscar started pairing us off, insisting that we were the ¨jovenes¨(young people) and we should therefore be the ones starting and enjoying the dancing. I like dancing salsa and merengue (even though I´m not very good...let´s be honest, normal people´s hips don´t move that way), especially since I usually just have to follow the steps of whoever I´m dancing with. I must be improving at least to some degree, because Jenny told me, ¨You can dance Miss Cris but why can´t you bathe?¨ So, that needs some explaining, but it was absolutely hilarious when she said it. I don´t think Ricardo or Frixon could breathe for at least three minutes due to laughing. A while back, there was this time period (of four days...) when I didn´t shower, because the water is freezing and I was being prissy. Yes, this is gross, but someone told a neighbor and now it´s STILL a running joke with everyone. I´d like to add that since my retreat group in January I´ve showered every single day (except for yesterday).

Weather here lately has been HOT, but the rains haven´t been around for a while, which everyone keeps insisting is very weird. There was a period of about two weeks when the mud was out of control, and the streets literally looked more like muddy rivers than anything else. Besides the fact that tadpoles are in the puddles and it´s a breeding ground for mosquitos and Dengue (don´t worry, we´ve doubled and trippled up on the repellent), it´s actually kind of fun. I wear bright yellow rubber boots and get called ¨gallina¨, or hen, every single day because of it, but I´ll take that over having to wash my shoes everyday (which I´m sure, I probably wouldn´t do anyway).

The mud can be fun, but it also brings to light how fortunate we are just to have a cistern. The mud makes the roads nearly impassable, meaning that the water trucks sometimes can´t get to everyone. The other week I was talking to one of our neighbors and she told that they hadn´t gotten water in eight days. EIGHT. DAYS. Without water. Can you imagine? She said they were getting by just by asking for a little bit of water from different neighbors, but that if the truck couldn´t get through soon, she wasn´t sure what any of them were going to do. Luckily, the water truck was able to pass through that street later that afternoon.

Water is just something we never have to think about. In that states I NEVER thought about having clean water. I could drink out of the faucet for goodness sake. Here, I think about it more because we have to drink water from the pomas and we have to call the water truck to come fill up our cistern. But yeah, we can call the water truck. Our neighbors can´t. I don´t think I´ll ever get used to kids screaming in the street for the water truck to come to their house.

Paz, Amor, y Ecuador

Bienvenidos Boston College

So a large part of the Rostro de Cristo program is hosting retreat groups from colleges, universities, and high schools throughout the year. Both Duran houses have houses for retreatants right next to the houses where the year long volunteers live, so when a group stays in one of those houses, a volunteer from the same community is the leader of the group. This person stays with the group at all times and has a lot of responsibility but also gets to just hang out with the group. From January 3-11, Boston College came to Arbolito and I got my first taste of being a retreat group leader. I was really excited for it (and definitely a bit nervous because I just didn´t know what to expect) because the retreat group program is something very unique to Rostro, and it was something that strongly drew me to the program, since a cultural immersion trip was basically what started the chain of events that lead me to volunteer for a year.

Boston College was AWESOME. They had so much energy, lots of great questions, and had such a fun group dynamic that I am STILL missing them two weeks later. Everyone took part in reflections and I really felt like I was part of the group, just hanging out and playing Jenga and giving people mohawks? (That did actually happen...by the end, Kenny, Calvin (the two guys in the picture with Aide and I) and Kipp were all sporting mohawks and Ricardo let Aide cut his hair shorter). I was truly and honestly very sad to see them leave.

Every retreat group does more or less the same things. We spent lots of time in the neighborhood, meeting neighbors and playing with the kids. In Arbolito we visited Patricia, Ellsya, Pastora, Jenny & Oscar, and Lupe. BC definitely came with a lot of questions, and even though they all had alternating levels of Spanish, each and every one of them introduced themselves in Spanish and made an effort to speak the language to the neighbors. It was also really fun to get to spend lots of time with Aide, since she works at Manos and is so busy all the time with classes and other responsibilites. Aide was with us all week for market trips to buy food, at neighbors´houses, helping to cook dinner, and she even borrowed a pair of my shorts so she could play in the soccer tournament on Saturday that Ricardo organized. Ricardo and Aide have both known the adult leader for BC (Chris) because he´s lead this trip for BC for the past five years. It was really fun to see how he still held such a strong relationship with the neighbors and with the two of them even though he can only return each year for a week. My group also went to Damien House, which is a hospital for lepers in Guayaquil, for two mornings, visited with the patients there and did some singing (really, I do more theatrical productions here than I ever have before...and my singing is way less than satisfactory). We headed to Nuevo Mundo as well to visit Caitlin´s English class, and again, sang to the entire assembly (Build Me Up Buttercup).

My favorite thing to do with the retreat groups is to visit all the afterschool programs. Because the group was staying in Arbolito and because I work at Semillas, we went there three times. We also got a chance to visit Valdivia and Manos Abiertas, which was really fun for me because the last time I went to these programs was my first week here when they were still run by last year´s volunteers. Having visitors come to our programs is awesome, because we have so many kids and the real thing that they need most is attention. With lots of extra people, more kids can get that one on one attention that they crave. We love the kids we work with, and to see the retreat groups give them that one thing they need so much, it´s just really wonderful.

The last day we went to the Malecon in Guayaquil, as a sort of transition day back to their reality of being US citizen. This is a chance for them to reflect on what they´ve seen and done and who´ve they´ve met over the past week. Honestly, I like for retreat groups to feel uncomfortable with their experience. I guess that sounds really weird, but what I mean is that I believe that being a college-educated US citizen puts an individual in a very privileged, and very small, population of people in the world, and coming to terms with that is awkward, because who honestly likes to think of themselves that way? I feel like there´s a social responsibility to realize that you are part of that privileged population, and to do something with the leverage that you´ve been given. Whether it´s helping out in your own neighborhood or halfway around the world, it doesn´t matter. I just believe that there are lots of people that have the capabilities to achieve amazing things, but just not the opportunities. In one way or another, I just hope that this program provokes retreatants to think about the opportunities they´ve had and taken advantage of, and how maybe they can transfer those to other people that weren´t so lucky. As much as I hope our program made the retreatants think a lot, it definitely made me think too.

I can´t say that I ever thought I´d be so happy to wear a Boston College shirt (go ´Nova!), but this group has converted me hahaha holler at BC :)

Due to lack of my camera capabilities, this picture doesn´t include everyone, but it was the best group shot I had!

Paz, Amor, y Ecuador

Fun Fact: I Can´t Ride Horses

So as I said in the last blog post, we did some travelling for a few days between Christmas and New Years because the foundation gave us the week off from work! The volcano in Banos decided to continue spitting hot ash into the air, so we nixed that plan and headed south to Loja. Fifteen of us ended up going to Loja, but we travelled in two groups. I was in a group with Caitlin, Jon, Jessie, Celso, Tasha, and Jenn. When we first got into Loja, we took another bus right away to get to Zamora, which is on the other side of the National Park Pordacorpus, and it´s the side of the park that enters into the jungle. Total travel time was probably about 11 hours. It was definitely a long day of being on busses, but it was funny and we were all together so we still managed to make it hilarious. We got into Zamora pretty late and checked into our hostel, which actually was more of a hotel, and they handed us seven different keys to seven different hotel rooms...uhhh not necessary, nevermind the fact that we were also scared to sleep in rooms by ourselves because some of the rooms had huge windows that opened into...the hallway of the hotel.

The first day we decided to try a few hikes at the National Park. We found a pickup truck to take us to and from the park entrance, and got some bread and cheese to make sandwiches during the hike. The first hike we did was to a waterfall. It wasn´t too difficult, but it kind of broke us into the hike we decided to try next. The next hike was basically an eighty degree incline that never stopped, and we got separated at certain points but eventually all were able to meet back up. I think we all slipped at least once (let´s be honest, I slipped multiple times) but we all made it down in one piece. We did a short hike to a river afterwards and went swimming in the freezing water (Caitlin actually looks like a dog when she was doing the doggie paddle in the river...). We had our picnic and slept on the rocks in the sun and Jon and Celso (and finally Caitlin) were jumping off of rocks into the water (I´ll admit it, I chickened out...there was no way my little legs could get me over the rocks and into the safe water).

That night we took the guide book´s advice and went to the ¨best place in town¨...and we were the only ones there haha but I tried frog legs! They really did taste just like chicken, and they came with this super great sauce, so they kinda tasted even better than chicken. Seven gringos walking around in Zamora was like a walking circus/freak show. Zamora is definitely not too much of a tourist town, and everyone was staring at us even moreso than usual.

The next day we took a bus to Vilcabamba, which is like a hide out for expatriots haha it was absolutely wonderful and extremely relaxing. Just to comment on how much of a freak show seven gringos in Zamora was, we were on the bus ready to leave for Vilcabamba when the owner of our hotel gets onto our bus and starts shouting about the gringos who were in room 402 (cough cough Tasha and Jessie) that walked out of his hotel with the room key. Jessie reached into her pocket and took out the key to return it (which was hilarious because the keys were MASSIVE). Then the bus company kept telling us to move our seats around because we all naturally had to sit in the wrong seats. She was amused though, not too irritated. We got to Vilcabamba early and headed to Rendez-Vous, which is a French-run (duh) hostel that was just extremely comfortable and quiet and peaceful. Vilcabamba is in a valley so it´s surrounded by mountains and the air is so fresh and cooler with less mosquitos, which was a very welcomed change of scenery from Duran. The first afternoon, we found a cute place to eat in town and then some of us went hiking while others hung out in the hammocks at the hostel and read. That night we found Timothy´s Bar, which was absurdly American and had couches and a Christmas tree? Oh, and the kid that took our orders was probably...six years old. It was a lot of fun.

The next morning, we headed over to Holger´s Horses, a little place that does horseback riding tours through the mountains. There were two routes available for the "inexperienced" (aka me...the only other horse I rode was a donkey ride when I was younger and I fell off the stupid thing) so we split into groups. The boys (Celso and Jon) headed to the waterfall while the girls (Tasha, Jessie, Cailtin, Jenn, and myself) headed with Holger himself up through the mountains to his family´s finca (farm).

I laughed so hard during all of this that I may or may not have peed my pants (again, I know) for a few reasons:

1. I just plain and simple cannot ride a horse. The thing went faster when it wanted to and went slower when it felt like it...I just tried to hold on. And when my horse, Mil Amores (1,000 Loves) decided to partially gallop or even just trot, I was stiff as a board and just bounced up and down in the seat (graceful)

2. I looked like Jane Goodall, meaning I wore Earth tone clothing...and the ranchero hat that was offered to everyone but I was the only one who thought it was necessary

3. I was afraid my horse was going to fall off the cliff, maybe because I saw Jessie´s slide a bit down the cliff.

4. Mil Amores kept walking slower than the rest of the horses, so Holger (who was awesome) kept yelling back to me "Oye, Payasa, todo bien?", which translates to "Hey clown, everything alright back there?"

5. We stopped off at Holger´s mom´s house to meet his four-year-old daughter and to have a cup of coffee. Then we hiked a bit to the highest point on the mountain...and I slipped in slow motion down part of the moutain (like I almost did a split...) so Holger decided he had to walk next to me for the rest of our descent.

We had dinner at the most ridiculous establishment in town that night. Everyone there was a character, with some absurd story. A woman the looked like Cruella DeVille (how do you spell that?) was at the table next to us and she had a puppy with her...which was really ironic. Through eavesdropping we found out she was from LA. We asked our waiter, who was also the owner, why he moved to Vilcabamba from the states and he launched into this huge story about how everyone who comes to Vilcabamba is running away from something. Later, we met up with the other group of volunteers that ended up staying in Loja and went to Timothy´s Bar again. The six-year-old wasn´t working again, but we still managed to have a good time.

The next day, we checked out early, remembered to return the keys to our hostel rooms, and headed back to Loja to make sure we could get tickets home to Guayaquil on an overnight bus. The woman in the bus office in Vilcabamba told us they´d be hard to get because pretty much everything was already full to get back to Guayaquil, but she was lying because we got tickets easily and then had the whole day in Loja. We went to an open market and got little trinkets to take home (I got a necklace with a C on it that´s like the ones that a lot of the kids wear here) and we walked around on a wild goose chase to find a bar called Jugo Natural that Tasha decided we just had to go to...she ended up walking right past it when we tried to use the map in the guide book to find it. It´s this nice little cafe, and Tasha goes to the bathroom and asks us to get her a sausage pizza, which doesn´t seem like it was that funny as I´m writing this but it was HILARIOUS at the time. And then they tried to overcharge us, but we caught them.

That night we call returned home on the overnight bus, Caitlin almost peed her pants because she has the smallest bladder known to man, and we got in to Guayaquil at 6:30am, where I ran into one of my students. During the day, we helped Eduardo finish up our Año Viejo, which he decided to name Joey, which is my boyfriend´s name, meaning that we blew up Joey with sixty fireworks and gasoline on New Year´s Eve. We went to mass at 8pm, then headed to Aide´s house to have dinner with her family. We were starting to blow up some fireworks in the streets with her younger brothers before we headed back home to blow up Joey with Eduardo and Elvis. Megan was in Duran for the night with some of her kids from the shelter and Jenn came in from Monte Sinai, so it was fun to celebrate with them too. At midnight we literally poured gasoline all over our año viejo, then lit it on fire so that all the fireworks started blowing up. It was pretty funny. My roommates and I took a walk through the neighborhood and said hi to a bunch of different neighbors, including Don Felipe (who runs the food stand where we usually buy groceries) who tried to convince us that we could share a little "cervecita" (the tiniet beers I´ve ever seen) with him (we didn´t). We all met up with Megan, Jenn, and the boys at Patricia´s for dancing around 1:30 and ended up staying there until 3:30. Ricardo, Aide, and Frixon showed up too so we had some good teachers, and Brendan and I ended up dancing with them in the retreat house until 6:30am. Then we watched the sun rise from the roof of our house, got attacked by mosquitos and Ricardo cooked us breakfast (miracle) before we slept nearly all day.

Solid New Years :)

Paz, Amor, y Ecuador