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