Sunday, February 8, 2009: El Primer Fin de Semana

I’m finishing up my first weekend of the trip, with my host family, without my group of Americans. Saturday I got up at 7:00 to get ready and went to a parade with my host dad and youngest sister, Camila; my middle host sister Mimi is a cheerleader for her private Catholic school. The parade was for the 100th anniversary of Saint Miguel, the Ecuadorian patron saint of education, so Catholic schools from all around the country came to be in the parade. There were different groups of indigenous dancers from the Oriente, la Sierra, and the coast, and they were all doing traditional dancers. The schools had baton twirler girls and cheerleaders and bands and then other students who marched along in their uniforms. Some of the littlest boys had sweaters and ties and suit jackets on, and it was really hot, they must have been smoking. I remembered to put sunscreen on, but I missed the part of my nose that my glasses rest on, so that part got a little burnt.

The rest of the day was pretty slow. I’m rereading The Godfather, so that was what I did for most of the day. I finished it last thing at night. I went on a little walk around my neighborhood. It’s all walled off in blocks. There are gates that lead into people’s driveways, which are usually shared, sometimes between relatives. One of the blocks is named after Saint Patrick and has a shamrock painted on the corner.

Today was a lot busier. Patricia (my host mother), Camila and I went with Patricia’s friend Luis to buy a tree for their garden. They are adding on a swept concrete patio space and an outdoor oven. First we drove into Quito and waited while Luis changed the car for a truck. Then we drove to Rayon, which is where everyone goes to get their plants – there are little nurseries everywhere called viveros. We got a little tree and different kinds of flowers at one called La Tierra Negra. Cami and I rode on the back of the truck with the flowers back to Los Chillos and then we drove back to Quito, Cami, Mimi and me riding on the back, to exchange it for the car.

Then we drove back to Los Chillos and immediately left again to go back to Quito to visit Patricia’s mother for lunch. Her mother lives in the northern part of Quito and from a window in her back wall you can see the famous angel statue and the entire historic center. Patricia’s brother and sister, her brother’s wife, and their kids came, too, and so it was a pretty full little apartment. Her mother’s really cute – she was wearing a flowery apron. Patricia’s sister asked me about all the vampires in Pennsylvania.

For lunch we had lots of courses: 1.) corn on the cob (different than in the U.S. – bigger kernels and less sweet); 2.) cow’s feet soup; 3.) thin slices of pork with two potatoes with sauce, served with mild guacamole; 4.) raspberry sorbet with cake. It was all good – Cami had just told me earlier today that cow’s feet soup was one of the most typical dishes in Ecuador, so I wanted to try it. It had a big cow’s foot in it, which was interesting, but it was tasty and not that different than normal beef broth soups. It had those white corn kernels that have been cooked for a really long time in it.

We stayed around there for a long time, until around 6:00. I talked to Patricia’s sister-in-law for most of the time, mostly about politics and school. She told me a lot about Correa, the President, and she (and a lot of other people it seems like) voted for him but think he’s not living up to his ideas since there was never enough money to support them, even before the crisis. His approval rating is always really high, around 60-70%, but she and her husband and this lady that talked to us the other day say it’s because of the ignorance of the people more than his effectiveness. They think he’ll definitely win the April elections since the poor believe he’s still going to help them and there are no other great options.

An example of how Correa’s not following through with his ideas is the environment, naturally a big deal in Ecuador since it prides itself on being really diverse for such a small country. Correa got a new constitution passed in September, the first to directly recognize the legal rights of the environment, but now there is a huge mining debate between Correa and supporters of his economic policy versus indigenous people and environmentalists. He wants to open this one area that’s really rich in resources up to mining but indigenous people and others who live around there know that it will mess up the water supply and nature, and then there’s also an uncontacted indigenous group right in the area that doesn’t want to be part of civilization if all they do is fight and hurt nature.

After Patricia’s mother’s house we went to the mall in Los Chillos, which is the major hang-out place in the valley. It’s huge, at least twice as big as Monroeville Mall and it has tons of stuff. It’s really clean and pretty too. I’ll try to take pictures later, I’m very impressed. It’s all white and there are plants and along the top are brass-looking busts of different kinds of farm animals. There’s a 10-theater cinema, a huge supermarket, and a big arcade games area. I called my parents for the first time from an international phone box in the internet café, and it was only 12 cents a minute.

From the mall we went to a fancy-looking (by my standards) hair salon and Samantha, the oldest sister, and my host dad got their hair cut. It took forever. I read some fashion magazines in Spanish, and I saw that Audrey Tatuo/Amelie is going to play Coco Chanel in a new movie??

Dinner in this house at least is more like a snack since lunch is definitely the big meal. Today we had grilled cheese and ham sandwiches, milk, and tea. I got pretty red riding in the truck for so long so Patricia gave me something to put on my face and she says it will make it not red really fast.

I have to get up at 6:30 tomorrow so I am going to bed at 10:30! Everyone else is in bed already, I really like going to sleep early.