Yesterday

5:30AM- Alarm to do yoga and meditation. I don´t think so.

6:20AM- Wake up and take shower

6:45 AM- Time I meant to leave for Gimena´s. Getting dressed.

7:45 AM- We made it to Gimena´s. I start making chocolate chip banan bread, first time I´ve gotten to use an oven since I got here. They do baking by weight, not cups, so I eyeball it.

9:45AM- Delicious.

12:00PM- We have cuy for lunch. Ginuea pig,the national delicacy. It is delicious, except its skin does not break down under teeth. Ever.

1:00 PM- Getting dressed for traditional indigenous dance. Purple pleated skirt. White embroidered blouse. Hair pulled back and wrapped tight in a ribbon. Slipper shoes with white flip-flop soles. Woven blue belt around the waist. If you couldn´t breathe with altitude before...

2:00 PM- Walk to Tabucundo with all the little girls dressed up, the 3 gringas, and Luis and two of Gimena´s brothers. The men are not dressed up.

2:30 PM- Waiting in the rain. Passing around chucha, corn meal alcohol. Smells like Kombucha, tastes like shit. And peach wine which tastes like cough syrup. The men play instruments, mostly guitar, and wear llama fur chaps over jeans.

3:30 PM- Dancing (which means shuffling our feet and twirling our skirts) and singing down the streets of Tabacundo. Each little community has its own group and own song. When I explain to Edison that I´m having trouble understanding the words, he explains to me that some of them are in Quichua, the indiginous language. Oh.

4:00 PM- Still dancing.

5:00PM- Still dancing.

6:00 PM- Still dancing.

7:00PM- We get into Louis´s car and drive to Quito with Katie, the volunteer who is living with them, and Milagros. I ask Louis how he and Gimena met, and tell him about my parent´s divorce. They met in high school. When did you know she was in love with you? When she offered to help me with my homework.

8:30 PM- We arrive at the part, get served big bowls of soup. People talk to me and ask me questions, occasionally trying to say things in English. I repeat what I think they said, which sounds to me like nonsense, and they nod, repeating it. I finally have to ask them in Spanish because their accent is so thick.

8:45PM: A plate of potatoes, rice, cuy, pork, and chicken.

9:00 PM- Dancing. Variations on salsa without partners.

9:30 PM- They are passing around a tray with glasses of whisky. Ok.

9:45 PM- Have more whisky! No thanks. More whisky! Really no thanks. God these people can drink.

10:30 PM- I look at the clock and realize I haven´t been up this late since my plane got into Quito.

11:30 PM- Cake and rum raisin ice cream. Gloriously artificial, like dimatap. 40 year old man obviously crushing on me, becomes the joke of the party when he calls me his cousin and I say no no you´re my grandfather. I have never had so many people pay so much attention to me at a party. Asking me all sorts of questions about myself. Make friends with the coolest 7 year old girl. Here name is Linda, which means pretty. I tell her Que nombre linda! My first pun in Spanish.

12:00 AM- More dancing. I keep trying to sit down and rest. I have never met a people so able to dance, so oblivous to tired feet.

1:00 AM- Gimena, Louis, Katie and I all sitting, tired. Gimena asks, are you tired? I say yes, thinking, oh good now we can go home. Instead she shows me a room where several people are resting on a bed. I fall asleep and wake up when people come in and out of the room.

4:30 AM- Gimena wakes me up to go home.

4:45 AM- Traveling along foggy cliffside roads. I do that stupid airplane thing, where I imagine that I have to be constantly vigilent to protect us from having an accident. Keeping nodding off and getting jerked awake by tight corners. Louis and Gimena keep waking me up by asking me if I´m awake.

5:30 AM- The yes game. I play the yes game when children speak to me in mumbly Spanish, or when I´m too tired to understand anyone. Mumble mumble Spanish mumble. What? Mumble mumble Spanish mumble. Si! It´s just easier. During the party with the loud music making things hard, I played the yes game with Linda and she brough me more cake.

6:00 AM- Home, go to sleep.

3:00 PM- Wake up.