Mis queridos,
Things are picking up. I have no intention of flooding you with esoteric stories, but this weekend has been full of adventures that I thought you would all enjoy. The Spanish classes are going so well -- I am getting very confident speaking and the more confident I get, the better I get. Because I actually speak, so people correct me without feeling bad about it. A tip for any future language learners... I am also much busier, a fact which will soon become apparent. (FORESHADOWING!)
On Friday night I took my dinner break with the Ohioians at a famous restaurant called La Boca del Lobo: the mouth of the wolf. A brightly painted colonial style corner house enclosed by glass, with a tree growing right up the middle of it, right behind our long low table. Y que rico la comida!
On Saturday I caught a taxi to the kids' school, a French school called La Condamine, for Nicolas' final program. The theme was the history of Ecuadorian dance. The gym was stifling and crammed full of people, none of whom I knew, and the campus was covered with stalls of junk food and drinks, games and people selling their crafts and old stuff. I don't know what they did with the pet llamas, who normally graze in the yard, but I didn't see them in the crowds. I also met the president, and kissed him twice! He is a fascinating political figure, intensely hated and intensely adored by nationals and foreigners alike, with a pretty vivid socioeconomic divide. Based on my social class, I probably should not be a fan of him; but he is the president of my country of origin, and I kissed him. Twice.
We had some friends over for lunch in the afternoon, and after dessert I was sitting outside reading Harry Potter. Suddenly the neighbor's dogs appeared in the yard, two golden retrievers. One of them returned when he was called, but the other one was on the hunt. When I realized where he was headed I started yelling at him and running after him, but he had already snatched up one of the kittens in his mouth and ran off with it while I tried to hit him, to no avail. I will spare you the gory, traumatizing details, but the kitten died several minutes later. We buried him and drew pictures to stick on his grave.
Fortunately I had plans to go out with my coworker Marisabel that evening. She is 25 and divorced. I met her entire family in Calle La Ronda, in the Old Town. It used to be one of the most dangerous streets in the city, the red light district, but recently the mayor has put a lot of resources into making the city a little safer and it is now a well-lit, lively old road. We went with Papá and Mamá, Tío y Tía, Estefano her 5-year-old son and Jorge Luis her boyfriend, into a few little restaurants where we drank mora-flavored canelazo (blackberry sugar cane liquor) and ate fried empanadas with sugar, drank vino hervido or boiled wine and shared platters of meat and potato appetizers. I felt properly Ecuadorian, even though they all kept making fun of me for being drunk, which I was not, especially compared to Tío who kept pouring more vino and inviting guitarristas to play for us, and singing along very raucously. After La Ronda, we left Estefano with his abuelos and headed off to a karaoke. Marisabel and I did our makeup in the car, and it was, suprisingly, one of the best makeup jobs I have ever done. At the karaoke we met up with two other couples -- I was the seventh wheel, but didn't feel left out at all. The Ecuadorian style of hanging out with friends makes so much sense to me. We ordered a round of cerveza nacional, Pilsener's, and as we were finishing it up a fourth couple appeared, the guy calling out, "Oy hombres, a bottle of whiskey!" Everyone groaned, but it appeared and we slowly polished it off over the next few hours, singing raucously and dancing the night away. On our way out, we saw the parking guard sleeping on the stairs, all his tips spread out around him in careful piles. I slept in Estefano's bed that night, in Marisabel's beautiful departamento on the North side. In the morning, Jorge Luis appeared at the breakfast table blaming Marisabel for the gum in his hair.
Upon reaching home I found myself second-in-command of a storm of preparation for a 14-person trilingual dinner party. Some French friends from the school had their cousins and grandparents over from France, and we'd invited the whole brood over for a grill on Sunday afternoon, to the tiny 2-bedroom house in the middle of a fickle rainstorm. I took a break to race my cousin Nico along the path where our guests were apparently walking; we didn't meet them but reached home soaked, flushed, and happy. The six little boys immediately transformed themselves into a Crusading army, turned the floor black with mud, and disappeared into the trees, plastic swords clanging. After dinner someone put in "A Knight's Tale" in French, and Natalia and I spent the end of the afternoon getting hit on by the very rambunctious four-year-old Timoté. I think everyone was rather relieved when the whole bunch of them marched off into the gathering dusk.
Today I finally visited the downtown area with the student group, Ohio State + Clara -- we're getting closer, crammed on top of each other into a little yellow bus and adapting our growing inventory of in-jokes, slang terms, and personal historical accounts. At the center we climbed up onto the colonnade of el gobierno, the government building, looked down uncomfortably on a protest against the Honduras coup, bright green flags popping out of the mass of Ecuadorian flags and colorful indigenous dress. I have not toured the churches yet, though it is still higher on my list now that we have seen the outsides of some of them. There is something about churches...
My adventures continue, and I hope your summers are picking up as quickly as mine is. This email is in a better state now than it was when I started -- apparently as I get better at Spanish, my English deteriorates. Or maybe it's just bedtime...
Con mucho cariño,
Clarita
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