First thing was we left the Hacienda we had stayed two nights at early in the morning. I feel like all of our departures have some innate need to be as early as possible. That morning in particular I could see the need as the drive ahead of us was going to be 8 hours long. We split the drive into two four hour blocks, one on each side of lunch. The first part of the drive was fairly uneventful until we reached the town of Alausi. There we got lunch at a small restaurant that had a special where you pay two dollars and you get a large bowl of soup and a plate of rice, beans and meat. It was a pretty good deal and then we set out to stretch our legs and explore the town before we hit the road again. We found one of the first Panaderias that we tried in Ecuador, I tried my first south american donut. The donut was a bit stale, not glazed and more bread like than I was accustomed to, but otherwise it was pretty tasty, especially so with the frosting. We followed one street as to its terminus that led to a steep set of stairs which we climbed to find a neat lookout over the rest of the town. There was yet another giant statue on the opposite side of town of the Virgin Mary which we didn´t get to see closeup but it looked neat from afar.
Our bus winded on and on after Alausi, snaking through the mountain roads. Two hours in we took a bathroom break at the very first chapel ever built in Ecuador. It wasn´t fancy and I liked that about it. The rest of the drive was smoother and I fell asleep listening to music in my seat. I awoke to find that we had stopped, no we had not arrived yet, but rather there had been a small rockslide on the mountain road that we were driving on. We had to wait for about twenty minutes as a few of the drivers including our own made the road driveable again. In the meantime this huge cloud kind of glided next to use covering the giant ravine/valley to our side. It was about level with the road to the extent that it seemed viable that we could jump out and land on the cloud, yes I know that doesn´t actually work, but damn if it did that would have been so cool.The approach to Cuenca an hour later was incredibly exciting. It just kind of appeared out of nowhere, parks, buildings, churches all in front of us on that sunny afternoon. I know I was scared to meet my host family, I don´t know about anyone else on the bus. What if they didn´t like me? What if I couldn´t communicate? We climbed the stairs to our new university and were seated in a medium sized room with the host family coordinator Dunia. One at a time she called the next person to leave the room and meet their host family as if it was an elaborate game show. My name was called and I got to meet my host mom Lupe, her son and his wife(they´re in their thirties) and their son Sebastian. It was overwhelming, but they all seemed quite nice. We were given fruit, drinks and snacks and given some time to mingle. That mingling time went by in a blur, but I got to try my first granadilla which my host family taught me how to eat. Granadilla, for those of you who have never had one, are kind of yellowish orange in color and kind of pear shaped. They are related to the pomegranate, and if they´re not then they´re eaten in a somewhat similar way. First you use your finger to crack into the inside, the inside if full of sweet gooey crunchy seeds that you can then either suck out or use a spoon if you´re feeling a bit more civilized.
(hmm I guess I´m remembering a fair amount)
My host brother then drove us all to Lupe´s house where I got to settle in. They showed me each different room, let me take it all in and showed me my room and how the shower worked then gave me space to unpack and take a rest for a bit before dinner. I came down a bit before when I thought dinner might be and everyone was getting ready and kind of heading for the door, which for me was enormously confusing as I assumed we were having dinner at the house. I asked Lupe where we were going and she answered that her sister had invited us to dinner at her house. Her sister´s house was nice and full of relatives all eating. I was shy at first around so many new people when I was still kind of in shell shock. Dinner was delicious, it was this kind of stir fry with rice, various vegetables such as peas and then chicken and eggs mixed in. On the side was a small plate of broccoli and a cup of coca cola(coke is pretty popular down here). As I ate I became a little more comfortable and listened to the family and some of their jokes, I could only pick up on some of them. I learned the word ¨chendo¨ which is basically a joke. Once everyone was finished eating half of the family all gathered around an ipad to play ¨Who Wants to Be a Millionaire¨ in Spanish while the other half started playing dominoes at the table. After mustering a bit of courage I went over to the ones by the ipad to investigate, they welcomed me over and had me help out. They were quite impressed when I knew quite a few answers, like that Zeus was the god represented by the planet Jupiter. I ended up staying longer with Sebastian to play with the ipad with the others while Lupe went home early. When we did leave it was pouring outside. We scrambled to get into the car in the rain. I got to try out using my keys to the house as the rain poured down and we all got soaking wet, I was laughing: I thought it was pretty fun.
When I got in, Lupe was worried about me being wet, but I said it didn't matter and I was grinning from ear to ear. Before bed they showed me how my TV worked, its a small little one with no remote and the stations come in depending on the direction of the rabbit ears. I found a channel that came in fairly well that was playing what Lupe told me was a fairly famous Mexican comedy. It seemed to me like the Mexican version of Billy Madison, but 20 or 30 years earlier. I washed up, turned the light off and crawled into bed falling asleep to the sounds of the river running in the background.
-----------------------------------------------------------
I've decided I'm splitting the weekend's adventures into two parts since this is fairly long already, so expect part two in the near future.
No comments:
Post a Comment