Catch Up, vol. I

Manchada. Así estoy. I´m stained purple and red after a paint war in the neighborhood to celebrate Carnaval. Not all Ecuadorians commemorate the three days before Ash Wednesday in the same style, but on the coast, the custom is to throw water, paint, flour, mud, and even animal fat and motor oil on passing friends and neighbors. The ¨festivities¨ make leaving the house an adventure and in these three days, I never successfully left without returning a disaster. Most people throw harmless tempera, though some, as I discovered as I tried to scrub it off, opt for house paint. My hair is currently two shades of red, with random purple highlight every now and then. Throwing people in puddles is another Arbolito favorite, which proves especially easy now that we´re in the rainy season and entire streets are flooded. Thanks to a few friends (who are much stronger than their deceptively skinny frames suggest), I ended up face-down and submerged in a flooded street. Oh well - I was due for my quarterly parasite check-up anyways, and that mouthful of water I drank will ensure an interesting diagnosis. I´m a mess, my clothes are destroyed, and my stomach regularly gurgles about that delicious shot of puddle-water, but man, oh man, was it worth it!

I should back up and give you a long overdue update. Let´s go back to Christmas...

We celebrated Christmas Eve with a mass, though I listened to the first half blind as I waited ¨backstage¨ for the gospel reading´s nacimiento viviente (Christmas pageant), which I graced as a maestro de la ley (a scribe). I stuck out like a sore thumb, as the saying goes, or like a tall, red-headed woman in Ecuador, which may be even more awkward. But I did my best in our posadas and delivered my single line (¨In Bethlehem of Judea because that is what the prophets wrote¨) with gusto.

Posadas. Te lo explico. Let me explain. Posadas is a Latin American Christmas tradition which reenacts Mary and Joseph´s door-to-door search for shelter, which finally brings them to a stable. Here we did it in conjunction with our parish, though I know several families who do it within their neighborhood communities back in the States. Want to know more? Try Wikipedia.

After mass we came home for a cozy family meal of enchiladas (not a traditional Ecua food - one of my communitymates is Mexican), beans and salad, then opened a few gifts before dragging ourselves to bed.

Santa found us in Ecuador! We opened presents in the morning (thanks Mom and Dad, Kat, the Winkelmanns and Mrs. Mary Miano), then spent the afternoon at a neighborhood party. I still haven´t gotten used to the dance competitions that pit 7 year olds against each other to the impressively sexual lyrics of reggaeton songs. But it´s neither my culture nor my child , so I stand back and watch. Dinner brought us to Guayaquil to the home of Sr. Annie, a nun from Brooklyn who runs a home for patients with Hansen´s Disease (you know it as leprosy) where some of our vols work. Annie is a vibrant Italian woman and a gifted chef, so we feasted on lasagna and meat sauce before diving into an hour of Christmas carols (Bezaires, you would have been proud). Exhausted, full, and delighted, we piled into our van and headed home.

Fast forward to New Year´s. The evening began with another mass and a Nueva Generación dinner. I ran home to rest briefly before before midnight festivities, then we crossed the street to count down with our guard Abráhan. Another Ecua tradition: the burning of the año viejo. The premise: at midnight, everyone burns a paper mache figure to represent burning the last year to make way for the new one. The victims: Spongebob, Puss in Boots, Rafael Correa (current president of Ecuador), and...me.

Like many, Abráhan made rather than bought his muñeco, and spent the entire week secretly creating a lifesize effigy of yours truly. Midnight arrived and Abráhan doused ¨me¨ with diesel and set me on fire, giving life to the whopping 140 firecrackers he´d stuffed inside. If I weren´t friends with Abráhan, I´d be appalled. As it stands, I´m flattered.

We stayed for a midnight meal, then Scott and I rook off to stroll through the lively streets of Arbolito, visiting various friends along the way. After rounding up Eduardo and Anita, we made our way to Andres´ house to dance our little hearts out until 4:00a. The parties continued, but my ánimo ran out, so I came home to sleep for three hours before heading to another (and very sparsely populated) mass. I was half the choir and after such little sleep, I sounded like a rooster, but I gave it my all.

New Year´s Day brought me to Rosa´s in the evening to celebrate her 23rd birthday. Dancing, singing, and penitencias (punishments), which is a tradition in which you stuff a little piece of paper into a ballon before blowing it up and select various people to pop the balloons. They then have to do whatever the paper instructs. Mine was easy: ¨Tell a joke¨. The party was great, and similar to another birthday celebration I´d attended on Dec. 29 for a great guy who reminds me so much of Jeff Michael, it´s astounding. It goes without saying that I like him a lot and think he´s much cooler than I was when I was 18. I´ve been blessed with friendships here and am grateful for the chance to meet, know, and celebrate life with these people!

Today´s prayer intentions: for all of us, that we listen and sloooooooowwwwww down.