Friends, Surfing, and Life on the Beach

Nov-Dec, 2015

So other than working at the bar and restaurant (click to go to those posts), I did a bunch of other stuff at the beach.  I'll do my best to elaborate on said things in roughly chronological order.

I baked a cake for Jonathan's birthday, and was a little surprised that it worked so well since they had to bend oven parts back into shape with pliers before I could use it.  Cake was a treat since for some reason they don't bake very much down here.

Birthday Boy!

And of course the rest of the night was a party.

Party people left to right: Marcelo, me, Simone, Bernardo, and Jonathan

My Thanksgiving was wonderfully strange.  I talked to both sides of my extended family via Skype over the long weekend which was great.

Thanksgiving Day everyone was with Dad's side of the family

On Friday I got to see all of Mom's side

I also had my very own Friendsgiving, Ecuador style.  My friends heard it was a holiday in the States where you get together and eat a lot, so they were all 'Lets go make food!' even though I had trouble explaining exactly what the holiday was celebrating.

We're all 5 in the photo again, Jonathan is barely visable peeking out from below Marcelo, a piece of bread in his mouth.

We had the 5 of us celebrating with a big pasta dinner, including pan toasted garlic bread and fresh fruit juice.

I sort of learned how to surf, though mostly I learned how easy it is to bruise your shins on a surfboard trying to stand up on it.  I also got a LOT of salt down the back of my throat.  And burnt my nose a bunch.  There aren't any pictures of me surfing, but here's a couple of Jonathan and Marcelo.

Marcelo was endlessly patient with me, helping me catch wave after wave in the hopes that THIS one would be the one to stand up in.  I even caught one all by myself one time, which is harder than it looks when your back and arm muscles aren't totally ripped.  I was rather proud of myself.

My last day out surfing, I finally managed to get two feet under myself and balance long enough that I counted it as standing.  I would have liked to have another go at it, but the waves the next day were too big for comfort.  I guess I'll just have to go back.  Darn.

I visited a farm, which belonged to Marcelo's grandparents.  We headed out on the bus with Jonathan and Simone, and then walked on a dirt road about 45 minutes before crossing a river to get there.  Fish cleaning in the river happened, then the fish became lunch.

We sat in hammocks for a bit, had a rousing game of foozball on the most ancient foozball table I've ever seen.  The players were metal, the table was all wooden, and the field dipped down in the middle so your goals had to have some oomph behind them, they couldn't just accidentally dawdle into the goal.  I think we came out about tied after around 30 points.  We lost count partway through, and were all sweating by the time it was done.  Competition was fierce.  I'm sad I forgot to get a picture of the table.

There was some hanging out with farm animals along the way too, and trying to find the horses but they were hiding somewhere in the hills.

This little piggy...

Feeding the chickens was an exciting flurry of feathers

Heading home had a hitchhike ride halfway there, and I must say, the back of a pickup is a great place to see new places from.

I went fishing too, but that gets it's very own post.

And finally, here's where I lived for the last month.

My door was the little white one in the middle half covered by the fence.

My room was basically a concrete box with a door on one side and a window on another, stuck onto the side of the neighbor's house.  I made it a little more homey by buying a hotplate stove and some cookware.

Due to a short cord, I had to jury rig a tall enough cooking area.  A stool on a table is super legit and safe, right?

The left half of my room was the 'kitchen' with the sink, prep area, and drying rack.  So I guess that means my stove was actually in the bedroom.

Lack of dresser or anywhere but the floor to put stuff meant that my clothes lines were esentially my closet.

And my bed usually had a bunch of stuff on it during the day.  At night it was my cozy little bed-fort, as bug nets tend to make things feel.

Outside was the drying line for laundry, the water lived in the big silo in the corner.  Sometimes there was more, sometimes there was less.  Right around Christmas there was about a week without any water at all.  Running water is definitely one of those things we take for granted, and should be a late addition to this list I wrote earlier.

With more time, I would have made that concrete box into the coziest little setup every.  With only a month, I didn't go full out on it, but I was very pleased with my living space most of the time.

Stay tuned for more adventures!