Feliz Navidad!

Christmas this year was different for me, being in a different country and all.  It hardly felt like it was approaching either, since I was sweating every day with palm trees all around.  The decorations up were sparse and far between, and the little tree in the computer center in Sua just felt like it had been accidently left up until April.  In my journal the days were counting up to 25, but it just didnt feel right.

I decided to take a trip to Latacunga to spend Christmas with my friend Fernando and his family.  We met in a bar during Carnival during my study abroad two years ago, went rock climbing a couple times, and have stayed good friends.  Shay and I visited him on our first trip through Ecuador, we went to a pretty sweet lake.

Since Latacunga is at 9200 feet of elevation, it was cold.  My first night there we went and walked to all the nearby churches which were lit up with colored lights.

The park under the main church was filled with lights and decorations, my nose was cold, and it finally felt like Christmas.  Not quite the same as walking around the neighborhood where all the houses are decked in lights and statues, but it was wonderful anyway.

Very appropriate with the new Star Wars movie coming out

Nothing says 'Merry Christmas' like an erupting volcano...

We went for sandwiches and hot chocolate at a cozy little bar after, which was so packed we had to start outside at a table.  We got scooted inside shortly after the food came, so it was basically just perfect for getting a sweet photo and letting my hot chocolate cool to a drinkable temperature.

The next day was Christmas Eve, and I discovered that it's a much bigger day in Ecuador than in the States. (at least for my family)  We had a giant turkey lunch with his family and his grandparents from down the street.  It was wonderfully moist, and there was a delicious cream cheese frosted cake at the end with ice cream.  Then a bit of time to rest, and at 7:00 we all piled into the car and drove to Quito to an aunt's house for another big party.

There were aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and who knows who else arriving.

There were lights and decorations

And a real Christmas tree!

Someone had brought a packet of the things-on-sticks that photobooths have.  A lot of photo-taking fun was had with those.

Another giant turkey dinner happened around 10:30.  It was also absolutely delicious, with mushroom sauce and a sweet potato sauce, rice with peppers and rasins (actually a pretty good combo), an apple-celery salad, bacon wrapped asparagus and carrot, and some sort of sweet-soaked cake for dessert.  I was stuffed.

The table before everyone sat down was beautiful

Then we stuffed ourselves around the table, and stuffed ourselves

After dinner was a gift exchange, of the variety where everyone sticks their gift in the middle, draw numbers, and open them in order, stealing previous gifts if you like that one better.  I watched since I had brought no gift.  It was entertaining, and I think that the little Strawberry Shortcake mantel dolls were *actually* popular.  Go figure.  After that was gifts for specific people, and they took pictures of the giver and recipient with the unopened gift each time.  I'm not quite sure what merit that has, but sure.  I gave Fernando the crossstitch I had done for him- he's fond of minions.

After all the presents, there was dancing until the wee hours.  I was cracked up by a couple of the elderly aunts, who still had a lot of pep in their step.  My favorite was the antler and glasses wearing gal.

Ignore the terrible photo quality and light flare, and see the antlered-dancing aunt on the left

We got home about 3am after everyone conked out in the car, and all fell into bed.

Christmas morning dawned rather quiet since all the festivities had happened the night before.  I opened the package Mom and Dad sent to Quito for me while listning to a Christmas mix on Youtube.  A headlamp to replace the one I (think) I left on a bus in Colombia, Jiffy pancake mix that I requested (I'm so so so excited for pancakes!) my PADI dive card to go diving in Central America, a bar of Theo chocolate in my favorite flavor, and a giant Peep minion that Mom just 'couldn't resist'.

At 11:00, still in bed, I had a three-way video chat with Dad at home, and Mom and Becca who were with my aunt and uncle in Minnesota.  Thanks to the wonders of technology we were all together on Christmas morning, in three different time zones, laughing together.  It was wonderful to talk to everyone and catch up a little.

The rest of the day I basically did nothing.  Fernando and I realized later we should have gone to see a movie or something.  Christmas meal for me was food court hamburger (it was pretty good though) since one of the dogs got into the leftover turkey they told me.  I worked on another Christmas project for a friend back at the beach, and watched some shows on Netflix.  Bed was early after a snack of cheese filled bread and juice.  It was a pretty nice Christmas for me.

The next day I headed back to the beach, but not before visiting their family hacienda 15 minutes out of town and hanging out with the horses for a bit.

All the nice horsies

Obligitory selfie with Sr. Morante

I rode for a little bit too.  Really it was more sitting on the horse, and if it decided to walk, then I guess I was 'riding'

All in all I had a great holiday, different from all the previous ones, but filled with friends and fun none the less.  New Years was at the beach, and that'll be one of my next posts!  Stay tuned.

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!

Would you like patacones with that?

November 29, 2015-January 6, 2016

So I got another job. Really it kinda replaced the bar 'job' which had extremely uncertain pay and hours. One night I got talking with a group of family of Dario's and they said I should come help out at his cousin's restaurant.

My first day on a Sunday, which I came into having no previous waitress experience (unless you count serving cake at family parties) was a doozy. I was trying to figure out what the heck I was doing and the lunch rush filled the place up and had people waiting in the street for a table to open up. Definitely jumping straight into the deep end.

My coworkers were pretty much the best though, Alfonso and Tania especially helped with answering questions and providing explanations for things even before I asked sometimes.

On a typical weekday I showed up before the lunch rush started, either earlier to help with breakfast, or around 11:00.  In the downtime there were small taskes to do, including folding mounds of napkins to refill the napkin bucket that we refilled the table napkin holders from.

Napkins.  So many napkins.

There weren't usually many people for breakfast, which meant I got to watch the morning talk show and Ecuador trivia Jeopardy show on TV. It was exciting when I actually knew an answer.

It didn't happen very often.

At noon the soap operas started, always with lots of intense looks and dramatic music, but the lunch rush was starting anyway so I didn't have to watch them.

During the week, the majority of people come for an almuerzo, which is the set lunch menu for the day. We always started with two soup options and 3 main dish options, and then as things ran out, the menu would switch around a bit. Almuerzo came with a cup of whatever juice we had that day too. So it was lot of repeating options, not spilling soup, and remembering to bring the second half of the meal too.  I only forgot a couple times...

Sundays there are no almuerzos, its all off the menu. I learned our dishes pretty well by the end, and could even answer with some certainty when customers asked what came with a dish. (rice, patacones, etc)

I got more used to walking into the kitchen and just yelling my order to the world, which was more what they had me doing at the beginning. Someone would hear it and the dish would show up eventually.  The owner Narcissa, known as Nacha, was excellent at remembering all the details of an order, and what dishes were still missing.  She stayed at the main kitchen counter and acted as Kitchen General, making sure everything was running properly. I stll don't know how she does it. Years of practice maybe.

Once I figured out where the different dishes were prepped and who it was that cooked them, I could be a little more directed in my ordering and go straight to the source to say I need a fillet, a shrimp encocado and a rice with clams.  Ceviches came from the sink, encocados and al ajillos from the back, fried rice and fried/breaded/other things from the other room. Patacones had their own corner and we went through a ridiculous amount of plantains every day.

Green is plantain for patacones, yellow are riper plantains, for making maduro.  Both are cut up and fried in oil, the maduros end up being sweeter tasting.  I enjoy both of them immensely.

We kinda go through a ridiculous amount of everything actually. Whole days are spent by people in the back peeling shrimp to use, I'll come in to find tubs of fish looking at me.

Those are hunks of fish on the table, and not even fish containing spine.  Those are fillet pieces.

Laundry baskets are filled with onions, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.  Whole buckets of garlic are peeled at once.  The amount of rice we went through in once day would feed me for about 6 months of normal meals.

And the food that comes out of the kitchen is delicious and beautiful.

Arroz marinero, with all the different seafoods we had.  I think 95% of the time I saw the customer take a picture of the dish before they started eating it.

Encocado of camaron del rio.  I think they were the equivalent of crayfish and made for a gangly dish.

Lobster a la plancha

Encocado of a whole pargo (some kind of fish, maybe a snapper?)

The dishes were classy looking and we took care in plating. Adornments of tomato and cucumber, fish and shrimp came nestled on a bed of lettuce, and the rice dishes were symmetrical and lovely.

Lime slices go on almost everything. Portions are giant and well worth the price.

For the crab dishes they have a bunch of small cutting board type boards and little hammers for smashing the legs open.  Rather concise if you ask me.

Along with being prompt, polite, and efficient while working, I was the loony who was always making the food talk in high pitched voices, usually saying 'no me comes!' which is 'don't eat me!' When the fish still has a full face on it, it's just so much funnier!  I couldn't help myself.

And when the food was all done, we cleared ALL the plates to the back.  Usually dishes had at least two plates of things, since so many of the dishes had one plate for the thing and another plate for the accompanying rice, patacones, beans, etc.

The ladies in the back did a great job of getting evreything left on the plate table scraped, washed, and turned around to use again.  On busy days we'd go through our (not small) supply of plates more than once with the things being plated, currently eaten, and watiting to be washed.

For about two weeks we had our very own bard, which made me giggle when I compared myself to a tavern wench from the fantasy stories.

His name was Jose, he was from Argentina, and he'd come in and play for the customers for tips almost every day for at least an hour or two.  Sometimes going away for a break and coming back to keep playing.  The first time he came, it was a busy busy day, and one of my first, I was less than thrilled to have a standing person in my aisle and guitar music to talk over.

My job got more familiar though, not every day was as busy, and he was a very good musician.  Everyone at the restaurant came to enjoy his playing and talking to him every day, and we were sad to see him leave for another beach after a time.  I had grown used to having live music to work to during the lunch rush, and missed hearing it after that.

Overall, it was a job that was occasionally tough, had stress on more than one occasion, and improved my Spanish skills about 200%.  I can confidantly say I've had waitressing experience now if I ever try to get another restaurant job (though the reference might be a little hard to contact) and I've got new friends that I'll not forget.

Also the hand soap in the bathroom smelled like almond, and reminded me of Mom making almond macaroons at home.  I enjoyed washing my hands.

Back to the Beach

Preface: due to bad internet, all my photo files getting corrupted, and general procrastination due to beach, the following few posts are reeeeally late.  Like two months late.  So they're 'what I did' posts rather than 'what I'm up to now'.  Since I'm on the move again, my posts should be a little more consistent. I hope.

Anyway.

November 12-28, 2015

I was back in Sua, which you'll remember from this post two months ago and also this post from two years ago. Only this time I was there to stay for a while.

I lived in a friend's spare room for a while at first, and got started on my first beach 'job' at one of the little beach bars.  I was offered the job when Shay and I came through before, and decided to come back and see what it was all about.

There's a lot of sitting in hammocks involved in this job. But this is the view which doesn't suck.

It doesn't have a set schedule for when its open. It all depends on when Dario (owner, also know as Salsita and Flayolay) feels like it, and if there's any business. Also running out of beer usually closes the place down.

When we do open, it means taking everything out of the fridge to put on the shelves. The fridge gets chained and padlocked shut at night so its storage for the glasses, liquor bottles, strainer, juicing things, knives, cutting board, etc.

Those go out on the shelves. We have 2 pint glasses and 4 of the ice cream sundae looking ones. There used to be 2 small clear glasses, but they disappeared and we gained a blue star one, I think it was absorbed from the restaurant across the street.

Hammocks get hung, swings get put out, tables and chairs passed down from the balcony on the second floor, and the sound system gets set up. It plays discoteca quality salsa all day.

I also get to set out the fruit we have for the day, meaning fruit art!  It gets stacked attractively on the counter, exact order depending on how many oranges and grapefruits we have to make pyramids out of.  The pineapples sometimes get flowers stuck in their tops too.

The selection usually includes piña (pineapple), naranja (orange), pomelo/toronja (grapefruit I'm pretty sure), and maracuya (passion fruit). Sandia (watermelon), melón (cantaloupe) and papaya have also shown up.

The trash on the sand floor that accumulated overnight gets picked up, cups, bottles, spoons etc. Counters and tables get wiped clear of sand. And then we enjoy the day.

Since I'm the gringa in town I get a lot of people stopping to talk. They all know my name. I know about a third of theirs.

In the evening the light bulbs get screwed in so there's light. The lightbulbs are colored so that's fun.

Whenever we decide to close, processes are reversed and everything is tucked back away.

In my first week and a half I made a whole $14, so I'm not in it for the pay. But hammock sitting in front of the ocean isn't too bad of a way to spend a winter.

Note: I spent a couple weeks at the bar, then got a job waitressing at the best restaurant in Sua, so the rest of my winter was spent not in a hammock.  That post coming soon!  Also the other things I did on the beach when not working.

10 Things I learned at the Beach

So this is me jumpstarting my blogging again, after a bit of a hiatus at the beach.  It was partially a lack of internet and partially all my photos on my flash drive getting corrupted (and still not fixed, where`s the geek squad when you need it) which throws a kink in things.

Anyway, I´m back on the road again, after a tearful goodbye to Sua.  The posts about what I did for two months will be posted just as soon as I have a couple solid hours with a computer and wifi to get my affairs sorted out.  Promise.  For now, another list, because they´re fun to write and easy to read.

Here´s a bunch of things I learned during my stay at the beach

1. Running water is a priveledge and a luxury.

2. Sometimes having water at all is a luxury.

3. No refridgeration is harder to live with than no running water.

4. Hand washed clothes need air and sun to dry in, otherwise they end up smelling TERRIBLE.

5. When you finally get around to shaving your legs, its really easy to tell *exactly* how many scrapes and bug bites you have.

6. No matter how much sunscreen I put on or how many hats I wear, my nose is destined to always burn.

7. Cockroaches are much easier to kill than advertized.

8. While being cold all winter may not be the best, sweating until your glasses fall off is also not as much fun as it sounds.

9. Dogs do actually chase cars and motorcycles barking, it`s not just something Hollywood made up.

10. Learning to surf involves a lot of shin bruises, if you´re me at least.  (But I actually stood up on the board after weeks of trying!)

More photos and stories coming soon, I`ve got to tell all about my jobs at the beach and how I spent Christmas and New Years.  And as always, here`s a photo to enjoy.  Its the hill I saw every day walking home, and where some spectacular sunsets occured.