Unas Sorpresas

This week has had a couple of small surprises. I will tell you about them here.

I have been on time to work everyday this week. This would be great news if everyone else wasn’t late. I have had to wait for someone to come with the keys everyday by myself or with some random kids. I have only been a little nervous, but I think I’m pretty safe since it is in a park and there are kids and other people running around everywhere.

First surprise: Monday, I got to the library on time and no one was there. A little girl ran up to me and said hi and let me know that it was still closed. Yeah, thanks. Hahaha. So I went up to the steps and noticed that there were a lot of people gathered in the street about a block away. I hoped that it wasn’t something bad, like an accident, but one guy had a little kid on his shoulders to see better, so I figured it wasn’t too bad. Then I was worried that it was a holiday and we were actually closed and Naomi was trying to tell me that the library wasn’t opening. But Adele said she would see me there on Monday, so I kept waiting. In a few minutes it became very clear that it was a funeral. A big private bus showed up to take the mourners to the cemetery and two guys were carrying big flower arrangements around. The funeral procession eventually made its way out of the house down the street, with a few men carrying the blue casket and those following tossing flower petals on it. There wasn’t a lot of crying or anything as far as I could see, but they were on the other side of the park. Everyone not involved stood and watched and the dogs ran over to see what was happening. They turned a corner and got in the bus. Just like that, it was over.

Monday night I woke up around 1 or 2 am to the sound of very loud popping. There are a lot of sounds here, but explosions are not one of the normal ones. At first I thought gunshots, then bombs (because I am rational), and then I realized it was fireworks! I looked out my window and got to watch a few fireworks go off in the middle of the night, in the middle of a huge city, before I fell back to sleep.

Tuesday I was on time for work again, which again meant I was the first to arrive. This time, instead of a funeral, I got to see a pet monkey! A little girl was in the park and just running around with a little monkey on a leash. It looked like Marcel from Friends. Sometimes when she would stop, the monkey would climb up her leg and just hang around her neck, like little American kids always hope for in their wildest exotic pet dreams. She came over to ask me a question and I could not take her seriously. I just couldn’t give her my complete attention when she had a monkey in her arms. I wanted to ask her its name and if I could pet it, but she ran off with Gianfranco before I could say anything. That might be one of my biggest regrets.

Today is Wednesday and I just finished eating lunch. When I left the table, my host family was watching a show about all the fun you can have in Ecuador. Then I heard The Today Show come on. With Matt Lauer. It was in English. I knew that they had the Today Show here because I see it on the guide on our television every morning, but I didn’t realized it was the exact same thing as what they broadcast from New York every morning. Surprise!

Final surprise that I will tell you about is this. For our school credit we have to do a few reflection papers and group discussions. This week we had to do something creative that we could use to show people at home what things are like here, and to help us remember when we get back. So I decided I would take pictures of the kids and make a photo collage using an app that I found. Easy peasy lemon squeazy. The only problem was that it was due Sunday, I started it Sunday, and I didn’t have any pictures of the kids. Really all that was due was the explanation of it, so I explained it before I did it. The next morning I got an email from the ISA offices in Texas saying that they wanted to see my collage because it sounded like the kind of visual representation that they would like to use to promote elap. Awesome. So I had to make this collage great. Haha. It did it. Don’t worry. But surprise! They liked it! They really liked it!

Additionally, it is the middle of July and I am wearing long sleeved shirts under sweatshirts under jackets. It’s cold and I just want summer.

P.S. I saw a man holding a guitar kick a bus yesterday as it was pulling away. I thought it was funny, but I don’t know why.

PPS There is a group here from OSU but I don’t think any of them actually go to OSU. And the professor isn’t from there. I don’t understand grad school. But they are all Spanish teachers and I got to work with some of them on Sunday at La Casa de Panchita. What fun.