Carnaval and other Summer Sunshines!

   I only have three more months in this country and with my new family, I am prepared to make the absolute most of them. I have done more things, it would seem, in the last month than I have in my whole exchange that I am so grateful for that! Things are continually surprising me and I am still constantly learning. Although this exchange has been a challenge, the experiences and life lessons I have pulled out from it have been all too worth it.

  To start us off, this last weekend was "Carnaval". I tried asking my family what the point of Carnaval was, but no one could really give me a straight answer, "It's just something we do every year to celebrate right before Lent!" they would answer, right before they would hurl another handful of flour at someone's face. In order to gain a little more information, I consulted the ever useful internet. 
   According to historical stories, the basic celebrations common to Carnaval celebrations was popular in Ecuador before Catholicism arrived in the country. It is said that the Huaragans Indians,  from the Highlands of Ecuador, celebrated the coming of the second moon of the year with a festival in which they threw flour, flowers and scented water. This celebration was once thought of as pagan and was later integrated with the Catholic celebrations. Today, Ecuadorians celebrated by surprising passersby with buckets of water, water balloons, flour, eggs and colored powder or paint. People run the streets with white on knowing that colors and water are coming soon! 

  These are some pictures of people around Ecuador celebrating. Each city does it differently and in the highlands they put on the masks and wear the beads and parade the streets. Much like the Mardi Gras we're familiar with. 
   In cities such as Ambato, the celebration is called Fiestas de las Flores y Frutas or Festival of Flowers and Fruits but the celebrate the same as everyone else. The north of Ecuador is heavily influenced by Afto-Ecuadorian culture and they celebrate with African inspired music and celebrations. 


   Here in Machala, the festivities were fairly quite. No one comes to Machala to celebrate, most people leave the city, but a few of us ended up staying. My dad's family from Riobamba came down and spent the weekend with us. It was nice to have a full house (There were over 20 in our house the whole weekend) and it was even better to have a quite house afterwards! The first day we had a dinner at our house to welcome all of our guests. Meats were prepared and beer was consumed. The beer of choice here is Pilsener, as advertized to the right, "the beer of the Ecuadorians". Let me you, it tastes just terrible. But every country has their specific taste, I suppose! 

   I stayed at my friend's house during the nights as there was not a space in the whole house to sleep! So after the BBQ on the first night, I headed over to my friend's house. I woke up early the next day because my dad wanted me ready by 9 am. It was going to be a long day. Lucky for me, Latins love running late and I wasn't picked up till almost noon. 
   We headed out to a town called Pasaje, where my mom's family lives and got right down to spend our last day of Carnaval. The second we stepped onto the property, we were soaking wet and everyone stayed wet until about 9pm. The rules were: 1. No Bathing 2. No Changing and 3. No whining. I kept breaking the first two rules, so I got buckets of frozen water on me. Oh what are you going to do! So per tradition in my family, a small pig was killed for the event and my uncle was busy in the back of the house getting that prepared. It wasn't till a little later in the party that I ventured back and despite being here for 6 months now, I was still shocked by what I saw. 
   Three of my aunts were sitting around a small table cutting something up. Two of them were taking knifes hacking at the pig's head (sorry to you vegetarians!) and the other Aunt was cutting up, the ears, liver, stomach, kidney and various other innards. Don't worry though, we saved the intestines for another special project. I kept my Exchange Student mind open and I ate everything they gave me, sometimes with a mask on of approval and sometimes with actual liking. I will say, there was one piece of mystery meat that I ate that was especially delicious, the liver however, mm, yeah... Moving on! 
   Meanwhile, in the front of the house, more guests were arriving and people started getting bored with water. I was gone for about an hour in the back helping out and while I was gone people had gone to the nearby market to go pick up some fun. We served lunch (the cut up innards, plantain chips, and a pork broth. It was great!) and then as if almost planned, the war began. They had these soap dispensers that resemble silly string cans called Carioka and those were never in short supply. Also added to the list of goodies bought for our war was paint, oatmeal, flour, cornmeal, and eggs. Yes, eggs. I got several eggs cracked on my head along with who KNOWS how many handfuls of flour to the face and hair. 

My dad got her with paint. You can see in the background that there were more victims.

Water refilling station

The Walk of shaaaaame!

My new mom and I covered in Carnaval!

The culprit and the victim!

My sister and aunt and I, pre-oatmeal

Remember the intestine? haha

   Those intestines were used to make homemade sausage, another family tradition. I can't remember what the sausages were called, but they consist of rice, spices (delicious ones), mixed piggy meat and blood all stuffed into wrinkly intestine. Yummmm. No actually it was very, very good and I was honored to be apart of the stuffing process. In the picture is my aunt filling them. Before I decided to get elbow deep in blood, I thought I should capture the magic. 
   Overall, Carnaval was pretty fun and it was a great break from sch-- just kidding. I'm not in school. HA. It was a great way to cool off in the summer sun. You can really get in touch with a culture by really experiencing their holidays and weird traditions. I am so eternally grateful for the family I have been blessed with and for their patience with teaching me as much as they can about their patria or homeland in the short amount of time I have here. 


   In other news, I have taken up a teaching "job" here. I currently teach about 35 children from the ages 8 to 11. For those of you who really, really know me, you are probably laughing. And for those of you who don't know, I am not a kid person. I always feel so awkward around them and I never know what to say. If you ask me, the older generation is where it's at! But anyways, I teach everyday for 2 hours at a church about two blocks from my house. A couple of weeks ago, my mom and I went and visited a lady from the church about possibly getting a few of the neighborhood kids together to learn English. I had unlimited free time and these kids could really benefit from learning English, so the lady organized a little course at the church for anyone in the neighborhood and I was to come in on the next Monday (February 13th) to talk about, or at least that's how I understood it. I showed up just before 9am on that Monday morning and faced nearly 100 little faces looking up at me eagerly awaiting to be taught. 
   You can imagine my shock when I walked into the room. They all met up in a small library, no bigger than a small bedroom and it was there that I walked into another notch on my challenge belt; another steaming spoonful of beef. At first, I was scared and frustrated. Mostly frustrated, I must admit. When I talked to the lady, I had mentioned that I might, might have two friends that would like to help me out but from when I had told her that to the present, they had lost interest or gone on vacation. Scared, because first of all, I don't like kids and here I was being put in charge of teaching ONE HUNDRED OF THEM and second of all because I have absolutely zero teaching experience. But after an afternoon of, literally, freaking out, I was back to "normal" and the teaching resumed. 
   God doesn't present challenges that we can't overcome and I was forced to take this beef by the spoons. Now we have a schedule and an actual curriculum made day by day. It's interesting how you can go from not knowing a single thing, to it becoming a natural habit. But I guess that is life. This teaching gig has been a challenge and a half, but it is one that I am willing to see though till the end. More on my teaching as it progresses! 

Lastly, I got a cute little package from my dad. He's just the sweetest! A little Valentine's day treat and stickers to hipsterfy my Klean Kanteen water bottle. It was a great surprise! We're at 85 days left till I make the big trip home! The Galapagos is in less than a month and our last trip is in April! I have a feeling these last three months will just fly! 


Until the next post, 
 Marlee Chavez