This weekend I went to Cuenca for a Halloween volunteer reunion. Cuenca is the 3rd biggest city in Ecuador, and the city with the most Americans/foreigners in general living there – it’s a big retirement spot. It was really surreal that I was still in Ecuador because it could have been Europe or something, its just so different from my site and even from Riobamba. There are 2 malls with movie theatres, cafés that serve real coffee, hookah bars, and pretty much everything you would find in the US except maybe Starbucks or Taco Bell. It was fun to see all the other volunteers again and do something American.

Monday I went to my host-aunt’s house to make bread to celebrate Dia de los Difuntos – I’m not actually even sure what the translation is for Difuntos, but it is the day when they go visit the graves of dead family members and stuff, like Dia de los Muertos in Mexico. That is actually on Tuesday, but on Monday all the family got together to make bread in the shape of babies, and we also made empanadas filled with cheese, rolls, croissants, and I made some cinnamon rolls. We made a ton of dough in a big trough kind of thing, and then just made bread in lots of shapes until there was no more. We also ate guinea pig, grilled chicken, and potatoes, and drank colada morada which is a drink made of blackberries and pineapple and other fruits with cinnamon and cloves. It is kind of like Ecuadorian Thanksgiving because the whole family got together, the kids were playing outside while the adults were cooking, I sat for a while talking to my grandpa, and then we all ate together. Kind of makes me a little homesick, but I’m excited for Shannon and Sarah to come visit me on Christmas so I can look forward to that.

I thought I would now tell a story of my bus ride back from Cuenca, which to me is not that abnormal, but it is probably a good way to describe my everyday life here. I got on the bus and sat down in a seat by the window just waiting for it to leave, and then a man sat in front of me and leaned his seat all the way back so it was touching my knees and shut the little curtain on the window. I kind of pushed it forward but he didn’t do anything, so I moved seats. I’m guessing the person who ended up sitting behind him said something to him but I didn’t want to have to deal with it. (This is a cultural thing I have noticed that people are just kind of rude sometimes, but here its just considered normal) So we started on our trip up the Panamerican Highway which is currently under construction so we had to stop quite a few times to wait for traffic to be let through from the other direction on the one-lane road. The times we were moving were quite bumpy and I was sitting in the second to last row because people had made me move from my other seats, so it was not the smoothest ride. Then this guy who was also a passenger got up in the front of the bus to talk to us all. This is not uncommon for people to sell things like fruit, drinks, ice cream, potato chips, and stuff like that, and there’s also people who come on to beg, and others who are pretty much begging but they are selling cookies or candy. First they make a little speech, thanking the bus driver for letting them on and thanking the passengers for their attention, then they will give every person a candy or whatever, and talk some more saying for just “50 centavitos” you can keep the cookies then go around and collect the money or the product that the people don’t want. So anyways on this particular bus ride I thought this guy was gonna do that, but he actually started explaining how he was an art student in a university and then he started asking questions about what he had said and gave out prizes to people who participated. Turns out he was selling these gemstone necklaces that he and his art classmates had made, which was the most interesting thing I had ever seen sold on a bus. Of course I had to buy one, and it was only $1 anyways. So then I was just sitting listening to my music and being really bored, when the bus stopped and turned off. I thought it was because of the construction again, but then the driver came running back to the back of the bus, and opened up a little thing in the floor that allowed access to the engine or whatever. He did some stuff with some wrenches and we were sitting for a while with the fumes of gasoline coming up into the bus, but eventually he closed it up and we were on our bumpy way again. We went over speed bumps so fast that we all bounced out of our seats. There was a woman sitting next to me with her baby, not really crying but just making loud baby noises. There were also people leaning on the side of my seat because they had to stand in the aisle since there were no more seats left – some of them were going to be travelling about 10 hours total and just had to wait until other people got off and there were seats available. About 4 hours into the ride, they started playing some movie with Sylvester Stallone – the menu and stuff were written in Russian but then they put on the Spanish translation, but I couldn’t really understand it because the bus speakers kept going out, but also because they just record the translation and its not always matched up to the picture or of very good quality. I just tried to sleep some more, then finally arrived in Riobamba where I went to a store to buy a drink and break a $20, but they had to run over to the gas station next door to get me change (another typical thing in Ecuador is that no one ever has change, so sometimes even $5 bills are pretty much worthless). I took a taxi for about 15 minutes to get to where the bus for my site leaves, and then got on another bus for an hour to get home. That 6 hour ride was the longest I have done by myself. Some other volunteers have to travel 15 hours in bus to get to their sites, which is hard to believe because it’s the size of Colorado and there’s no way it would take that long to drive across half the state. So there’s a story of my everyday life in Ecuador…might be boring but maybe it will be interesting.