My Second week in La Calera went smoothly for the most part! The festivities of San Juan wrapped up and we got to start working on the jewelry project. Here's a fun photo from Inti Raymi!
Unfortunately still wasn't feeling all that much better. Today was another day of festivities for San Juan, but I decided it might be best if I layed low and rested so that I could be 100% better for tomorrow.
However, in the morning I was able to meet and chat with some of Marisol's extended family who was staying here and visiting from Quito.
In the evening when everyone came back from Cotacachi, I saw Suri crying and I asked why. Apparently, they accidentally ran over one of the puppies when coming home today, upon finding this out, I just about started crying too.
I chatted with the family in the evening and everyone is so interested in my diet because I don't eat much meat, that is the strangest thing to them. They also still don't understand why I won't eat the Cui (guinea pig), as someone showed me their plate at dinner with a Cui head on it, I excused myself and wished everyone a good night.
Tuesday:
Yet another day of partying for San Juan. Got up in the morning and again needed some help getting dressed up in the traditional clothes. Then went to the cantina to set things up and get ready to sell. I spent some time chatting with Elizabeth, a niece of Marisol who lives in Quito and is 24. We took my little host sisters to the plaza to dance. I had my first real food today without getting sick, so that was a positive experience.
More observations from San Juan:
Chicha is the alcoholic beverage of choice, I have not tried it (1, bevause I can't drink while on the rabies vaccine, 2, because it smells like vomit). The drink contains herbs, corn, alcohol and some other things, people buy buckets of it and use a cup to scoop out the liquid, drink it and pass it along.
They also drink Puro, which is a hard liquor that quickly puts people at a level which disables them from talking and waking. I have gotten pretty good at understanding drunk Spanish, although it is very difficult. I really have never seen a party like this. It amazes me that people can drink this much and then get up the next day and do it again. At the end of the day we always see people being carried home, or laying in the street. It's interesting because of course this happens at college towns, but the group of people that are partying at San Juan are majority men ages 15-80, And yes there are older men getting belligerently drunk.
Another thing I noticed is the whiles and sticks that the men carry around have a variety of things attached at the top. I have seen cut off baby doll heads, real dead animals, fruit with a head carved in it, stuff animals and more.
Today's afternoon of San Juan festivities was particularly eventful. As I was selling in the cantina, I heard a bunch of people start screaming and running into the cantina covering their noses and eyes, I wondered why and then felt my eyes and nose starting to burn. Well, the men of la Calera started fighting with men from a different community and it got so bad that the police interfered and threw a year has bomb.
Remedies that I saw people using to combat the tear gas:
First of all, everyone came running to the cantina to purchase cigarettes (or Cancer sticks as Marisol and I have been calling them). I struggled to sell the cigarettes because I was crying so much from the tear gas. Apprentlty smoking makes the tear gas hurt less? Not sure, I wouldn't try it. Also, Flora started smoking and blowing the cigarette smoke into the eyes of the little kids, maybe as a distraction from the other smoke, not sure.
Also, people started buying and eating lemons, another strategy to make the smoke hurt less. Finally, people started making fires, I saw some on the streets, some in our cantina and some in the woods, the one in the woods that was by our cantina started getting out of hand and one of the people in our cantina called the fire department, but then other people put it out before the firefighters got there.
Flora said the coast was clear and asked if I wanted to go to the plaza, so I accompanied her. As we approached the plaza I felt the gas again, this time I had the awful taste in my mouth, my eyes and nose also burned and I sprinted back to the cantina. The men were throwing rocks at each other, and using their whips. One of the cousins of someone had a wound on his arm.
And you might think the party would stop after something like this happens, but noooo, they keep dancing and drinking the night away.
As we drove home later that night we went pay the hospital which was super packed with all the men injured from the battles of San Juan. I was talking to Flora about it and she said she thought they weren't going to fight this year because of the treaty, but I guess that treaty got broken.
Today's new experience was tear gas, and now I know why they call it tear gas
Dancing in the street
All of my host sisters
Making Chicha
Fire in the woods
When the tear gas bomb was thrown
Wednesday:
The final day of San Juan, also known as Dia de Los mujeres (women's day). About 6 days for men and one for women, hey it's not much, but I'll take it. And of course, today was my favorite day of San Juan.
We started the day with a group of tourists (high school students) coming to floras home to purchase hammocks (that floras husband rodrigo makes) and jewelry. It was fun to chat with the students and sell the jewelry!
Then after lunch we got dressed up for the last day of San Juan. Like I mentioned before, usually all of the men gather up in la Calera to dance to Cotacachi together for all the other days of the festival. Today however, it was finally the women's turn. We met by the comunal house. And by we, I mean me, Flora and Blanquita. Yes, just 3 of us, two ecuadorian a and a gringa danced our way to Cotacachi. When I asked Flora where all of the other women are, she joked that they all died and we are the last of the women in la Calera.
So naturally we had to take a picture.
I said they'll put this photo in a museum- the last of the la Calera women (plus a gringa)
Flora and Blanquita explained that there are 4 Días de Los mujeres during the year that are determined by the solstice and seasons.
Also, I found out that there are a group of 5 people from Quito that are doing a documentary on the community of la Calera. They were filming us as we danced our way to Cotacachi. the director of the film wanted to interview me and I said sure as long as he's ok with non-fluent Spanish. He asked me about the tear gas and the fighting that happened yesterday at San Juan, he also asked me about what I'm doing in la Calera- so look out people, I'll be staring (more like possibly featured) in a documentary!
We danced and danced and everytime we got to a street corner/ intersection, we danced in circles for 5 minutes as the band played in the middle of the circle. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, we had our own personal band accompany us to Cotacachi.
At one point, 3 more women joined (including a child), and we kept dancing and dancing, we even stopped traffic multiple times, and when I say stop traffic I don't mean because people wanted to watch us dance, I mean because we were literally dancing in the middle of the street so cars could not pass by.
When we met up with all of the other women closer to the plaza in Cotacachi, our group grew significantly, and now I actually felt famous because people on the streets were stopping to watch us dance. I can't tell you the number of people that were taking pictures and videoing us. I've never had paparazzi before! Paparazzi and an interview all in one day!
It felt a little weird since I was the only gringa, but I felt more comfortable having Flora and Marisol there because I am living in la Calera and they all wanted me to dance with them.
When we finally got to the plaza we did what the men did for their dance: dance in circles around the band at each corner and then go to the next corner. The only difference was that there were no police there to organize the different groups, so it was a little bit of a mess in terms of there being 2-3 groups at the same corner all trying to dance in circles, but Flora got everyone organized!
I babysat Camila and suri during the day while the moms went to the cantina. They girls wanted to go on a jumping thing, so I waited/ watched them as they did that. We went back to the cantina and ate a little bit and hung out until the next dance at the plaza.
Got to see Byron's son, Michael. So adorable!
We all headed out to the plaza and did 3 entire loops around, stopping and circle dancing at each corner every time. My feet are so sore! Why I liked this day more than the others: these women are classy and don't throw whips around and bang street signs with sticks, they don't start fights which result in the police throwing tear has bombs, they don't get beligerantly drunk to the point where they can't talk it walk, and they still have a lot of fun dancing.
Dancing even after the sun went down.
After the dancing we went back to the cantina. It was much calmer that the past nights, which I enjoyed. I was able to talk to some natives and also chat with the crew making the documentary.
My favorite person I chatted with/ my favorite person I've met so far in Ecuador was Carlos. He was from Quito and wandered over to Cotacachi by himself to celebrate inti Rimi. He was a VERY happy person, he was very intoxicated but kept telling me all of these deep quotes! He was also always smiling.
My favorite things things he told me:
1.When you're in an unknown place and an opportunity is presented, don't turn it down because you might not have that opportunity again.
2. Dancing is a necesisty. I said so you have to dance all day? And he said you have to dance all your life. Then he explained how he perceives dancing, and that it's more about how you carry yourself and express yourself and that you can dance with every step you take. He then proceeded to get up and show me how you can walk and dance at the same time.
He then went and danced with the people playing the music and whipped a flute out of his bag and started playing that.
We hopped in papito Byron's car and went home to sleeeep!
Thursday:
They day we are supposed to start working! And we did! In the morning the women had to return all of the things they rented for the cantina and pay for the beers that they sold, but in the afternoon we started working on the jewelry.
They taught us how to make one of their necklaces and I observed their processes on how they go about making them. I also asked a lot of questions about why they do this, where they get their beads, average salaries in Ecuador and more. It was fun to sit around the table, make jewelry and chat with them. They had to go back to Cotacachi a few hours later, so I stayed at floras home and played with Lili and Alia (Monica's daughter) and here's a picture of Monica's newest daughter, Emily, who I absolutely love to hold!
We had a late dinner of rice and french fries and then I played around with Lili, Camila and Elkin before heading to bed. Elkin has his exams tomorrow and said he has his P.E exam tomorrow so I was having him show me the exercises he will be tested on, and then Camila was trying to do them as well!
Friday:
I discovered how wonderful my rooftop terrace is and even hopped over the terrace to sit on the roof for some amazing views of the surrounding mountains.
Today we went to Otavalo to see where the women buy their seeds from. We spent a while in the store picking out which ones we wanted and I talked to the guy working to learn more about how they get the seeds, how much the different types of seeds cost, and what the names of all the colors are. I took one of each color and put them on a string and had him write what the names of all those colors were. This will be helpful for our communication with the store as well as when I go back to Wisco and am talking to Flora about what colors we want to order!
We came back from Otavalo and had lunch, and then afterwards we made some more jewelry. Now that I had the prices for all the seeds I was able to do a cost analysis of each of their jewelry pieces. It was fun to try out new designs and color patterns with the new seeds that we just bought. Then Flora made some tostadas for us to snack on- tostadas are like corn nuts!
I'm glad that we are finally getting into the swing of things with work, it will be fun to see what we accomplish over the next 2 weeks!
Playing around with the new seeds and new designs!
Saturday:
Today I went to Otavalo with Keenan to do a little shopping! Otavalo is known to have the best markets in Ecuador, so I was excited to do some bargaining! I loved all of the products made with alpaca fur and I ended up getting myself a blanket and a sweater that looks like a mix of something that bill Cosby and mr. Rodgers would wear! I also got a few gifts but mostly just enjoyed looking through the hundreds of vendors and all of the different things they were selling!
We had lunch at a Mexican deli which was delicious and also went back to he bead store and got a few more beads and different string for the women.
We took the bus back to Cotacachi and I had some grocery shopping to do because I told my family I would be making them dinner to celebrate America's independence.
In Cotacachi, I also found my new favorite place, it's a cafe owned by two Americans. I felt it was necessary to support an American establishment on the 4th of July so I bought a scoop of homemade chocolate coconut ice cream and it was amazing. I will for sure be going back! They also have a cute little library and pottery shop, it's adorable!
I bought groceries to make grilled cheese, mac and cheese, and brownies, because I would be cooking for 13 people, that was the easiest and most American thing I could think of!
I cooked for about 2 hours (also there was a spider crawling on my face/nose that freaked me out) and then served dinner to my wonderful family!
The Mac and cheese probably could have used a little more cheese, but the grilled cheeses turned out great (and I put avocado in some of them!) but the family enjoyed all of it (or at least they said hey did!!) Hoping that they actually liked it! They were so so stuffed after dinner that only a few people had room for dessert, but we enjoyed the brownies and saved the rest for everyone else to eat tomorrow!
I brought some of the left over food and some brownies over to floras home to share. The ladies who ran the cantina were all there for a meeting and ate all of the leftovers! I was glad that all of the food was eatten and that I could keep the spirit of the Fourth of July alive, even in Ecuador!
Mi familia!!
Flora and the rest of the women trying out some American food!
Cheese on cheese on cheese
This large spider was on my face
Also pumped about my blanket- which i bargained down from 35 to 25
Sunday:
Keenan and I took a day trip to Chachimbiro! This is a small town about 2 hours away known for their thermal spas. We got up early and took a taxi to Cotacachi and caught a 6:45am bus to Ibarra and from there a 7:45am bus to Chachimbiro. We arrived and went straight to the baths. It was definitely different than I expected. There were 2 sections, one was more like a water park for kids and the other was more relaxing and mostly filled with adults. I chilled in the relaxing part the whole day. There were so so so many pools of water all with varying tempatures. All of the water is completely natural which I really liked!
There was a steam room, jacuzzi, individual bath tubs you could fill with the water temperature of your choice, and a bunch of other pools with temperatures ranging from brrrrr freezing to I think my skin is melting off! I relaxed in the warm tubs but switched it up sometimes! I met a nice family from Colombia who I talked to the mom for a while and she was super kind and her daughter was adorable!
We caught the 3:30 bus back to Ibarra and then another to Cotacachi. I really wanted to go back to the ice cream place I went to yesterday and when we arrived in Cotacachi and started walking towards the ice cream place I heard someone call my name. It was Luis, Marisol's brother, he offered us a ride back to la Calera. I couldn't say no, that was so kind of him, but I also so badly wanted ice cream. So we got in the car and I asked if I could buy them ice cream! A win win! We went to my new fave place and I got Luis and his wife each an ice cream cone, and of course one for myself, today I tried mint chocolate chip! Only $1 for the best ice cream !!
I loved relaxing in the pools situated right between 2 mountains! Nature is beautiful!
Overall, solid second week! Can't believe I only have 2 weeks left here- the time really does fly.
Sending Smiles from La Calera,
Rebecca
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