parks and partying

On Saturday, I had breakfast with some of the guests that were here, which was nice. It was sort of strange to have breakfast be cooked for me, since I normally eat way before Carmen,our maid, comes, but not this time. I also made my own breakfast and thus had lots of good food (humitas, yucca/eggs, and papaya/granola). I ate a large breakfast so I could go adventuring without being hungry.
On this adventure, Ali, Shaunte, Edan and I decided to go to the Parque Metropolitano, which runs parallel to the east edge of Quito on top of the hill/small mountain that creates said edge. We figured it would be easy to get in, since it's huge and there are clearly trees right there. After climbing a nice steep hill, we reached a street which bordered the park but had no entrances. We followed this street and several other streets for about 20 minutes until we found a little street with a guardhouse. We walked up an even bigger and steeper hill (apparently most people drive to the park, and I see why) and at the top of the hill there was a soccer field and a random little town called Miraflores, I think. We watched the soccer game for a while (it was 6 people versus 10, and none of them were terribly good). None of us has ever received so many whistles in our life, courtesy of the two teams that were waiting on the sidelines to play next. We left. Shaunte flipped them off, and I was pretty darn tempted, but I would hate to exacerbate the problem haha. This town is a square, that's probably an eighth of a mile on each side. We walked down the street and found a little tienda (store), based out of someone's house like they normally are in towns such as these, that had fresh-squeezed orange juice, made with an extremely nice juicer. We continued on into more park-like territory. By park I don't mean swingsets, I mean many square kilometers of trees. We followed some paths which became increasingly smaller, and then we ended up at this cool viewpoint looking out over the city that's on the other side of the hill/mountain. We followed more paths, avoided being run over by mountain bikers (how they managed some parts of that path, I have no idea), and visited several more viewpoints. We also found a field full of llamas and a water treatment center. It's sort of a strange park.
On our way out, we passed a pavillion with a photography show and a field with inflatable bouncy toys advertizing for a new Nestle product. There were also some real playground toys, including a zipline in which you (or at least us, as adult-sized people) come extremely close to being sliced by a guidewire at the end of the zipline. It was quite entertaining haha.
We went to the Stadium near our school to buy tickets for a futbol (remember that's soccer here in Ecuador and the rest of the world). For $8, we got tickets to see the Sunday game, which ended up being a ticket for two games! more on that later...
We ate lunch at Mr. Bagel (I brought a sandwich. It was not as good as a bagel, but it was free). Then we got ice cream (which was more like sorbet) at a nearby cafe, which was very enjoyable.
Then we walked over to the parque Carolina (which is the huge park in between my house and my school). I walk next to it every day and I've run through it and played Ultimate in it, and I still hadn't visited any of what we went to this time. We found the paddleboating lake (I'm excited to do that!), watch some bikers and skateboards narrowly avoid dying in a skatepark, and discovered the location of the botanical garden. It costs $3.50 (that's a lot for a museum here) so we didn't go, but I want to before I leave. We were EXHAUSTED from walking so much, so we laid in the grass for a while and then headed home.

Saturday was my host parents' son's birthday. His name is Richard, and he is the Ecuadorian Labor Minister, so he's kind of a big deal. Everyone got semi-dressed up and I enjoyed having all the females in the house on the second floor landing getting ready by the big mirror.
We drove out to what they called "quinta". I was unfamiliar with this word (the dictionary translates it to ranch, I just found out). This turns out to mean mostly outside, which nobody told me so I was wearing a knee-length skirt, but I had my north face fleece so I was mostly warm enough.
There was a large house and deck, small cabin, patio, pool, and a field. There was also a big tent covering the patio, pool, and live band. There were about 100 people there, many of which were family so my parents, aunts and uncles knew them all, but I definitely did not. I don't know if it's a Quiteno thing or a my-family-thing, but I'm never introduced to people. Sometimes I'm presented, so they all know my name and who I am, but when I go around and give everyone a kiss (that's the standard greeting/goodbye here), they just say Hola, but not "nice to meet you" or "my name is ___". Hence, I know a lot of faces and not a lot of names or family relationships.
After greeting most of the people who were at the party when we got there, I hung out with a group of relatives who I like. I would say "chatted" with this group, because that's what they did, but I really contributed nothing to the conversation because I couldn't hear anything. I probably would have had a hard time hearing in English, and since I normally just listed to their conversations even if I can understand, I certainly didn't follow what they talked about this time. They made sure I always had a drink and then every time my grandpa would cheers me (I don't know the appropriate verb there, but you know what I mean), my uncles told me to say "bueno abuelito" (OK, grandpa) and kiss my fingers like I had just eaten something delicious (also not a good description but I think you know what I mean). They got an absolute kick out of this all night. I don't know why it was so funny; that's on my list of things to ask my teachers tomorrow at school haha.
Aside from the unlimited drinks, there were some little yummy appetizers and then delicious hamburgers and wings for dinner (which, I might add, was probably at 11 pm).
All of the drinks and appetizers were served by men in catering uniforms, and all the food was prepared by empleadas. There were a lot, maybe 8. They didn't wear anything special. My family is really white; there are a couple people that actually look fully Caucasian, a few others that look vaguely Asian, actually, and the majority of the others have very light skin. This contrasted strongly with the empleadas, who all appear more indigenous (shorter, darker skin, and different facial features). I actually felt somewhat out of place at the party; it was fancier than I'm accustomed to, and many of the people got more dressed up than I would at home.
There were also a lot of kids at the party, but all of the families with young kids (3 and under ish) brought their nannies with them, so there were at least 3 or 4 empleadas who just took care of their charge(s) all evening. Families are extremely important here but it surprises me how much parents rely on their nannies for young kids. different culture...

Everyone dances here (it's South America), and since most other people were actually taking advantage of the ultimate free drinks, people were having lots of fun. Ecuadorian are knowledgeable partiers, I think. Several of my grandpas/great uncles, or something along those lines (since I was never formally introduced and don't know who they are...) also got a kick out of dancing with me. Fortunately they were all excellent leads so I didn't struggle too much. My host mom then decided that I'd had enough dancing with them and she transferred me to the care of her daughters. When the band played, they mostly did American songs, which everyone at the party knew. They also played some Spanish songs, which everyone knew and sang along to (except me, since my Spanish song repertoire is pretty limited).

We (everyone living in my house), had come in two cars. I was in the first car to go back home, and we left at 2 am. The second car (with both my 60+ year old host parents) left at 3 or 3:30 haha). I went to bed at 3, and got up at 7:30 to go to the soccer game. Thus, I'm exhausted and going to bed, so I'll write about my Sunday adventures tomorrow!

Love Alex