Halloween and Vacation in Cuenca

Halloween/Día de los Difuntos

To celebrate Halloween and the Ecuadorian Día de los Difuntos, I had a party in both of my classes last Thursday. Like Americans who wear costumes and go trick-or-treating for Halloween just because that's that people do, Ecuadorians participate in Día de los Difuntos traditions that many people don't really have explanations for anymore. There are some traditional food items like colada morada (hot fruit drink) and guagua de pan (translation: bread baby), but also some odd, non-food pageantry.

For instance, someone in my first class was voted to be "Mr. Wooden Spoon" and another "Mr. Clay". The former brought a variety of wooden spoons into class that he handed out to all of the students and the latter brought tiny clay pots in for everyone. When I asked the students what the hell was going on, I received a variety of explanations, the most plausible being that colada morada is traditionally made in clay pots and stirred with wooden spoons.

I had fun ridiculing my students about their traditions that were bizarre from a foreign perspective until they asked me why people dress up in costumes for Halloween in the United States. The best answer I could come up with was that it gives young women an excuse to dress indiscriminately, and it is so awesome that no one really asks questions about why we do it anymore.

My colada morada, guagua de pan, and various presents my class gave me.

I told my first class to wear costumes for bonus points, but sure enough I was the only schmuck who wore a costume to the party. One of my students, Christian, actually used this situation to set up a pretty solid burn on one of my other students, Lizeth.

Lizeth happened to be wearing an overall-shorts outfit that day, and at one point she and Christian were at the front of the room giving a speech or something. During the speech he addressed me and said that I need to remember to give Lizeth a bonus point. Someone in the class asked for what, and he responded "because she wore a costume today." Smoke. This particular student is constantly making jokes under his breath during class that I can never hear but that get the class rolling in laughter behind my back, so I am glad I finally got to hear one of his jokes—especially since it wasn't targeted at me.

In my second class I had a a joint party with the other English teacher at SECAP, Caitlin. My second class is older than my first, so quite a few people actually wore costumes and everyone brought a ton of food outside of the traditional Día de los Difuntos fare. Something that everyone forgot to bring, however, was music. I happened to have some songs on a flash drive, so we listened to Biggie for two tracks. I was the only one dancing, so we had to switch to a CD that one of the students had with her and we listened to three different electronica songs on repeat for the next hour and a half. I now hate those three songs.

All in all the day was filled with holiday pageantry and I am glad that I was able to share a little bit of my Halloween traditions with my class as well as experience what they like to do at this time of year.

Cuenca: An old Kichwa word meaning...

Día de los Difuntos is a national holiday here in Ecuador, so I did not have classes on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. I decided to go with some of the other WorldTeach volunteers from Ambato to the third largest city in Ecaudor, Cuenca. Cuenca is a seven hour bus ride from Ambato and they happen to celebrate their independence day during the time we had off.

Cuenca is known for its colonial architecture, and I was impressed with how good looking the city is. I don't know enough about architecture to describe its style, but there were cobblestone roads, tiled roofs, and huge churches.

Cathedral de la Inmaculada Concepción

The hostel we booked turned out to be very entertaining because of our ridiculous hostel-keeper, 17 year old Mateo. The room was fine and the location of the hostel was in walking distance from everything in the city, but Mateo is the only person who works there. He let us know the first night that since the front door is locked and only he has the key, we had to return before midnight or after two in the morning because he sleeps during those hours. It was annoying, but it sounded reasonable enough and we felt bad for him so we made it a point to follow his guidelines for returning to the hostel.

One night, however, we got a call from Mateo asking us if we could return after four in the morning because he was going out. We rushed back at around midnight because we didn't want to be out in the streets at four in the morning. What transpired when we returned to the hostel was the definition of ridiculous.

We found out Mateo was going to be out late that night because he was competing with some friends in a dance competition. The night before I had heard the Pussycat Doll's "Buttons" playing from somewhere in the hostel, but I didn't realize that it was the soundtrack for his dance routine.

When we returned to the hostel that night we were greeted by Mateo and three friends in his dance group, wearing about five articles of clothing between the four of them. One guy was dressed like Lady Gaga, another one was wearing only a few strips of strategically placed caution tape, and I'm pretty sure they were all wearing bras. It was the gayest thing I have ever witnessed, but we were all psyched the next day when we learned that Mateo's group won the contest (probably because it was the gayest thing I have ever witnessed).

View from our fabulous hostel in Cuenca

 

The festivities in Cuenca were pretty fun. Street vendors were everywhere during the day and especially at night, selling things like meat on sticks, banana chips, and candy apples. There were bands playing music in the street, and one night we stopped by a group of drummers and danced for a bit. It was in this drum circle that a friend of mine commented that one of the young Ecuadorians jumping around looked like me. I took a picture with him, so I'll let you decide if he is really my brother from an Ecua-mother.

The most impressive part of the Fiestas de Cuenca were by far the fireworks. I knew well before I came to Cuenca that Ecuadorians love fireworks. Ecuadorians will use any excuse to shoot off fireworks and they have woken me up many a non-holiday night. The firework display in the main plaza of Cuenca were set up on a tall, wooden tower. 

When I first laid eyes on the tower I was almost certain that it would not be used for the fireworks display because it was so close to the people and it looked very wobbly. Well, Ecuador didn't disappoint this time, because fireworks did shoot from the tower and it was equal parts impressive and terrifying. 

There were arms on the tower that were on hinges that spun around disconcertingly fast— powered, of course, by fireworks. Then sparks shot out from all over the place and the tower straight looked like it was about to explode. Fireworks then proceeded to actually shoot into the sky from the tower and explode like a traditional American display. 

Things got awesome when one of the regular fireworks hit a tree (we were in the middle of the city plaza, after all) and it caught on fire. The finale was a spinning crown-like firework that shot into the sky and sprayed sparks everywhere. Sparks rained on the crowd, the tower itself caught on fire, and the maintenance crew came to disassemble the deathtrap. I don't think I've ever been that close to fireworks before, so it will definitely go down as one of my most memorable fireworks experiences.

Check out this video I took of the end of the fireworks display. I can't figure out how to change the video to play vertically, so you're just going to have to tilt your head.

Back to the Grind?

Well, not really a grind since I only had one day of class this week due to the holidays, but I am back in Ambato working again. Since we only had one day this week I watched a movie with my class and had them write down words they didn't know that they heard in the movie. The words my class selected included these gems: bullshit, ass, fart, barf, whore, and skank. 

I'd also like to thank all my friends and family who read my blog. I am writing this blog for a number of reasons; I want to record my experiences so I can remember my year abroad in the future and I am hoping it will be a good way for future WorldTeach volunteers to get an idea of what the program is like before they sign up, but most of all I write it for my friends and family so they can keep up with what I am doing and hopefully be entertained in the process. I spend a lot of time writing, but I have a lot of fun doing it and I am glad that people are reading it. I have even met a few people from my blog being passed around, which is pretty cool when I think about it.

Lastly, please check out the photos page for more pictures from Ambato.