You never know exactly what’s going to happen around here. It lends itself to great Facebook status ideas. You should all look forward to that whenever the phone company gets around to hooking up the internet connection here.
Yesterday was a lazy morning. I woke up just a little too late to make it to EFC for the early service, and knew I’d destroy everyone’s plans for the day if I went to the late one, so I caught up on reading, writing, and devotional time most of the morning. Lunch was pescado, which is always amazing here. I was even corrected in my manners and specifically told to eat it with my hands (and after I gave in and put down my fork, Lourdes bragged to everyone all day about how Ecuadorian I was). Weekend and holiday meals around here (yesterday fell under both) always mean that both the whole family is here, and usually at least two people from the church. Doña Jimena and her daughter were here to join us for the pescado, and I was invited to go see the place where she and Teresita (my Godson Luis’s sister) work making bricks in the morning to learn all about it. I thought they were kidding.
After lunch I sat down to write, but Marta asked me “Nos acompañas?” (“Will you come with us?”) I wasn’t sure who “us” was or where I’d be accompanying1 them, but since Marta and her mom were on their way down the stairs together, I figured I’d be hanging out with them in the store again.
Turns out we started out going on a walk. I’m not sure if we were intentionally house-hunting to begin with or if it just seemed like a good idea once we started seeing for sale/rent signs around the barrio. Apparently Marta is looking for somewhere to live here in Guajalo (this sector of Quito) to be closer to her family and the store, now that she’s working here. We walked around the neighborhood behind the store, up the hill and around the corner, and I realized we had come up behind Emaús. I actually didn’t know that road kept going all the way around, so I feel like I learned a shortcut to the church. We kept going and crossed over the highway to go up the hill that looks down on the old storefront where Emaús began. We even actually stopped and looked inside one of the houses for rent we found and probably would have checked out some more, but many of the people were gone, I’m guessing for the holiday weekend.
It was early afternoon when we started out, and roughly 6:00 when we came back. I thought the lazy day that I had intended was about to commence, but my phone rang literally five seconds after I’d stepped back into the tienda. It was Cameron, and she was looking for Lourdes. I gave the phone to her, and they talked for less than a minute with Lourdes mostly just saying “Okay… okay… okay…” before she hung up, handed the phone back to me, and headed off upstairs. I decided to just hang around the store, but Marta looked at me skeptically and asked if I was going to go upstairs and change my clothes. Apparently Cameron and Lourdes both thought the other was going to tell me that we’d been invited to Cena at the Vivancos’ house.
I make the distinction that it was cena because here in Ecuador, there is a difference between cena and merienda not totally unlike the distinction between Supper and Dinner in the southern United States. Like supper, merienda is the meal at night, wherever it is, whoever it’s with, and whatever you’re having. The definition of cena borders more on an event. It’s a big holiday dinner or when you have people over. So basically you know to expect a bigger meal than pancitos and coffee.
When we got to Cameron and Roberto’s place, I could hear other people already laughing and talking inside, and I was excited to see Maggi and her kids (Omar, Maria Jose and Gema) and some others from Emaus. We had a great time playing Ker-Plunk and eating dinner, then hanging out together and drinking coffee and taking pictures. I escaped for a few minutes to call my family on the Vonage phone, and then fiddled with the piano with Gema for a while, before we all crammed back into Lourdes’ car with Omar and me in the “trunk” area behind the back seat.
I was somewhat zoned out on the way back, except for some brief periods where Omar was talking to me in English2. During one of those moments, Omar asked me “See where we are?” “Yeah…?” I responded, looking around at the gigantic hill we were on, although not necessarily3 sure where “here” was. He told me it was about a kilometer away from home and we would be walking there in the morning. His mother chimed in at that point “A las ocho.” Great. I not only have to be functional and sociable at eight in the morning, but I’m going to be climbing a stinking mountain. Turns out this would be the adventure to go see the brick business that had been mentioned at lunch.
So this morning I woke up at about 6am to do my devotion and wake up in my room. I listened until most of the noise outside my door stopped, meaning that most everyone was down in the store (sort of like the last couple of semesters of school how I’d wait until everyone else in my house was gone to work or school before I left my bed), took a shower, ate a breakfast so big Lydia would be proud of me (because food kept getting put down in front of me) and somewhere around 8:00 Omar walked upstairs.
We headed off down the street down the house-hunting route, past Emaus, and up the Pan-American highway until at one dirt road indistinguishable to me from the rest, Omar hung a left and we began trekking the steep road that was sometimes paved, but easier to climb when it was only rocks and dirt.
Omar seemed to be handling it a lot better than I was. But about three quarters of the way up he finally groaned a little bit and I didn’t feel so bad about complaining anymore, so I breathlessly said “Yeah, yo soy de la costa.” Omar responded in English, “I’m from here and I’m tired.”
When we finally got there, Jimena let us into the brickyard and went to find Teresita. Teresita then proceeded to explain the process of making bricks to us, and I caught bits and pieces. The mud-walled “oven” where the bricks were baking looked to me about as tall and wide as those prefabricated storage sheds you can buy at Lowe’s or Home Depot, or roughly the size of my bodega at my apartment in the north. It was just four walls about twice as tall as me with a ladder going up to where huge plumes of smoke were rising from the open top. I’m not sure how many bricks I would have thought would have fit in there at one time, but my guessed would have ranged from several hundred to a couple thousand. At some point, Omar asked. “Diez y seis mil,” Teresita responded. My eyes bugged out about as much as Omar’s did, and he could tell he didn’t need to translate that 16,000 bricks were baking right next to us. She also told us that when the bricks are done after two full days, the oven is still so hot that you can cook your meals in it for at least two more days.
We hung out and talked for a little while more before heading back down the mountain. Omar decided we should take the bus on the way back. I think we should have taken the bus on the way there. At any rate, I spent the rest of the morning in the store and shopping with Jose at the Mercado Mayorista (huge market where you can buy in bulk. Basically the Ecuadorian Sam’s Club) and then we closed up for a while to go have lunch, which Adrian had been working on all morning. He showed off his chef’s skills and made chop suey for us, which was fantastic (and I have thus been singing the “Hong Kong Fuey” theme song in my head the rest of the day).
This afternoon has been dedicated to writing and teaching guitar. Except that I lost track of time and suddenly Gabriel was here exactly when he was supposed to be, nothing unexpected happened. And the way things work here, that was probably the most unexpected thing about the long weekend.
1I had no idea that “accompanying” was spelled like that. Thank you, spell check.
2As I told Amalia the other day, “Yo no habla mucho antes de diez en la mañana, y yo no hablo español después de diez en la noche.”
3And by “necessarily,” I actually mean “remotely.”
