The Anti-Thanksgiving

Having had to deal with crappy cooperating teachers, a ridiculous amount of errands, and the return of my not-so-favorite friend the parasite, I have been feeling less-than-festive lately. I am really in no mood for a holiday, unless that holiday involves laying in my bed and groaning for two to three days. The fact that I'm in a country that does not celebrate Thanksgiving further adds to my feelings of holiday non-cheer.

While my friends and family in the States finish up their workweek today and head home for some family time, I am planning stupid Holiday "learning activities" for my classes and the classes of every other teacher I have contact with. Cheers to being the only gringa and therefore the resident Thanksgiving expert.

Tomorrow, my family and countless other families across the nation will stuff themselves with pounds and pounds of potatoes, cranberries, and pie; I, on the other hand, plan to enjoy a delicious meal of antibiotics and crackers. Yum!

Despite my Scrooge-like approach to Thanksgiving this year, I genuinely hope that everyone out there enjoys a delicious meal with friends and family and that everyone takes the time to be grateful for their loved ones and the abundance that they have been blessed with.

Now, to lift your spirits and detract from the stress of cooking, traveling, and having to have countless conversations with your crazy uncle, please enjoy this photo I found of the first animal Thanksgiving:

Happy Pumpkin Pie Day!

Hallo-what?

I have always had mixed feelings about Halloween. On the one hand, I genuinely enjoy dressing up like my favorite alter egos/heros/stupid puns. On the other hand, nearly every other female seems to enjoy dressing up like a ten-dollar-hooker. I'm not sure of the exact history of Halloween, but I'm pretty positive that it did not involve skanks at the beginning of the tradition.

Luckily, this year I was able to escape my Halloween hesitation and ignore the holiday completely (besides all those Facebook pictures of people's hoochy costumes). Why is this? Well, Ecuador does not celebrate Halloween. Not only do they not celebrate, the holiday is actually banned in schools. It is illegal to celebrate Halloween with a party or costumes.

Instead, Ecuadorians celebrate the day of the shield. The shield is the symbol that's in the middle of their flag. "Celebrate" might be too strong of a word however. At school, the teachers still did small Halloween themed activities and the students said "Happy Halloween" to me before sarcastically saying "and Happy Shield Day".

A few days after Halloween is another Ecuadorian holiday that they actually do celebrate. Throughout Latin America, people celebrate "Día de los Difuntos", or the Day of the Dead, though every country celebrates slightly differently. In Ecuador, people make guaguas de pan, which translates to "bread babies". These are children-shaped breads that are painted with bright colored icings and eaten in remembrance of the dead. This custom doesn't make a ton of sense to me, but when in Ecuador...

They also have a traditional drink for the Day of the Dead, Colada Morada. This is a super purple thickish drink filled with fruit that takes nearly a full day to make. I got the chance to make it a few weeks back at the house of my friend Priscilla. It takes so long to make that we didn't finish while I was there, but here are some pictures of the process.

Here's Priscilla with the many different herbs that are used in the Colada. It can only be made around this time because these herbs are seasonal. I don't remember what they all are, but they smell delicious while cooking!

Here I am chopping up some pineapple. Pineapple is only one of the fruits used in Colada Morada. There's also naranjilla, babaco, blackberries, and blueberries which give the Colada its purple color. They are all cooked together until only small bits of fruit remain in the beverage. Yummy!

Here are the herbs cooking down in some water. I'm pretty sure this takes hours, and so I have no idea what it looks like after it cooks for a while.

Here is the pineapple, blackberries, and blueberries all ready to cook. Again, I'm not exactly sure how they get from fruit form to delicious purple beverage, but I do appreciate the taste!

Let's go take a Baños!

Since I haven't had much time to dedicate to blogging lately, I'm going to go back in time a few weekends and cover some past events.  (Not physically back in time, but hopefully that was obvious.)

The weekend of Halloween, I went with several of the younger members of my family to Baños. Baños is about three hours south of Quito and is right at the mouth of the Amazon rainforest. It's a huge tourist destination and everyone I met had been telling me that I had to go.

We left late-ish Friday night on a bus that can only be described as 70's disco era. It had blue and orange circle lights all over the ceiling and played several different Chuck Norris movies. Apparently people here really love Chuck Norris.

Anyway, Baños is spectacular. It's a smallish town full of tourists on the weekends and hippies during the week. We stayed at a gorgeous art hotel called La Casa del Abuelo that is run by the friend of one of my host brothers. Besides being a gorgeous place with individually painted murals in every room, the owner is wonderfully nice and serves fantastic healthy breakfast and seriously kick-ass fancy chef-prepared meals every night that are included in the cost of your stay. If you are ever in Baños, stay here!

I also made a pretty sweet friend while I was staying in the hotel. I opened my window one afternoon to find this staring back at me:

In related notes, Peacock mating calls are extremely LOUD when you are trying to sleep at 4:00 in the morning. 

We did a ton of different things in Baños (eating, walking, swimming, drinking, etc.), but one of my favorite things was visiting waterfalls. The first fall we visited was located at the end of a 30-minute walk through the rainforest.  The path was gorgeous and looked like this:

We were the only ones at the waterfall at the time, so we spent some time swimming and enjoying the views. The water was icy! but it was still really cool to swim in a waterfall. 

The other large waterfall we visited is called the Pailón del Diablo, or the Devil's Cauldron. It is so named for the combination of the extreme force the waterfall comes down and the circle shaped rock formation at the base of the waterfall that create the appearance of a steaming cauldron. Here's a shot of the volcano falling. 

Besides visiting waterfalls, the people I was traveling with were playing a show at La Casa del Abuelo on Saturday night. They play mostly Celtic music and have a mix of tons of different cool instruments. Their show was fantastic, and afterwards we went out to have a few drinks, and then ended up at a volcano weather station. It was super dark, really high, quite cold, and extremely fun. Here's a shot of the tree house at the weather station. Look at that crazy cool sky view!

We also visited the baths that give Baños its name. We went for the popular Baños de Cajon treatment, which involves: walking barefoot outside on a path of sharp rocks, screaming at a mountain, sitting in an extremely hot personal sauna/wooden steam box, having ice water poured over you while you are in the box, being hosed down with ice water, and then eating some delicious fresh fruit while wearing a mud mask.

If this sounds crazy, it's because it completely is. It's so ridiculous that it's amazingly fun. I felt great after sweating, screaming, and freezing out all my negative energy. This was one of the best weekends that I've spent in Ecuador so far, and if it's at all possible I will be returning here before I leave!