A Few Things Forgotten

Monday was the first day of the Carnaval weekend thus far that wasn’t rainy and cloudy and cold. As such, it was a most opportune time to take some sun. I first thought of my walled-in yard, but then realized that all the bulla we heard was from every single person who remained in the Quito area coming to the pools that are right near our house. I had never even seen them because they’re always closed (and apparently really dirty), but today they were THE place to be! I decided to aprovechar the opportunity and so I suited up, sunscreened my arms and torso (because my legs never seem to get any color at all, yet alone burn) and walk down to the pools. It was madness! Sadly, I have no digital pics for fear of the water damage (in other countries, carnival means parades, foods, sins of the flesh; in Ecuador it means water throwing and lots of it). But it was packed. I mean every inch of the pools, the surrounding lawns and parking lots, too. No one actually went swimming, they all just bobbed up and down, packed like sardines, splashing and bobbing. One of the many food vendors kindly supplied me with some ice cream to squelch my calor, and after I walked around and saw the sights, I decided it best to not fight and elbow for a patch of grass just to be ogled at. So I returned to the privacy of my yard and rotisseried for an hour. Now, the noonday sun was not strong enough to penetrate my SPF 30 (chuta!), but it was more than enough to burn my vulnerable legs, poor things. My bad. But it was only later, of course, that I realized all this. Amazingly enough, though, my legs never peeled, though they did itch awhile this past week. And now they’re nicely bronzed while the rest of me is still white!

Anywho, I was soon bored again and had decided to make breakfast and lunch for the family the next day (prompted by a minor fight between Sofy and Jairito over who had to cook lunch/clean up because the maid had the day off and Mony and Jairo had to work), so I decided to walk to the Supermaxi grocery store about 45 minutes away. Stupid me forgot that it was Carnaval. And we all know what Carnaval means. So I was relatively lucky for about half of the journey, and my glares, smiles, and verbal pleas reduced the damage to only three water balloons and a guy chasing me with a relatively short hose. But then. Then, there were three guys with buckets of water and an older guy (papá?) who assured me it was safe to walk by. I doubted, but he insisted, so I trusted him…and then got doused by three full buckets of water. I couldn’t outrun them because they were young and agile and not attached to a spigot. Chuta. So I waddled and dripped my way to Supermaxi, where I bought the necessary food items, averted my eyes when passing people, and hastily made my exit. I walked home and only got the same hose guy and one more water balloon. Luckily, most of the pool traffic had passed so the fewer targets reduced the attackers’ patience. And as soaked as I was, it was really funny to see people in the back of pickups just bombed over and over from rooftops, to the extent that some would lie down under a tarp the whole way home! Motorcyclists were also popular targets, but harder to hit. After this nice exercise/cultural initiation, I passed the evening…yep, you guessed it—watching t.v.