Bungalow

Friday night I was invited to go out again con Vanessa y María Rosa. So this time I left the house at 7:15 in order to catch the last bus to Quito, and it was pouring! Once in Quito I was going to walk to María Rosa's house because it is pretty close to the bus terminal. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember the name of the street I had to turn left on, so I walked down one street, looked in all the gates, walked back to Rio Coca, walked down the next street, walked back to Río Coca, walked down the next street......until I hit the right street 6 tries later! Now, XT and Eli can probably imagine how my feet felt (or at least how I would be complaining about them) because remember--I'm going dancing, so I-m wearing my paper-thin-soled black salsa shoes. Yikes! Bikes! But I finally arrived, we had bread and coffee, chatted, and finally left at 11 p.m. But then we had to get gas (all $3.oo worth), and so we waited at least 25 minutes in the line (how much gas do you think we spent just waiting?). And then we met up with Caty y su novio Christopher and waited for them to eat a burger and fries. THEN, we drove around trying to decide on a place to go/trying to get through the traffic-blocked streets/finding a place to park. See, none of us really wanted to spend much money, so we finally decided on Bungalow, a place packed with gringos, but free for the ladies! The good news is that the music was fairly varied so it wasn't boring for awhile! The bad news is that it was mainly rock, techno, really old songs like the YMCA, and a few merengues. We danced in our own little group for awhile, and then these nice little 18-year-olds asked Vanessa and I to dance. It wouldn't have been that weird except that the third question my guy (chris) asked me (after what's your name? and where are you from?) was "How old are you?" Why would you ask that?! Anywho, he was nice enough, but I soon lost interest (one of his next quations was which fútbol team I preferred), as had Vanessa and María Rosa. We were about to leave when...they played a salsa! And I don't know how he knew I was dying to salsa, but this really guapo guy named Xavier asked me to dance...and dance he could! Not to generalize all ecuadorians, but Franciso is officially wrong because, ay! he spun me and spun me and spun me! And at the end of the second salsa he dipped me! So I was perfectly feliz...and then Vanessa said they were ready to go. Nooooooo! But I went and we ate french fries and ice cream (okay, only I had the ice cream) and then drove to the next bar that doesn't start to pick up until after 2 p.m. Unfortunately for them (but fortunately for me), there was a 5 dollar cover and because MR had to be home by 4 a.m. we didn't think it was worth paying for only one hour. I was secretly quite happy with this decision because my feet hurt and I really don't enjoy techno/hip hop. So we returned home, got 6 hours of sleep, and had a great breakfast with MR's family again. While I can't say it was the best night dancing, it was wonderfully fun and a much-needed escape from la isolación del valle.

p.s. I forgot to mention one thing about Bungalow that we all found highly offensive: We were waiting in line to get in behind a group of latinos and in front of a group of 6 gringos. The bouncer chose the gringos behind us to go in, then waited awhile. Vanessa had me move to the front of our group and say some stuff in English, at which point we were allowed to go in, with the latinos still waiting! I was mortified! That's horrible discrimination and I felt truly ashamed of being white!