Tradiciones del Campo

This past weekend I had quite a few rural country experiences. Saturday I went to Otavalo, a town 2 hours from Quito that has a huge mercado artesanal in which the Otavaleños sell their traditional clothing, lots of jewelry and paintings and wood carvings and such. It's famous and all, and everyone says you must go, but honestly the stuff was exactly the same as what you can get in the mercado artesanal de Quito (because they all come down to Quito to sell their goods). The only difference was the sheer density of people speaking quichua instead of Spanish, which was pretty cool to hear. But while I can now saw I went, I saw, and I conquered, in hindsight I would have rather not spent 4 hours on a bus for no reason! But I did buy lots of gifts, realising that my time is almost up here, so my few faithful readers should be thankful I went!


On Sunday I went with Jairo and Monica to a town called Quinche, about 45 minutes from Tumbaco. Jairo's dad was born and buried there, and they knew of a typical, popular restaurante, El Rancho, that serves cuy. Cuy, dear friends, is guinea pig. But deep fried and crispy, it is lunch! So, yes, if you zoom into this fine picture of me you will see the little claw sticking out of the chunk of meat I'm eating. I shouldn't say chunk, because it must have been a scrawny little guy for the noticeable lack of meat it had! But I must say I liked it better than steak or other red meats. Not as much as chicken, though. It kinda tasted like chicken, but it's rubberier. Anywho, I also tried Güitig, the popular natural sparkling water they make here, and I confirmed the fact that I don't like carbonation in my water. Tastes funny.


In the late afternoon I went up to Quito for the Book Week exposition that was basically a bunch of bookstores selling their kids' books. Unfortunately, Trin, they all had words. And right as I got there it started pouring, so we all were stranded inside for about 45 minutes. I ran into the physics/math teacher from BSQ who was there with his wife and daughter and his parents from England, and luckily they gave me a ride back down to the ecovía (it was over 100 stairs to get up to the park). But before I descended back into the valle, they invited me up for coffee, and get this--they had mini chocolate easter eggs, too! Cadbury, straight from England! What a great night, no?! It was really pleasant to chat with them, and I got to practice my spanish with his ecuatorian wife, so that was bien chévere.

And today I began my last week of student teaching! Tomorrow is a public holiday (international workers' day), so I wish you all a relaxing break and encourage you to find and join a rally for immigrants' right! I wish I could!