Goodbye to the Valley... :(

So this weekend was a rather eventful one, culminating in a lot of tears and very sad goodbyes. First of all, our Spanish classes (finally) came to an end on Friday. We got our final exams back and I am happy to report that I did very well. Regardless of what the grade on my exam said and what number it was, I feel like my Spanish has improved immensely since I arrived, more than any grade could really reflect. And a lot of that is not necessarily due to my Spanish classes but rather to living with my family. It has been wonderful living with them this past month and I made sure to get their address and all their other information before I left, because I will definitely be keeping in touch with them for a long time to come.

Friday evening, we had a big dinner/dance for all the host families. It was in this restaurant, where we had chicken and rice and salad and icecream for dinner, followed by some wild and crazy dancing. Everyone--the families, the students, everyone!--danced and had a wonderful time. Once the party was winding down, we all went to one of the student´s houses, whose parents had agreed to host an after-party for everyone. So we hung out at their house, danced, and all around had a pretty good time. Unfortunately, I was still (mentally) hung over from my previously-mentioned wild and crazy weekend, so I did not partake of the drinking and stuck to Coke.

Saturday during the day, I mainly hung out around the house with my family until the evening, when we were scheduled to attend a wedding (to which I was supposed to wear a rather hideous outfit, as I wrote previously). However, I had gone incognito earlier in the week to the local mall and bought a slightly more appealing and flattering outfit to wear. Explaining to my mother, however, why I was wearing something other than what we bought was a bit tricky because the last thing I wanted to do was hurt her feelings. So, I just explained that since Karina (another student in my program whose host family is related to mine and whose family was also attending the wedding) was wearing a dress to the wedding and everyone was wearing such nice clothes, I just felt like what we had bought together was not dressy enough (which is actually true, since spandex pants and tops do not strike me as particularly dressy). She seemed to understand and did not really care too much. Thank goodness! Crisis averted...

So, we left for the wedding about an hour late, at about 5:00 Saturday evening. I had been ready when I was told, which was at 4:00, but I was the only one. And when I asked them about it, they just laughed at the silly gringa and told me, "Oh, no! We are on Ecuadorean time!" which basically means anywhere from a half hour to forty-five minutes later than when an event is actually scheduled to take place.

HOWEVER, "Ecuadorean time" or not, we were actually late to the wedding and walked in as it was going on. My mother was absolutely flabbergasted that the ceremony had already started, but then, I think this was not Ecuadorean time anymore--we were on "just plain super-late time". THEN, after managing to sneak into the church and get a seat without really interrupting, the cell phone in my mother´s purse started ringing! AND then, just when I thought we had everything under control (seated, phone turned off, etc.), my mother began "pssstting!" at the little ring bearers and flower girls seated across the church from us, waving and making faces. Now, I love my mother, number one. And number two, I know this is a different culture and that things are different here than in the US. But regardless, I could not help but feel like this was super rude--from the lateness to the cell phone to the continually trying to get the attention of the kids across the church. Somewhat frustrating for me, but whatever...

So, after the ceremony was over, we walked across the parking lot from the church to the center where the reception was being held. The reception took place in this giant ballroom and it was GORGEOUS! The colors were all golds, whites, oranges, and peaches, so the tables all had gold tableclothes with white and peach roses in the center. The food was incredible--beef, chicken, asparagus, some sort of vegetable souffle thing, red wine. And the wedding cake was spectacular--my mother and her sisters had apparently spent nearly two days nonstop creating it. It consisted of two flat, rectangular, cream-colored cakes, but one of them had this elaborate horse-drawn carriage constructed out of sugar on top. And inside, the cake was rum and whiskey flavored, or something like that...all I basically understood from my mother when she was telling me what was in it was that everyone could get drunk just off the filling of the cake.

However, that was not necessary, since everyone was drunk well before the cake was cut. When we first arrived, my friend, Karina, was seated with her family at one table and, a few tables away, I was seated with my mother, her sister and brother, and a family I did not know. Because my host siblings were part of the wedding party, they were seated elsewhere. Well, after the bride and groom arrived, the dancing began. Karina and I danced for awhile, but I took a quick break to go to the restroom. When I came back, in my absence, apparently all hell had broken loose.

So, I found out from a rather bewildered-looking Karina, who was sitting alone at her table when I returned, that the father of the groom had apparently come up and quietly asked her father that he not drink during the reception. Rather indignant, Karina´s father then demanded from Karina´s mother, Blancy, if she preferred he not drink. And Blancy quietly responded that "of course" she preferred that he not drink. At this point, Karina´s father stood up, put on his coat, and demanded, "Well, fine then! Let´s go! We´re leaving!" And, since Karina´s family is VERY machista and whatever her father says goes, if he had really insisted on leaving, there would have been nothing Blancy could have done to stop him.

Luckily, the groom and some other people came over and tried to calm him down and took him outside to talk. As Karina was telling me all this, Blancy came back from I assume the bathroom and, even though she tried to act like everything was fine and that she just had something caught in her throat that was making her cough, she was obviously very upset and trying not to cry. Poor Karina and her family--apparently, even though her father ended up agreeing to stay, there was much awkwardness all throughout dinner.

At MY table, however, by the time I returned to sit down for dinner, my mother, her sister, and her brother had been helping themselves to the whiskey being offered freely at the bar, as well as the champagne, and were, in a word, sloshed. And apparently, when my mother is sloshed, she smoked (who knew?). So my dinner consisted of her brother telling dirty jokes in Spanish, repeatedly making me smell his whiskey (maybe because he thought that smelling it would make me want to drink it, which it did not), and my mother smoking like a chimney.

To be clear, I was having an AWESOME time. It was kind of fun listening to them joke around and I had a blast dancing, as well. HOWEVER, it was in the last hour or so that it kind of went slightly downhill. You see, first, after about her second or third whiskey, my mother absconded with my camera to take pictures of everyone dancing, which was fine except that she had never really used to camera before and when I got it back at the end of the night, there were about a thousand pictures of random people´s backs AND a giant smudged substance on the lense of the camera which had caused perhaps the last 100 or so photos to be rather foggy and strange looking. Secondly, after all the festivities were finished and people were beginning to clear out, ONLY THEN did my mother decide (I think because she was only just then intoxicated enough) that she wanted to dance. So, despite the fact that there was hardly anyone else left dancing and me and my host siblings were all sitting down, coats on, ready to do, my mother continued to dance. And when she finally retired to her table for another cigarette, just then my host brother and sister decided to dance some more. So, Nathaly and I continued to sit there, absolutely exhausted, watching Javier and Silvana dance with maybe one or two other couples that were left and my mother´s drunk brother, who by now was more or less just stumbling around the dance floor.

So, FINALLY, we decided to leave. But it was suddenly decided that, of all my mother´s siblings (many of whom have larger cars than we do), we had to drive the completely smashed uncle home. So I was then shoved in the back of the car with my mother and my drunk uncle, who kept telling some joke I did not understand over and over. And while I might have thought it was funny THE FIRST TIME HE TOLD IT had I understood it, he continued to say it OVER AND OVER, the whole way home.

DESPITE the frustration of the last hour or so of the wedding, it was certainly memorable and, for the majority of it, very fun.

Today I just hung out around the house until 3:00, when everyone had to meet at the church to take the bus to Quito to the Hotel Alston, where we are staying overnight before leaving for the rainforest tomorrow. While I do not typically get emotional with goodbyes and continued that trend today, many people all around me were crying their eyes out, students and family alike. I said my goodbyes to my family, gave them hugs and kisses and repeated "gracias"s. They, in turn, insisted I call and write and if I ever needed ANYTHING while in Quito or during my stay here, all I had to do was call them. But poor Blancy, Karina´s mother, was crying as soon as the bus pulled up to pick us up (she only has sons, no daughters, and really enjoyed having a daughter for once with Karina). Many of the students, as well, were crying and finally retreated onto the bus after repeated tearful hugs and kisses with their host families.

It was so funny--I was sitting on the bus as we were getting ready to leave and looking at the window and thought about how, just a month ago, I was in the exact same place, feeling so nervous that I thought I might throw up, looking out the window of the bus at all those strangers. I remember how wide-eyed and bewildered we all were as we stumbled out of the bus and were immediately swept up by all those strangers, all chattering rapidly in Spanish. And then, here we were, in reverse--sitting on the bus, waving goodbye instead of saying hello, reaching out the bus windows to clasp hands with our families one last time, people crying to say goodbye to their families (truly families and strangers no longer). It seemed like forever ago that we first arrived, but then, in these past few weeks, we have come a very long way.

Next up: the rainforest for five days, followed by a month in Quito with all new families and all new challenges. I am a little nervous, to be sure, but compared with the terror I felt at the beginning of all this, what lies ahead is a piece of cake. :)

Ciao,
Alex