What a great Ecuadorian weekend!
Early Saturday morning, I went with Nicole and her dog Lola to hike in Parque Metropolitano. This is an amazing place because it's right on the edge of the city and only took us 5 or 10 minutes to drive to, but once you park your car and go a few steps into the park, you are enveloped in a beautiful semi-wildnerness. Any Westchesterites that are familiar with Rockwood Park, that's kind of the feel that it has... meandering trails you could get lost in if you don't know your way around, a canopy of trees, beautiful views. There's even a little farmstead that belongs to people who lived there before the park became a protected area... But instead of maples and oaks like in New York, there were neon-green bamboo forests and tingly-scented eucalyptus trees, and instead of overlooking the Hudson River, the lookout points gazed out upon a chain of volcanoes. The best part is that you can end your hike with a cup of fresh juice for a dollar... I think every hike should end that way.
Also, my birthday is in November, so I've never before been able to have an outdoor birthday party... this year I plan to take advantage of the mild weather and have a barbecue in the park!
Saturday my neighbor and landlord Berthita had me over, along with her two other renters (also teachers from school) to her apartment for an Ecuadorian family lunch. Her son made shrimp ceviche, and she made colada morada, which is a traditional fruit soup made for Day of the Dead. (We're a little early for Day of the Dead, but Berthita is headed off on a cruise next week, because that's the kind of gal she is.) The fruit soup is made from all of the red fruits that grow in Ecuador: mora, which is in the blackberry family, raspberries and strawberries, plus spices like cinnamon and cloves. It's sweet and dark red in color, and represents the blood of ancestors who have passed on. It's served with gua guas de pan, or bread babies (great for dunking), and traditionally eaten in the cemeteries next to the family plot as a way of remembering those that have gone before. First you eat the head, and then the rest of the body, and there's a cheese or jelly filling inside. It was a lovely spread, and her apartment looks out over Parque Carolina, with slices of the mountains visible behind uneven rooftops, pale in contrast to the dark charcoal grey land behind them. Berthita and her family are so generous and gracious. The three of us are lucky to have her as a landlord!
Then this morning, I went with some of my girls down to the Old Town to go to Catholic mass in the old Jesuit Church, Compania de Jesus. It is an incredibly ornate church, with a gold-plated ceiling and elaborate carvings and statues everywhere, and a high dome above the altar that reaches towards the heavens. I was surprised, given how fancy of the building appears, how relatively casual the service was. Many people attended in jeans, babies and toddlers were kind of sprawled out across the pews, and it was also not very long. It was quite beautiful, although I couldn't help wondering how many Inca temples and palaces had been pillaged in order to cover the entire arched ceiling in gold...
We capped off our morning with lunch at Case de Geranios, the House of Geraniums Restaurant on one of the cobblestone streets in the La Ronda area. We ate locro de papa, or creamy potato soup with cheese, and fried empanadas and plantain chips with spicy aji sauce. We sat in an outdoor patio overlooking the statue of the winged Virgin high up on the hill above us, surrounded by colorful pastel buildings, Spanish style ceramic rooftops, and balconies planted with lacy ferns and of course, geraniums.
And now I'm back home confronting the conundrum of being part tourist, part teacher. If we were simply on vacation, we'd almost certainly be still sitting in the Plaza Grande having a latte and taking in the colonial architecture, or perusing the shops, or exploring a museum, or meandering through the Botanic Garden for the Orchids and Chocolate exhibition.
Instead, I'm here in my apartment preparing to (or procrastinating from) writing report card comments, an IEP, and planning of the start of our next unit...
The positive side of this is that I get to know that I'm here to stay for some time, and there are many more weekends ahead to plan for, in addition to planning my units... climbing up in the rafters of the big basilica, my birthday barbecue, mountain biking or cycling down Amazonas Avenue, which is closed to traffic on Sundays, and maybe learning how to cook locro de papa and empanadas for ourselves! Cheers, to many more beautiful weekends in Ecuador.
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