Fruit, Pre-Carnaval, and Markets

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Saturday night (7) I went to mass with my family. My whole family: 2 brothers, mom, grandma, great-grandma, cousin/sister, my mom's sister's family, and my mom's brother's family who came up from Quito. So basically a lot of people! We took up a couple rows. The church was completely full, even people standing. They're starting the special masses leading up to Carnaval. After that I went over to the GVI House for a movie/icecream night. We watched Australia. It was pretty good. Sunday was all about relaxing! Sleeping in for once, reading, lesson planning, exploring other parts of Otavalo.

The excitement for Carnaval has already started here. It started the beginning of February and is increasing every day. In Ecuador the big thing is getting people wet. Water ballons, water guns, and foam so far. On the actual days supposedly it includes anything anyone can get their hands on... eggs, flour, oil... The point I guess is to get everyone completely covered in junk. All the little stores have started selling balloons and the kids at school LOVE them! And the kids in town. It isn't even safe to walk down the sidewalk anymore for fear of getting sprayed with foam or water from one of the passing cars.

Fruit is amazing here! It's everywhere! I haven't had as much of it as I would like because my family doesn't really eat it for meals, but I've had it some. Because of all the fruit there is also never-ending fresh fruit juice. Every night for dinner we have it. The basically just put the fruit in a blender with some water. It's really good! Especially blackberry (really big here) and passionfruit. I've also tried a couple new fruits. Babacoa is amazing! It is a big, long, yellow/green fruit that you cut into slices. It has almost a foamy center with white fruit around it. Almost tart, but also sweet. Pepinos on the other hand are not spectacular. They look almost like mangos but they have black stripes on them.

Monday (9) I finally got to do the food shopping! Every Monday we shop for food for the kids at our schools because we provide them with lunch everyday. Usually I haven't been able to do it because I've had spanish, but this week spanish is Tuesday and Thursday so I could go! We go to the market to get our list of food. It's pretty much the same every week and pretty straight forward so it isn't hard. It's fun to go with everyone though. We also ate icecream cups that they have here. I think they basically put different flavored cream in cups and freeze it. Or at least that's what it looks like. I'm not exactly sure what they're made out of. Regardless, they're delicious! We had coconut ones yesterday and I was surprised by how good they were!

School is still going well. I'm always surprised how tired I am at the end of the day. I guess that's what happens from running around after young kids all day...

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Comments

[Ethan]

I totally have a friend in Ecuador who was just telling me about the water balloons and how kids are throwing them around all over the place!!!