El Carmen

I apologize for the incoherency of this post; I'm exhausted.

There are some days when my brain just can't think in Spanish, and Friday was one of those days. At one point during the day, my host mom asked if I had anything planned for Saturday, and I said no, because in reality I was up for things like shopping or touring the city some more during the day. Well, around 6 o'clock that night she told me to pack my mochilla because we were going to go to her mother's house and we might go tonight or tomorrow morning, we weren't sure. So, at 9 o'clock we all piled into the car for a 4 hour drive down to the coastal region of El Carmen. Big misunderstanding on my part at some point. Picture this: steep mountain roads with perilous drop offs, dangerous curves, and the thickest fog you've ever seen, while my dad was driving at least 70 mph. It was terrifying. At 1 am we arrived at abuelita's house; she lives on a farm with chickens, ducks, cows, cats, dogs, and plantain trees by the millions:

On Saturday we woke up and went to the beach, which I was told would be a short drive away. An hour and a half later we reached the ocean. There was the weirdest juxtaposition of rich, beach front stores and poverty-stricken shacks on the other side of the street. Also, the sand was black, and when I asked Sophia (6) why she thought it was that color, she said "it's because the sun is so hot here that it burns the land to a crisp and gives us black sand!". Duh, how could I have not known.

An hour later, Sophia got stung by a jellyfish and we promptly departed the vicinity. It was a little terrifying. She's fine, but in order to calm her down we bought ice cream and went swimming in a very nice pool near by:

When we returned to the house, I met most of the family (I lost count at 24 new faces and just smiled and nodded all day long). I'm also pretty sure the chicken we ate for dinner was alive and well that morning; I'm almost considering becoming vegetarian...

Hola gatitos!

And this morning we woke up, I saved a baby duck from getting stuck behind the water heater, sat in the hammock for a while, and then we went out into the jungle. We picked limes, plantains, bananas (yuck), and mandarins right off the trees. It was really cool. Apparently the family grows plantains and exports them to places like the USA and Canada, so look out for those Ecuadorian stickers on the plantains, they might have come from my family!

So that was my weekend! No shopping or touring the city, just family family family. It was fun, but really intimidating and exhausting.