It has been 10 years since I was in Ecuador. And that was when I lived here for 7 months. my friend monsy came to visit me in belligham about 4 or 5 years ago, other than that I haven't seen her or her family. I have always called her family my adopted ecuadorian parents. When I lived here I spent Christmas with them and they made sure I got to do some sightseeing and always checked up on me at the school too. After my YWAM program I stayed with them for not her 2 1/2 weeks. Monsy's dad was the one who picked me up from the airport and it was like he was picking up his long lost daughter, a great big hug and a little bit of tears in his eyes.
The first day here was quite a relaxed day, everyone going on little sleep since we didn't get home from the airport until 2am.
We went out for lunch and I got one of my favorite dishes! A whole fish with Patacones...fried plantains. Oh it was just as good as I remember.
Monsy's brothers Becker and Alex, with his wife and three kids, came by in the evening to visit. They all look the same, like no time has past. It's really refreshing to be in a place where kids aren't attached to smart phones, tv and video games. Instead we all went out to play basketball, including Monsy's mom who is a very good player. My team won of course haha and we were out numbered 3 against 4.
Monsy's niece (7) and nephew (5) have been here for the weekend. I gave them each a Kinder Surprise egg which was a big hit! They haven't stopped playing with the motorbikes they got inside them. Saturday 8 of us, 5 adults, 2 kids and a baby piled into the Kia sportage to head to Otovalo. Baby's don't use car seats here, they just sit on your lap. And when you run out of room in an suv you just throw one or two in the trunk and off you go.
Otovalo is an awesome city on market days. It's a HUGE artisan market, On Saturdays the market takes up more than one third of the city. The merchants are mostly indigenous people dressed in traditional clothing. The stalls are a rainbow of bright colours. Paintings, alpaca sweaters,scarves, blankets, hammocks, purses. It goes on and on. I could easily spend hours upon hours wandering the stalls. Monsy is definitely a better barter than I am. She thought they were trying to put put a higher price on things since I'm a gringa and would easily talk them down a few dollars. I'm on the hunt for some alpaca wool to knit myself some slippers but so far no luck. I won't stop until I find some it's so expensive at home and I saw tons of it really cheap in Peru there has to be some somewhere here.
Last night the good old fashion fun continued with some ping pong. Man am I out of practise! I remember I was Fairly decent when we had a table growing up. We played some crazy ping pong games too...you would hit the ball put the paddle down for the next person in line and run to the other side to line up for your next turn. Trying to see how many hits we could get in until someone screwed up. It was a ton of fun with a lot of laughs. All the neighbour's came out to the courtyard to watch and laugh.
This morning we're off to church, I'm excited to see if I recognize and remember any of the songs.
The days have been very laid back and relaxing like vacation should be.
My Spanish has held up very well too! I have been able to understand pretty much everything until Becker purposely throws me off with slang and local sayings and then laughs. All in good fun haha.
