This weekend I hung around Quito despite the fact that my friends were going off to exotic locations such as the Mindo Cloud Forest and a beautiful camping trip at a crater. I did so supposedly because I wanted to experience a weekend in the city, but mostly because I had already paid 15$ for an International Students Party and was too cheap to forefeit that ticket money to go on another trip.
So, Saturday morning rolled around and I found myself waiting outside of one of Quito's stadiums with roughly 60 other gringos who were waiting to board the buses that the university had told us would arrive at 10. It was then 10:15, no buses in sight. At 10:30, I led a little expedition of people on a walk around the stadium, to see if by any chance the buses had parked somewhere else instead of right in front of the stadium, in the most clearly parked, wide open parking lot available. You never know...so, we saw some buses that looked suspiciously like the charter buses we were waiting for, only not a single one of them had a driver. Huh. We walked back to the group of gringos, defeated. We then waited until 11:00, when finally those buses drove up to find us...hooray! We then boarded the buses, only to sit there till 11:30, when we started moving. After driving for a SOLID 10 meters, a car hit one of the buses. Oh my god. Not a serious hit, but enough to merit some arguing and paperwork, which took a solid 30 minutes. FINALLY, when we arrived at the ranch where the party was to be held, it was 1:00pm.
The ranch was located in a suburb of Quito, and I guess it has some affiliation with the University. The advertisements for this party has promised, food, a DJ, dancing, games, and beer, which sounds great, except when we got there, there was only....nothing. We got off the bus only to find a tent set up with some chairs and banquet tables set up. There were no school employees to welcome us or tell us what to do. It felt like someone had invited us all to a wedding and then forgot to actually plan the party, or even show up for it. So that was weird. We all shuffled around aimlessly for a bit.
Luckily, before things got TOO uncomfortable, some of the international student leaders and Ecuadorian "buddies" showed up and broke us up into groups to play some "traditional Ecuadorian games." We were all a little more than reluctant...after a late Friday night who can really claim to be THAT interested in party games more appropriately suited to the abilities of a 6 year old? But, being the good sports that we are (and knowing that out return buses weren't coming for 7 hours) we set off for the playing fields.
My group's first game was a typical field day race where you balance an egg on a spoon, put said spoon in your mouth, and trot around for a bit. Easy. My team was slated to compete in the second heat, so naturally I was paying CLOSE attention to the other competitors to see how to gain an advantage. Spoon in teeth? Lips? Head tilted? Slow and steady? Go for broke? The possibilities were endless. I was intently zeroed in on the race, when this Ecuadorian girl comes up and hands me a tray of like 60 eggs.. Thinking this was for me to prepare for my race, I took them. She then instructed me and my friends to "throw one." What?? I turned to my friend to make sure I hadn't made a translation error. I hadn't. I turned to the girl, "throw them? why? at what?" "AT THEM!" she shouted in English. I laughed nervously. Surely she could not be serious...I was not going to throw raw eggs at the people who I am supposed to be trying to make friends with. We backed away slowly, but by this point the Ecuadorian was getting frustrated. The race was well underway, and so far nobody had any yolk on their face. She took matters into her own hands, and started firing away. Soon, all the Ecuadorians joined in. I literally could not believe this was happening. They had no mercy, chucking eggs at us from all directions, rolling them under our feet, it was crazy. Then it was our turn to race, and despite being fired upon by the Ecuas, my team managed to pull out a victory.
Our next game was a game more typical of the ones played in villages around festival days. How it works is there is a large wooden pole, and you have to climb it. If you can touch the cow/pig/bushel of wheat at the top, you get to take it home! However, by the time we approached this telephone pole height piece of (really, really smooth) wood, we were already soaking in egg yolk and were feeling less than enthusiastic about the prospect of being able to climb what was essentially a fireman's pole. The Ecuadorians kept saying it was possible though, and that we were really wimpy if we didn't at least try it.
I kept having Mulan flashbacks, and soon the group started to feel a little more hopeful that maybe someone, could by some miracle, climb up the pole. Mulan could do it. There are, however two main differences between what happens in the pole-climbing scene in Mulan and what happened with us. 1) we lacked those cords with heavy medallions attached to both ends that proved to be extremely useful and 2) Mulan is a cartoon. Needless to say, all we managed to do was sort of jump up, hug the pole in sort of a sloth pose, and then slowly slide down until our toes touched solid earth in a dust poof of defeat and shame. Unsuccessful.
After the party games, we were finally allowed to start eating and drinking, and from there the party actually became really fun. Lots of dancing, chatting, and meeting new people filled the day, and I was actually glad I had stayed in Quito to attend the party.
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