A Few New Things

So Leslie and I ended up having a great time this past weekend. Friday night we had our dance class, and since we're the only teachers who attend it (even though it's free) we get to spend some time learning how to dance together. What that really means is that Leslie is learning how to follow instead of lead when we dance. On the whole I don't agree with machismo, it does provide a few advatnages that I'm not yet quite willing to give up.

After our dance class, we grabbed a bite to eat from Betu's place and went and got in line for the Friday night free party bus. There is a company, Pazhuca Tours, that does a two-hour double-decker bus tour of Cuenca two or three times a day. The tours cost fives bucks and (if you're thinking like a tourist) it's definitely worth it, especialy because the bus takes you up to Turi. Every Friday night at 8, the six-o-clock tour gets back and there's a long line of people of all ages – little kids with their parents, people our age, grandparents, etc. – waiting to get on for free and take a one-hour bus ride around downtown with party music and canelaso and balloons. Leslie and I got on to the top of the bus and had a great view of everything going on both on the bus and around us. After the first round, which lasted around an hour, Leslie decided she was to tired to stay out with us (some other international teachers and some student teachers from the US came with us) and ended up getting a taxi home. I made her text me from Skype when she got home so that I'd know she was safe. And she was. The second time around we took a longer rout around downtown, we played louder music, we drank more and we had a lot more fun. It was also around 95% people our age on the bus, which was definitely helpful. We all got off on Calle Larga (gringo-friendly bar and club area) and ended up getting some schwarma and going to Once, a bar next to one of the CEDEI buildings. None of the drinks were two-for-one, so I ended up getting the chocolate one (that's made with ice cream) just to see how it would be. It was pretty good, and I wasn't trying to get drunk so I didn't mind that it was weak. After Once, we all just went home.

On Saturday I did abslutely nothing. Leslie had been invited to one of her kindergardener's birthday party, so she went there in the morning and I just stayed in bed. The only thing I really did all day, aside from eat and rest, was listen to Arkansas pound Troy in football. That may not sound too significant to you all, but we became bowl-eligible and the spread was only 14 points; we beat them by 36. It was a great Saturday.

Sunday was loaded with things to do. We decided to sleep in again, so we didn't end up leaving the house until 1pm – having made and eaten breakfast and showered and gotten ready for the day – when we headed down to the Mall del Rio. It was Leslie's first time going to the mall, which is incredibly boring because it's almost exactly the same as any small-town mall in the states. Except that the food court has more interesting options. We were there fo a fund-raiser event, FASEC's international food festival. FASEC is a cancer research group that puts on the festival every year, and since Nellie had made and served the Dutch food for them a few years ago she recommended we go and told us it wouldn't be too expensive. Apparently, something had changed since she worked the event because we had to pay just to get in and all the plates were four or five dollars. For five dollars both Leslie and I can get soup, bananas, fruit juice and a plato fuerte (main dish) at a Colombian restaurant with nice owners and incredible food. The Dutch table ended up, in my opinion, being the only one with food we tried that was really worth what we had to pay. Leslie and I shared a plate of incredible Dutch mashed potatoes made with bacon and cheese and enough butter (even enough for mommom). The mashed potatoes, which filled the plate, also came with some decent Dutch sauage. The plate was four dollars: still on the expensive side of eating here, but definitely worth it. We also tried something from Taiwan, which I won't attempt to explain except to say that they were balls of fried something, we had sushi made by cuencanos who are training to be professional chefs, we got a slice of strawberry cheesecake from the USA table that serves almost every traditional dessert we have back in the states, and we had paella from “Spain.” I saved the paella for last because it was horrible. A plate of paella, which came from a gigantic vat oh which I hope to have a picture for you soon, was five dollars. And when I asked the people who were working the booth they al claimed to be “half-Spanish” which, after trying their paella, I just cannot believe. I've lived in Spain. I've eaten real paella. So yeah, maybe I'm biased, but even Leslie didn't like it. That shit was disgusting.

We went straight from the mall, where we learned that Deportivo Cuenca will be playing in the national championship at home in the next couple weeks (I'll be going, you can be sure of that, and I'll be sure to post about it too), straight into downtown to La Universidad de Cuenca (La U) to meet up with a couple guys from work. An interesting note: in Cuenca, “el centro” (downtown) is the entire area in the center of town that has cobblestone streets. Once you're on a cobblestone road, you're officially in “el centro.” Leslie came to La U with me to do some exercise swimming while I played racketball with Pepe and Jonatan. I'd like to note that is was the second time I'd ever played and that Pepe has been playing for years and Jonatan was a tournament competitor a couple years ago. Yeah, not gonna write about how racketball went.

We were going to go to Mark Odenwelder's (CEDEI director) house to watch an NFL game after racketball, but he ended up being too busy to have us over. So we ended up getting Indian food on Calle Larga instead and just going home. The game ended up being on cable, so I watched the Spanish commentator version as I went to sleep Sunday night.

Monday's classes went well, but the important thing that happened on Monday was that I played in a soccer game Monday night that I had been invited to at Once on Friday night. A really cool guy, a cuencano named Javier who teaches English at a high school and always wants to practice with me, picked me up from my neighborhood and took me down to his father's canchas sinteticas (turf soccer fields) to play with his friends. It was a lot of fun, especially because I didn't suck all that much. I was a defender and I made several good plays. At the very beginning of the game, when my head was still spinning from trying to take in everything going on around me, I gave up the first goal of the game because I wasn't aware of what was going on around me. After that I was okay. The other guys on my team kept telling me that I was doing well, making good stops and good passes, even when I didn't think I was getting the job done. In the end, what it really comes down to is that when my opponents had the ball they respected me because they knew I could steal it if they didn't act fast and I'm pretty sure they'd all be fine with me playing every Monday night with them. To them I wasn't just some random gringo who sucked at soccer and was only trying to play because I'm living in Latin America, I was just another guy who was a little worse than them. That's the respect I was hoping for and I can't explain how glad I am that I got it.

I think that's all I wanted to say in this blog post. I'm not quite sure right now why I wanted to title it “A Few New Things,” except that I've finally found a weekly soccer game to play in. Anyways, I'm sorry it took me so long to put another post on my blog and I hope to eventually have enough time to finish the Vamos Ecuatorianos posts. Between work and class and saxophone lessons I really don't have much time or energy left for my blog, though I do consider it a major priority and try to write on it as often as I can. I hope y'all're enjoying reading about how my life is going.