Que paso?

February 2, 2009
Monday
1:27PM
Cloudy and about 60F
Sayausi


Since the last post we have traveled over 15 hours in a bus, over 20 hours on a plane, have covered over thousands of miles, and have ended up back in Sayausi!

Before we left, Sayausi was in full-swing Christmas mode with parades everyday and masses every few hours. The kids were dressed up as anything that required a costume and the cars were decorated with fruits, bottles of pepsi and coke, and any kind of bright fabric that came in quantities large enough to cover a car. Mike and I were busy getting ready for our big trip home and last minute Christmas shopping (as well as a little shopping for ourselves)!


December in Ecuador

Making a Cholita
For the sake of future Halloweens and other events requiring a costume, Mike and I decided to buy all the necessary clothing and accessories to dress as cholos and cholitas de verdad.

First thing first: the pollera. The pollera is the traditional skirt that the women of Cuenca wear, or used to wear. Though the pollera is worn daily by the older women of the surrounding area, the younger women only wear the pollera for special events (like Christmas parades) or when they want to dress up a gringa (me) and then just can’t resist dressing up themselves.

There are various qualities of polleras and as such the prices range from a reasonable $20 to the ultimate red-carpet worthy pollera that costs up to $300. They are sold all over Cuenca and we spent a full day checking out polleras before settling on buying a lovely velvet, burgundy pollera with good swishing action and an expandable waist so it will fit for the ages.

With the pollera in hand we only needed a blouse, a chalina (a fancy scarf/blanket use for carrying grass for cuyes and dancing), an apron (for going to the market), and a hat (I think this is just satisfying the fashion diva hidden inside all cholitas). Thankfully, we live in the land of the chola and as such we had no difficulty find all of the remaining items…except for the hat.

As it turns out, I have an absolutely gigantic head. Yes, that’s right a cranial circumference that casts shadows throughout the land. So big that when we went to hat store they did not have a single pre-made hat that could hold the contents of my planet sized skull. Fortunately, the hat maker was a resourceful man and agreed to custom make a hat for me and my uniquely large bobble head. To make this special hat he essentially stretched the largest hat he had over the largest mold he had and then continued as per usual.

Per usual hat making in Cuenca involves hammering the woven straw hat over the ancient wooden mold and then dipping the hat in white glue (plaster might be more accurate than glue). It is the dipping in this glue, plaster goop that makes then final product extremely sensitive to rain. Yes, in a land where it rains more often than it does not the hat of choice would literally disintegrate in an afternoon shower. To combat this mortal flaw inherent in every cholita’s hat, everyone carries around a plastic grocery bag. When it begins to rain the cunning cholita takes off her hat, wraps it in the plastic bag, puts the hat wrapped in a bag back on her head, and continues as she was with what looks like a bag shaped like a hat balanced on her head.

With hat in hand and a bag in the other we had all the clothes, accessories, and plastic needed to make a cholita at any point in the future. Now all we needed was the cholo.

Making A Cholo
I am sure no one will be surprised to learn that it is much easier to make a cholo than a cholita.

To make a cholo you need two things: a poncho and a hat. We were lucky enough to find both of these items in the mecca of Ecuadorian souvenir shopping, Otavalo. Before we left for the States we spent several days in Otavalo buying many things including a bright red alpaca poncho and a black felt hat sporting a few brightly colored feathers. Although Mike also has a gigantic skull, Otavalo is accustomed to providing for the giant gringo tourists that pass daily by their stalls in the market. So, while my hat had to be specially stretched and formed, Mike was able to buy his size at the first hat vendor that we saw.

Check out the pictures in the New York section to see the final products aka La Cholita Mari y El Cholo Migi.

The Advent in Azuay
Though we were not in Sayausi for Christmas we saw a fair share of interesting noel customs. If it has not already been made clear, Cuencanos are always ready for a parade. At a moments notice the street goes from empty to packed with hundreds of children in dressed as cholitas, cholos, superman, batman, santa, angels, kings, queens, gypsies, shepards, animals, or trees. You name it and someone is dressed as it. In addition the hordes of children there are countless numbers of farm animals draped in giant blankets with tiger prints and leopard portraits usually carrying at least one child in full parade costume attire. The advent is no exception to the ardent love of parades the Cuenca nourishes in all of its children and adults alike.

The week before we left there was a parade every afternoon complete with children, farm animals, marching bands, and floats. Lucky for us most of the parades begin or end at the church and so we have an excellent view from our apartment window of all of the festivities. Here are some of the advent highlights:

- Trucks full of children dressed as nativity attendees
- Herds of little Santas
- Cars covered in fruit, soda bottles, bags of chips, and bags of cookies (these are offerings made to ensure good luck in the coming year)
- A roasted chicken with its head still attached propped up in a bed of roasted potatoes, mounted to the hood of a car with a twenty dollar bill stuck in its mouth (also an offering made to ensure good luck in the year to come)

We can imagine that the parades and costumes continued through Christmas as when we returned to Sayausi January 14th, 2009 there were still parades and as of today February 2, 2009 there are still these same types of parades. We have been told that they last until Ash Wednesday. In addition to the parades leading up to Ash Wednesday, February 1st marked the unofficial start of Carnaval here in Cuenca. This essentially means that from now until Ash Wednesday the city of Cuenca is engaged in a giant water balloon fight. Mike, myself, and a friend got our first taste of this on Sunday as we were walking home and were doused with a bucket of water. Only two more weeks to go, here’s hoping for sunny weather!

Ecua-December (Double click to enlarge the image)



The Trip Home

Getting to New York from Sayausi
We left Sayausi on December 13th, 2008 headed for Otavalo. In a midst of parades and floats we departed on an 8:00am bus from Cuenca with back packs full of snacks and presents…

…thirteen hours later we arrived in Otavalo where we stayed for several days before continuing on to New York!

We left Quito at 7:00am Friday morning and arrived at Mike’s Grandma’s at midnight. Thanks to a six hour delay while sitting on the runway in Miami because of heavy snow in the Northeast it took us 15 hours to get from Quito, Ecuador to the delicious cheese, olives, and desserts that were waiting for us in Bayville, New York. However, waiting on a plane that has water, several bathrooms, and built-in movie screens in the back of every chair was not nearly as bad as it had seemed before I had had to ride a bus for 12 hours straight on a regular basis in Ecuador where not only is there no water but there is, if you are lucky, an absolutely foul bathroom that requires extreme amounts of balance to use and an unbelievable tolerance for bad smells to remain in said bathroom for more than three seconds.


A Bicoastal Christmas
As our families live just about as far apart as is possible in the lower 48, Mike and I spent Christmas on substantially different longitudes. However, we both had a wonderful time and are very thankful to both our families for such a wonderful Christmas!

New York, New York! (Double click to enlarge the pictures)


AZ, AZ! (Double click the to enlarge the picures)



January in Vermont
The last few days we were in the States we took a small trip to Vermont with my mom and Mikes’ dad to check the possibility of living in Vermont once the days of Peace Corps have passed and we return to the real world of life in the States.

We stayed in Burlington for four full days, eating in delicious restaurants, visiting at least 10 schools, talking with three principals, touring the Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory, studying up on quilt making in 19th century Middlebury, and generally traveling around seeing what we could see.

Snow and more snow! (Double click to enlarge the image)


Quilting in Middlebury



Back to Ecuador

You’ll never guess what was going on in the plaza of Sayausi when we got back…that’s right, another parade! It’s good to be back.

More Parades! (Double click to enlarge the image)


And dancing...


And dancing with parading...