Huasalata

Saturday 1/17 -

After going up Cotopaxi, we went to a small indigenous village called Huasalata just outside of Salasaca (a slightly larger town, still not very big though). Huasalata is down in a little valley, and every family has their own small farm and bunch of animals, including Guinea pigs (to eaaat! :P) known as 'cuy'. We arrived and put our things in the hostel we were staying in for the night. It was beautiful! The owner built it all by hand with only the help of his relatives. The doors and some walls are made of andean bamboo, and most of the rest is brick. The inside is gorgeous and very home-y.

Before having dinner, we took a walk through the town and along the ridge overlooking the river. It was all very green and so natural looking. On the way we stopped at the house of some friends of Maria's (our coordinator) where they showed us their loom, kitchen, small garden, and little cuy huts. There was also a little girl with her mother that Ligia (a student from Ecuador that goes on some excursions with us) and I talked to for a while, and the little girl had a basket with some corn that she kept giving to me and Ligia while we talked with her mom, and then she would take it back and put it in her basket again. I think she played the little "game" for 20 minutes or so with us :)

I've realized I'm instinctively drawn to children since being here. Yes, many of you have told me this already (Sam, Britta, Disney World) but I literally cannot resist talking to or playing with kids! I also get to interact with more children here in Ecuador because Martina and Ivana constantly attack me when I come home from school (or when I'm trying to leave for class and they won't let me), and I also volunteer now at an after-school program from 3-5pm on Mondays and Wednesdays with all ages of kids from 1 to 13ish. Yesterday (Monday) after they worked on their homework for a while I taught some girls Ritmo Vuelta and Magdalena (Thanks Concordia!), and we also did the Macarena, which some of them already knew.

Enough with tangent-ing.... For dinner in Huasalata we were served corn (with larger kernels than usual... very delicious), cheese, and habas (bean-like, there's a skin around it and you bite the corner of the skin and push the inside out, tastes a bit bland -much better when we were told we should eat them with salt, sort of like potatoes) as appetizers. Then the main course was CUY! eeek! (sorry Tim & Mon, I had to try it at least) and some potatoes with a peanut sauce. Cuy was really difficult to eat because there's not much meat, and lots of little bones, but the meat sort of tasted like the dark meat part of chicken.

After dinner we all hung out in a room in the hostel with a fireplace, and there were some girls from the town who we talked to and they taught us a few words in Quichua (sorry, i dont remember them) and then we wanted them to sing a song in Quichua, so we agreed to sing something in English first. We all debated for a whie on what to sing, and eventually did a 3-part round of row, row, row your boat! hah. Then we proceeded to think of a bunch of songs that we should have sang, and sang parts of them anyways (like some Journey, Disney songs (A whole new world), Beatles, N*SYNC and Backstreet Boys).

The girls were waiting along with us until they could get the CD player in the main room (also the dining room) to work so that they could show us some traditional dances from Ecuador. Eventually it worked and they did some dances to a few different songs. At first they looked easy, just a lot of bouncing and arm-swaying, but when some of us got up to try it it was pretty hard! The movements weren't too difficult but it takes a lot of energy to do the dances.

Sunday 1/18-

The next morning, we walked all the way down to the river to see where the people from the town cut grass to feed their animals. It was a looong way down, and pretty steep. The river was beautiful up close! We started to help some women (who already knew we were coming) cut the grass with small sickles. You just grab a bunch and then cut it from the bottom, and put it all in a pile together. Then, to get the grass back up to the farms, the people from the town carry HUGE bundles of very very heavy grass on their backs all the way up the hill! Three of the guys in our program tried it, and they only had about half the "normal" amount, which we saw a 90 or so year old woman carrying up the hill on her back! Maria said that if they're lucky, a family sometimes has a donkey to carry the grass up to their house. Once we got to the top (which was a fairly hard climb even without the grass!) they fed the grass to their cows :)

After going back to the hostel, all the boys actually went to play a game of soccer with some of the locals, while the girls stayed back in the gift shop next to our hostel and played dress-up. How traditional gender role of us :P. Anyways, we had lots of fun, I bought a pair of SUPER COMFY "Ecuador pants" (I don't know what else to call them) that are red and striped. My study abroad advisor told me I had to buy some while I was here. After we were done in the little shop and the guys came back, we headed up to Salasaca where there was a pretty decent-sized market. I got a couple gifts for Ivana y Marti because their 3rd birthday was the next day when I got back from my trip :) Maria also bought us really delicious mangoes that we all ate on our way to Baños....