Party Time. Excellent.

My friends in the market are starting to tease me that all I do is go to parties here. In the month I've been here, I've been to two birthday parties for my host family and the wedding of a friend of a friend. I'll admit that it's been more celebrating than I had anticipated, but it's also been a great opportunity to learn and make some really fun memories. Which also means I've been too busy to keep up with my blog, so this is going to be a two-fer. Besides, what kind of party pooper wants to turn down invitations to celebrate with friends?

Wedding

On Friday, June 29, I went to my very first wedding in Ecuador. It was an indigenous wedding of the family who owns Museo Otavalango (stay tuned for a post about them). My friend Blady (who I mentored during the summer of 2012 in the SUSI program at Bonas) is good friends with the family. His godfather is actually cousins with someone in the family. Being down here is a lot like being in Bradford: everyone is related to everyone somehow but it can be a little difficult to keep track of.

I've also been invited to another indigenous wedding in August, and even though I've been told by friends what to expect, I was appreciative to attend my first wedding with a friend.

So how did I get invited to a wedding of someone I don't even know? Well, here, it's fairly normal for neighbors or friends of friends to attend indigenous weddings. The unknown number of guests is offset by the fact that all in attendance bring gifts of food items to the newlyweds. Some of the food can then be prepared and served if necessary, but from what I saw, it appeared that they had more than enough food prepared. I guess you just expect a heap of people to show up. They must’ve been cooking for days!

 Indigenous style music and dancing. Note the white pants and blue ponchos that indigenous men wear for important occasions here. Indigenous women typically wear this style of clothing all the time. You can see the bride and groom (young couple) at the beginning and end of the video (the groom is wearing a blue button down with his sleeves rolled up and the bride has on a white shawl).

The wedding itself started sometime around 10 A. M. and the ceremony wrapped up around noon. It turns out this was the civil ceremony and not the religious one, meaning the celebration was only for a day. Had it been a religious ceremony, the celebration would’ve been a minimum of 3 days: first at the family of the groom, the next day at the family of the bride (I may have the order reversed), and finally at the family of the godparents. That’s right, they have godparents for weddings here!

Because Blady had to work, we missed the wedding ceremony but attended what we would call the reception. When we first arrived, we went straight to the head table to present our gifts of food. This made perfect sense, but I quickly noticed that I was the only gringa in the room, so walking across a crowded room by myself would have made me feel super conscious self-conscious and I was glad to have a friend at my side. We presented our food to the groom and father of the groom (I wasn't even on hundred percent certain of who they were until later). We then found our seats and the food started coming. They brought plates with rice, potatoes, and meat that sort of seemed like a pot roast. Then there were the containers of soup. Here's the problem: my host mom had made sure I ate lunch before I went to make sure that I didn't have to eat anything that might make me sick, but that meant that I genuinely could not eat anything that was given to me. Thankfully they tend to serve such large quantities of food at weddings that it's perfectly acceptable to ask for a plastic bag in which to take the food home with you. Thank God for small graces! In case you don’t believe me about the portions, at one point, women were walking around with large plastic basins they normally use to wash clothing in, only this time, they were overflowing with food and required 2 people to carry them!

While everyone else was eating, I noticed one of my friends from the market seated nearby. I was quite surprised to see her there, as she had not mentioned the wedding to me beforehand, but in all fairness, I had not mentioned that I would be attending it to her, either, so... It was only one person out of over a hundred that were in the room, but somehow it was nice to see another familiar face in the crowd. Plus, what are the odds that I would randomly attend the wedding and happen to know someone already there?! With the way everyone is related to each other here, apparently higher than what I had previously thought!

Then came the people with drinks. Drinks at parties here are a little different. A person will walk around with a bottle of a beverage and one or two plastic cups. They will offer the drink to you, pour it into the cup, and hand it to you. You drink it all very quickly, tip the last few drops upside down to offer them to Paccha Mama (Mother Earth), and then hand the cup back. They repeat this process down the line / for all the people in the area. When it comes to alcohol, people get a little territorial about their drinks, but not how you might imagine. For example if you tell them that you don't want any because you just had some of someone else's beer right before them, they will tell you “yes, but that wasn't from my bottle so please do me a favor and drink from my bottle, too.” The act of drinking becomes about solidarity and sharing more than it really is about drinking whatever beverage is handed to you. As you might imagine, this leads to lots and lots and lots of imbibing. Did I mention lots?

Somehow twice during the evening, I found myself in charge of bottles of drinks. Pretty sure you can tell by the look on my face I was trying to figure out what on earth had happened. Pretty sure I'm making the same face in the dancing picture, too. My life in Ecuador could be summed up by the sentence: I get roped into a lot of things but they normally turn out to be good (or at the very least, learning experience), so I go along with it and generally have a good time. I always joke that if nothing else, I’ll end up with something good to write on my blog. So, you’re welcome.

 

After the food was served, the dancing began. At first, the band played a roughly 15 minutes set, which I actually thought was all one song but turned out to be four different songs. I'll admit my ignorance when it comes to indigenous music here. They tend to have the same or very similar rhythm/beat to them, so they tend to blend together in my ears. Thankfully, I was sitting next to a very sweet student of Blady’s who also happens to be an indigenous young woman, and she was able to help me. From time to time, she even translated from Quechua to Spanish. Even though she is studying tourism and English, she was not confident enough to hold conversations and English. I was fine with that since I already stuck out enough and I'm used to conversing solely in Spanish while I'm here. It took Blady’s godfather a while to realize that I can actually speak Spanish. Bless his heart, he kept trying to talk to me in his limited English over the very, very loud music, which made for quite the stilted conversation. Once he realized I do in fact speak Spanish, he lit up, and the conversation took off! Still, I appreciated his effort to try to converse with me, regardless of language barriers! At one point, I'm pretty sure he even tried to set me up with his cousin who is definitely at least in his forties. 

Blady and I danced for 5-ish hours! I didn't notice it at the time, but when I finally made it home that night, my legs and feet were in agony. They hurt so badly, I barely slept all night! It took a day or two for them to loosen out and feel better. That’s what I get for trying to fit in and dance like a local. Next time I'll dance like a gringo with my legs fully extended, instead of in the bent two step dance that is the indigenous style of dancing here.

Birthday party #2

Saturday July 7, we had a birthday party for my host parents’ other 2 year old grandson, Galito. Actually, the two boys’ birthdays are only 2 weeks apart. This time, the theme was Coco, much to the delight of my niece and nephews at home. It’s fun how certain movies and songs transcend national borders. This party was every bit as fun and beautifully decorated, although it seemed to be a little more free-form. You know, the difference between the third kid and an only child.

 

On the invites, the starting time was listed as 3PM, so they expected people to arrive around 3:30PM. I’ll confess that I checked in a few times, but when I could see the party wasn’t starting yet, I watched the end of the Russia vs. Croatia World Cup game with the men in the family. It went into overtime and then a shootout! I mean, who could miss that?!

The party really started around 4PM, although people were still arriving at 4:30-4:45PM. My brother thought we should have a guitarist as our entertainment, in line with the Coco theme (I still haven’t watched the movie, so I took his word). When I jokingly suggested it to Carla (the birthday boy’s mom), she liked the idea, but it was too late to do anything about it. And probably not the best way to entertain a bunch of kiddos for an afternoon. I, however, wouldn’t mind a guitarist at my birthday party. Instead, there was a woman who did face painting – a big hit!

But the real entertainer was a woman who was dressed as a character from Coco (I think; or else, she was just dressed as a Calavera/Day of the Dead type character) and led the kids and adults in games. I kept getting dragged into games as the “mom” figure for kiddos who needed partners in games, and it was actually a lot of fun! We played musical chairs in which the adults were the chairs that the kids had to jump onto when the music ended. We played a Simon Says type game where the kids were monkey and the adults were trees…you might guess where this is going. They had to climb the trees (jump in our arms), sit in the trees (hold onto our legs), etc. Perhaps the best game was when she got a bunch of dads to act out a scene like a short movie. Pepe (my host dad) was the bad guy, and despite being one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, he relished his part!

After the games, there was another impeccably decorated cake, the piñata, and the kids danced around while the woman shot off confetti and sprayed them with some sort of silly string/shaving cream thing that led to many delighted squeals. The party wrapped up around 7PM, not quite as long as the first one, but every bit as fun!