starting now

This week went by so fast! Two of our culture classes this week were on sexual relationships from an Ecuadorian point of view. They were...interesting. I learned that gringas are basically put into 1 of 3 categories: Buena- meaning good, married or committed, "Chulla"- meaning slut, and prostituta- meaning.. well guess. Not a lot of flexibility. We spent one entire language class working on prepositions, so after 8 odd years of Spanish I feel like I have finally mastered the difference between por and para. I am ready to take on the world. Our last, 2 hour long, salsa class was Wednesday and by the end I was actually pretty good. I swear. But Liz always made me be the boy so I don't know how practical this training was, for me anyway.

Tuesday night Liz, Lily, Kelly, and I went to Diego's house for a party and we were able to meet a lot of new people. Which is awesome because right now nobody but the people in my program are at the University, so we haven't really had too many opportunities to meet actual Ecuadorians. Then last night I had 2 birthday parties. The first was my (great) Aunt Vickie's. Some background information on Aunt Vickie: she is in her mid 70s, she randomly blurts out inappropriate sexual comments, the first time I met her she had on a red cowboy hat and was dancing by herself to no music. Yesterday, when she arrived at my house I saw her squeeze everyone's butt as a greeting, but she barely knows me so I didn't expect anything. Wrong. And not like a pinch "hey", like a grab. And then shouted "Oh Montana has a nice butt!" About an hour later she made everyone come into the living room for a strepteeeeese. We were not disappointed. She proceeded to unbutton her pants, take off her shirt and throw it at her 15 year old nephew, who looked on-horrified. However, in her defense she was trying on new clothes. For older birthdays, instead of smashing the pinata with a bat there are strings you pull to rip the bottom off. She opened her shirt to catch all of her candy. Ahhh I wish any of these descriptions could do her justice. She really is just one of a kind.

Earlier that afternoon Liz came over and we decorated for my Aunt and baked cookies for Alejandro's birthday, a guy we met Tuesday at Diego's house. We went there around 10. At first it was a little awkward but people warmed up and we all used an incredible amount of Spanglish. I spent a lot of time talking to this one guy who is a really big Neil Gaiman fan. I probably shouldn't, but I found this very surprising.

Thankfully, there was no afternoon activity planned today so I took a 3 hour nap to recover from last night. Lily and Liz are coming over soon to watch a movie/do homework. Tomorrow the 10 de Agosto, Ecuador's Independence Day, celebrations begin, so this weekend should be pretty fun. Ciao.