¡Buenos Días de Ecuador! - Week 6

December 30, 2013

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas!  Mine was...different, but everything here is different soooooo

I feel like something significant happened every day, so I´m just going to give y´all the breakdown by day:

Monday 23rd: Last week we came home from an investigator´s house to find that the people who lived above us (we live on the third floor of a four story building) were having a very very very loud party on the roof.  As we turned the corner we realized the crazy loud techno was coming from directly above our apartment.  We could see the discotheque lights and everything.  It was ridiculous trying to sleep that night, especially since there´s a hole in the ceiling above my bed (oh dang I forgot to take a picture to show you) right below a skylight to the roof, so it just directly blared into our room.  We couldn´t even try to sleep for an hour.  Funnnnn.

Tuesday 24th: Christmas Eve!  Or "Noche Buena" as it´s called here.  Today seemed to be the main holiday, which was kind of weird.  Whatever.  We had to be in our apartments by 6pm that day, so right before we went home we bought some pizza to celebrate.  It was soooooo good.  I didn´t realize how much I missed pizza.  Oh man.  Anyway, so we kind of just chilled in our apartment for like three hours before we planned for the next day.  At 10pm, the family next door brought us dinner (since I guess people eat a super late dinner on Noche Buena) and we had a little feast that we had to eat super fast since we needed to be in bed by 10:30 haha.  Good stuff.

Wednesday 25th:  Christmas!!!  I GOT TO SKYPE MY FAMILY IT WAS SO GREAT!!!  I have a picture of the screen that I may have printed out today...  Nothing else was really that important that day, except for the fact that it was really really hot.

Saturday 28th:  We had a ward activity that was like all day long but actually really cool.  We managed to bring some investigators (one guy we met that day and invited thought I was 16 and literally wouldn´t believe us when I said I was 20...so anyways) and the missionaries in the ward even put on a little performance.  We did a skit to this song about a "Querido Juan" (Dear John).  It was actually super funny haha.  Later that night at about 10:20pm (ten minutes before we have to be in bed mind you) my companion gets a call from our zone leaders saying that she has transfers that night with them (ten minutes earlier they had told her over the phone that they had cambios and were leaving that night too) and that they´d call her in 20 minutes to see if she was ready to leave yet.  Hna. Herrera´s been in Santa Rosa for her entire mission--almost 6 months--and we were freaking out trying to get her packed in less than half an hour.  We had literally taken all of the clothes out of her closet and almost had them all packed in her suitcase ten minutes later when they called back and asked if we knew that it was El Día de Inocentes in Ecuador.  So basically it was the equivalent of April Fool´s Day and here it was after 10:30 and we had packed her clothes for nothing.  They literally made her cry when she heard she had cambios.  We were so mad hahahaha.

Sunday 29th:  Fun fact: exactly 12 years since my baptism.  Yup.  Oh and also last night we went to the house of a member in the ward and the mom showed me how to make patacones and they were delicious (basically fried smashed banana chips--but they aren´t bananas, they´re something different...I forget).  Felt pretty cool as she was showing me and then had me help her.

That was basically my week.  Pretty full of crazy stuff.  I´m still loving it here, and kind of proud at how easily I can stand 95+ degree weather (just so long as I don´t know the exact temperature haha).  Have a fun and safe New Year´s everyone!  I´m super excited for an Ecuador-filled 2014.

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

Hermana Iverson