ECUADOR - My June/July 2003 Trip Journal -- by Donna R. Carter
Page Twenty
~^~ My Birthday ~^~ Wednesday ~^~ July 16, 2003
I woke up at 5:45, as usual, on Wednesday morning. I really needed to do laundry, so I separated my clothes into three loads (light/med/dark). I heard Sonya going to the gym at 6:00 and figured she'd leave the door unlocked between the apartment I had been staying in and the main house, but she didn't that day. I decided I'd just finish reading "Watership Down" (Richard Adams... great book, second time reading it)
I think Gustavo heard me try the door, and he came over and opened it up. I went in to make my breakfast and the kitchen dinette table was piled high with nuts and raisins and eggs and boxes of stuff. I boiled the water for my cereal and while it was boiling, I took my clothes up to the washing machine on the outside porch upstairs. I threw in my dark clothes and started up the washer, went back inside and stepped into the hallway but wasn't paying attention. The doorway was pretty short. I whacked my head on the top of the door and it stung!! I took a quick breath and went downstairs to make my cereal.
Sonya came back while I was finishing up my cereal and she put me to work cutting up the big pile of raisins. She was planning on making lasagna, so I wasn't quite sure what the raisins were for (to put in the lasagna? Well, that would be different, but I wouldn't say anything).
I cut up all the raisins and went back into my room for a bit to straighten things up. I started reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude and then decided I'd check on the laundry. The load was done, so I took it out. They didn't have a dryer, so I hung everything over the porch wall and available construction beams (they were putting an addition on upstairs so Gustavo would have a studio again).
I went back to the washer to be sure I'd gotten everything and... {groan} I saw my palm pilot sitting at the bottom of the washing machine! I couldn't believe I hadn't checked my pockets, but I never never put my palm pilot in my pocket... but there it was, at the bottom of the washing machine.
I took it out and just couldn't stop berating myself for my stupidity. Gustavo and Aracely both saw what happened and told me to open it up and air-dry it in the sun, so I borrowed a screw driver and opened it up, dried off the parts that could be dried off without damaging the main circuit board (as though it wasn't a lost cause already), and I set it on the windowsill to dry out. I felt SO stupid! ("torpe" is a good word) I muttered a drippingly sarcastic "Happy Birthday" to myself.
I put another load in the washing machine and headed back to the stairs. Once again, I whacked my head on the doorway. Unbelievable! I put my hand on my head and rubbed it as I went back downstairs. When I got to the kitchen, everything had been shifted around and the mixer was out and things were cooking on the stove.
Sonya was getting everything ready for supper. I asked her how many people she was expecting and she said she didn't know. I asked how she could cook when she didn't know how many were coming, and she said, "Well, if people arrive too late, or there are more people than food, then there won't be enough and too bad for those who miss out. If there aren't enough people, then there will be leftovers and good for us!" I laughed. I love her sense of humor. I went to check on my laundry (and watched my head on the way back in!)
She mixed the cake batter, poured it into 4 large cake pans (bakery size) and put it in the oven.
I came back down and Gustavo and Aracely were sitting at the table amid the piles of food. Aracely was cutting the nuts and Gustavo was cutting a pineapple. Aracely kept telling her dad he wasn't cutting it right, and that her mom was going to have words with him. He was sitting there calmly ignoring her, or saying, "Don't worry about it! It's just fine!" and he was cutting long vertical slits lengthwise down the pineapple all the way around. Then he turned the pineapple on it's side and cut vertical slits all the way around it beginning on one side and moving across to the other. He proceeded to prop it on it's end again and then sliced off the boxes he had cut, while Aracely continued to tell him that it simply wouldn't work that way, and really, after all... I just said, "He's an artist - he's being artistic." I explained. They both laughed.
Sonya came in from the other room and asked me if I'd like to go to the store with her as she needed some cream. I said sure why not, and we walked down to Magda Espinoza, about 8 blocks away.
We ended up with way more than just cream. We meandered around in the non-grocery section of the store for a while and looked at shirts and plate sets, etc., picked up a bunch of other groceries, and then went through the checkout. Ended up with about 8 bags of groceries which we would be carrying while we walked home.
Half way back home, she suddenly gasped and said, "The cake! It's in the oven!" We hurried back as fast as we could while carrying these bulky bags of groceries with us, and when we got back, Gustavo met us at the door and Sonya asked him about the cake. He said, Yes, the time was done, and when she asked if he'd taken it out of the oven, he said he hadn't. I guess he had only turned the oven off and left it in there.
She hurried up the stairs and into the house and I was thinking she'd just put the grocery bags on the floor to open the oven and get the cakes out, but then she put the grocery bags on the table and started to put the food away when I came in and mentioned the oven. She stopped, came over and opened the oven door to see how they were.
They were, miraculously, okay. A little dark, but not burned by any means. She took them out and put them on the floor to cool (this was how she cooled things quickly: putting the pan on the floor.) She finished putting away the groceries and then we went into the livingroom and sat on the velvet covered settee and she showed me the photos of her trip to the U.S. (she got back the same day that I arrived.) Then she brought out the kid's photo albums.
I was looking through those when we realized it was getting late for lunch. Very late. It was about 2:30.
In Ecuador, lunch (almuerzo) is the main meal - usually at least a 2, if not 3 or 4 course meal. Because they were having construction done to the house, they also had to provide the noon meal to the construction workers.
Sonya made the almuerzo. Oatmeal soup with potatoes and vegetables (it really is nothing like oatmeal, trust me - and it's good). Fruit juice, and the main dish: rice, beef and vegetables.
I'm still trying to figure out how the table was cleared off for lunch. Anyway, we served the construction workers who ate on the stairs, the table was cleared off and Gustavo, Aracely and her friend Viviana, who were finishing off their thesis papers upstairs, Sonya and I, ate at the dinette in the kitchen.
We finished lunch at about 3:30 and started making the lasagna. Sonya had purchased pre-cooked noodles, so it was just a matter of layering the meat and cheese and noodles and baking it. Unfortunately, the cheese was frozen, so we had to grate it frozen, which froze our hands... but it all worked out in the long run.
Aracely ran out to get some extra cream because they put a cream sauce in their lasagna. When we finished layering 5 pans worth of lasagna, Sonya set them in the oven, but the oven was not turned on. She said it would be turned on about 1/2 an hour before supper was served.
Company would be arriving for the birthday party as early as 4:30. Sonya had to run to work for a brief moment that evening, but said she'd be right back. She asked me to whip up the egg whites into stiff peaks and she disappeared to change for supper. I whipped the egg whites and didn't see anyone around and didn't know what she was going to do with the egg whites, so I left them there on the counter and went back to my room to read some more.
When I came back into the main house, the cakes were iced and pretty, and most of the pots and pans were sitting either in the sink or cleaned and in the dish drain.
My cousin Esther & her husband Dale came by at about 5:15 or 5:30 with the kids (Rachel & Xavier) and Sonya came down from upstairs, introduced herself, and then said, "Make yourselves at home. Donna's in the lady of the house, and I have to go to work."
Everybody was due to be arriving, and Aracely, and Gustavo were nowhere to be seen, and I had NO idea either who was coming, or where everything was, or when supper was supposed to be served or for that matter, even how to turn her oven on in time! She said supper would be at 7, and turn the oven on at 6:30. And not to worry, someone would take over when they arrived.
I just shook my head and laughed. Esther, Dale, Rachel & Xavier and I were in the livingroom talking when Thelma came with her grandson, about Xavier's age. Thelma handed me a beautiful bouquet of a dozen pink roses. I set them on the side table and thanked her.
Thelma's grandson and Xavier hit it off right away. It was all we could do to keep them out of the crystal bowl of glass marbles. They kept picking up marbles and dropping them into the bowl ... sounded like it was going to break at any minute. Eventually we got them distracted a bit.
Thelma went back in to the kitchen. Nadia (Veronica's daughter who had been on the trip to Banos with Erica, Sonya and me before) also arrived and went back into the kitchen. They were working on a salad for supper. I offered to help, but was told it was my birthday and helping was not allowed.
Fanny Raquel arrived. It was her birthday as well. I gave her a gift and she thanked me, and then she went upstairs to talk with her brother, Gustavo. She came down shortly and handed me a small box and said it was my birthday present. A pretty, silver chain bracelet. I put it on. It was loose, but not extraordinarily so.
Veronica, her older sister, and Erica arrived soon. Gustavo came downstairs and talked with Esther & Dale about their work with the Cofan tribe in the north of Ecuador. Everyone was talking and I went back to let the ladies in the kitchen know that it was 6:30 and the lasagna was supposed to start cooking. They turned on the oven and I went back into the livingroom.
After everyone had arrived and we were all chatting in the living room, except Nadia and Thelma... and Aracely was setting the table. There were way more people than the table would seat, so the overflow went to the dinette in the kitchen.
There ended up being 3 of us there who had our birthdays that day and one who was going to have it 4 days later, so it was a mass celebration.
Sonya came back to a full house and supper was served. All told, I believe there were about 30 people there. I never did get a head-count.
The lasagna and the salad were great. They served a tasty combination pineapple/tangerine juice that was really good, too.
When the cake came out, the 4 birthday people each had a chance to blow out the candles. They sang "Happy Birthday" to everybody, both in English and in Spanish, and then (to the tune of "For he's a jolly good fellow") they sang (I am not translating rhythmically) a ditty to the effect of getting old and not being able to deny it.
Nadia, Veronica, and Erica gave me a nice coconut bead stacked necklace. Fanny gave me the silver chain bracelet, and Thelma had brought me the beautiful roses... it's nice to have mementos like those.
By 9:00 everyone was gone. I was very tired and went to bed.
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