¡Reunión de la familia!

El sábado de enero. My family, so kindly, included me in their family reunion.

Martha prepared a breakfast of yogurt, papaya, coffee, bread, smoothie and scrambled eggs which I greatly enjoyed with Vivi.

I was told we were leaving at 10:30 and the Geiger in me had me all ready to go by 10:25. The rest of the family besides Marco was still getting ready and cleaning. I think it was because of this and the amount of people we had to available car seats ratio that Marco drove me to his mother's house to go in one of the cars there. The house was only a few blocks away and WOW was it beautiful! It was grand and antique and filled with family members of Marco. He has 6 brothers and each one has a wife and children, some with children of their own. His mom was especially sweet. Although no one in my car ride up knew English, I conversed pretty alright I think...

We drove up to Guayllabamba, a small agricultural town about 45 minutes northeast of Quito, to a very nice hostel. I met one of the cousins who was 20 and talked with her for a while (in Spanish of course). Once everyone arrived we enjoyed a bowl of mote with tomatoes, pickled onions, some other wonderful flavors and bits of pork. FYI mote is corn but boiled and cooked. It's very delicious, here is a picture of plain mote I stole from the interweb:

We then started the games in the courtyard. First we played a game where we each had to name a fruit which had not yet been names. We played until a couple people repeated fruits and had to dance in the middle. Then we played American football! This was a lot of fun. It turned into each team hiding the football under our shirts, with the rest of the team pretending to do the same and then all running together to the other side of the field. In the next game, I was paired with Vivi, and we had to keep a tomato between our foreheads while we danced. We didn't last long, but then again only about two partner groups did. There were a few more games after, some in which I did not participate in but have pictures. Another one in which I kept losing and so we finally moved on...It was a combination of me not understanding the rules (everything was in Spanish) and also being humiliatingly poor at accurately throwing a ball far enough. In the last game we had to balance eggs on a spoon we carried in our mouths and get from one to the other end of the field and back without dropping it.

Since Carnival is in a week and the family gets together a week earlier, they all celebrate it during the reunion. This consists of water fights, or rather dumping water on people, and spraying something similar to silly string everywhere. While I knew there would be a pool, I did not anticipate these activities. It was really fun and I felt very included into the family of 26. I was soaked by the end, but luckily escaped being thrown in the pool by hiding in the sauna. I had a dry skirt in my bag, Martha lent me a dry shirt to wear and an aunt lent me some flip flops,...my undergarments remained wet...

After the games we had a wonderful late lunch of more mote with the same onions, tomatoes, and spices, but with more pork, avocado, and toasted corn (tostada, like a gourmet version of corn nuts). On the side was a cooked banana (YUM), fresh lemonade. For dessert was some sort of delicious mouse-y, fruit-y cake and coffee.

Everything was so wonderful and fun, and I felt so welcomed by the family. I slept most the way home and was only at Marco's mother's home for about 10 minutes before Martha and Marco picked me up. Once back at the house, I quickly changed into some warmer clothes. Some of the family was continuing festivities and going to Martha's father's home. I was invited but very tired and decided to stay back.

After reading a few pages, I decided it was a good time for a nap, which turned into a 12-hour sleep...oops.

Feliz fin de semana,
Zoe