FIESTAS!

This past weekend has been fun and full of parties, so I thought I should add a quick update!

On Thursday evening after our full day of work, we all went to this event honoring Padre Juan for the 45 years of the Working Boys' Center. It's pretty cool to be part of an evolving mission and live with the founders! Father John started the Center living in the roof of this beautiful Jesuit church downtown, La Compania, with some of the working boys. Then Madre Miguel came and it evolved, and eventually they bought their own building. Now there are 3 Centers (La Marin, Cotocollao, and La Gota de Leche) and whole families are involved in the Centers. This is why I teach classes from 6 years old to parents.

Anyway, the party was a fundraiser for the Center, and it was basically a bunch of rich Ecuadorians and then also some of the teachers and the directors of the Centers. There were some speeches, the chorus sang, and Padre was presented this huge painting of himself. It's actually a really nice picture I think, but huge, and he was joking afterwards with us about "what the hell he was going to do with it." He told us he was going to put it in our rooms! He's a funny guy! After the presentation, there was wine and whiskey with hors deourves....like sushi (we were all laughing), humitas, chicken, and some sweets. It was really a beautiful event, and it was cool to see how many people came out to support the Center.

Then Saturday, I played soccer with a bunch of the Center members. It was mainly moms and then some of the colegio (middle school/high school) girls. Both games I played in ended in a tie. I played goalie in the 2nd game....yikes. They're all pretty bad though, so it is more just a fun, active, social event. I do have some battle wounds though, so it's aggressive just bad! I'll probably try to play most Saturdays if I'm in town.

Saturday night I went to the wedding of the brother of one of La Marin Center directors. The wedding was in the Compania church downtown, which was absolutely gorgeous. Then we walked over to the La Marin Center for the reception. It was a late event though! We didn't eat until about 11:30pm, and then I left at 1:30am as I was exhausted and they hadn't even cut the cake yet! It was cool to be invited to the event though and dress up and such. Today, I went to my first LIGA soccer game of the year! I love the games! It is so much to in the sports arena atmosphere and the fans get really into it. It was a big game too, Liga v Barcelona, which is a big rivalry as they are the two biggest teams from the two biggest cities, Quito and Guayaquil. Liga from Quito won 4-0, which was amazing and a great celebration. Then I got another one of those delicious ice cream cones...raspberrry and chocolate today!

So it was a fun weekend and now time for another week of school. We might not have class tomorrow though as there are supposed to be huge protests by the indigenous population that is supposed to shut down all the ways in and out of the city. We'll see though... Time to watch The Wire and head to bed!