Hello Dear Kitty,
(guess who just bought The Diary of Anne Frank in Español? This guy)

My neck is feeling way better so I thought I’d update you guys on my fascinating life. Actually, its been pretty lively. I’ve still managed to sleep like fourteen hours a day, but get a lot done in the small time I’m awake.

Last Wednesday, we had the English Improv workshop. I actually have to write three pages in Spanish about this experience, but I’ll spare you the minutea that I’m going to get into, and just do an overview. The first part, where we did warm-up like games in the middle of the quad-like-place on campus went really well. People were watching and staring, we really caught the attention of the kids just laying around. It was also really good to work with my partner, Maria Jose. She looks like a typical USFQ student, with a blackberry that never leaves her hand, designer clothes and a perfect body. But she was actually really proactive and responsible in planning. She was a little embarrassed to play the games, but she totally got into it, and didn't seem to mind that her partner for all of this was a gawky gringa with bad hair.

The second part of the program, well, it wasn;t a failure. We were expecting some sort of audience, but no one sat down to watch and all my gringo friends left after five minutes to go eat lunch. So our audience was Sharon, our program coordinator, two professors, Maria Jose’s cousin and my friend Danny. Only Danny speaks English. Whoops. Additionally, we had The Drumming Guy join us. The Drumming Guy exists on every college campus, but seems particularly out of place at USFQ with his dreadlocks, tie-died linen pants, giant djembe drum, and belief that he, personally, was brought from Mars. So The Drumming Guy decided he wanted to be part of the games, which we totally supported, but he only wanted to participate through drumming. Which is not very helpful in non-musical games, or in musical games where The Drumming Guy does not know the song and keeps playing the same stoned rhythm over and over. So yeah, that was The Drumming Guy.

The English didn’t really stick, and that was fine. It was pretty comical, actually, to see people start sentances in English and then burst out in Spanish, “I want to…viajar el mundo contigo en un moto solo los dos de nostoros, amantes pro siempre.” Lord knows I wish I could use English when I get excited, so I was just happy to see people get excited.

Thursday was pirate day. In some sort of spirit week/homecoming/Halloween conglomeration, USFQ decided that Oct 24 to 26 was Pirate week. This didn’t seem to include anything except a film festival called “Non Pirated Movies about Pirates” (A pretty clever name, I’ll give them that) and some posters about the upcoming census. But Thursday was pirate day, and all the girls wore too large blouses and stripes. There was a fake ship mast in the lake at school (yes, there is a lake at school) and a hunt for treasure in the afternoon. Teachers were either irate at the festivities or joined in and cancelled class. Students were either apathetic, enthusiastic, or just used the day as an excuse to drink rum out of water bottles.

Thursday night, the school had a Halloween party. R Kelly (my pseudonym, not her’s) and I dressed up like 80’s babes and went down town, where we found fourty of our classmates drinking in an alley. After a while we got on a chiva, which is like a flatbed truck with a roof and railings but no walls. Its decorated and has a bar and a stereo system and its incredibly dangerous and the coolest way to party in Quito, apparently. We were divided into two chivas and drove around downtown at ten miles an hour for fourty five minutes, singing along to US pop songs, smashing into each other at stop lights, waving at people on the sidewalk, and being offered canelazo (think apple cider with moonshine) out of waterbottles by a guy in a bear suit. It was pretty fun and completely ridiculous. It was fun to ride around Quito at night, but I felt totally ashamed to be part of this drunken mass being driven around the streets and throwing their cigarette butts in the gutter.

On the chiva, the most ridiculous thing happened. I’m going to talk about it even though its embarrassing because I want to get it out there. So, you know at parties, how you sort of just meet random people and introduce yourself and start dancing and stuff like that? Well that was the case on the chiva. There was a guy who joined our little circle of dancing, a guy from Jaimito’s class, and we started dancing and that was fun. While we were dancing, he was like “oh yeah, you want this, you want me,” stuff like that. I figure other people like to talk as much as I do, so I just sort of let that slide. But then! I asked him what his name was, and he told me that he would tell me after we had sex. Smooth move, Sinatra. That’s really going to get me to leap into bed with you. I feel like names are personal but they are also completely public, you have a right to know the name of everyone you interact with. Especially people “con quien tienes relaciones.” Ehem. I’m embarrassed I didn't slap him and walk away then and there, but staying gave me the second best quote of the night, “Wait here, I’ll come back for you, my goal is to make out with five people tonight.” From my observations, and its hard not to keep tabs on someone when you are both on the same flatbed truck, he got to at least three.

I hope he was unsuccessful. I hope someone finally pushed him away. I hope she learned his name.