¿Mashna wakratak tiyan?

Weekdays lately have been essentially not worth mentioning but the weekend after Baños trip II was amazing. The one exciting evening was our Red Sox party for the last game against the Yanks. Twelve people in a bedroom with great quantities of pizza, various mentions of Quichua homework, me taking up a full corner of the room with the lesson materials I was making last minute and renditions of the song "Jesus Walks" every time Jonny Damon made a move.

Saturday morning, a few of us left Quito at 7am (extremely early for those of us who didn´t get home until 2) for Peguche, a village up north just outside the main indigenous market in Ecuador, Otavalo. There were 9 students and our Quichua professor staying in his house in the village. That day, we hiked to some waterfalls and spent some time talking to a group of people preparing for a wedding. And by preparing, I mean slaughtering a cow. Slight cultural differences but I was impressed that none of the gringo contingent even flinched. And in that vein of conversation, I finally tried cuy (guinea pig) for lunch. Kinda fatty, not a great deal of meat but hey, it´s tasty and cholesterol free!

That evening, we went to a restaurant to hear some live indigenous music. It was filled with people from the village and a few of us actually had a conversation with them in Quichua. Of course, there was the one minor failure in which one guy asked "How many cows do you have?" (See subject line)of the 25 year old indigeno in an Iron Maiden tee shirt. Our prof also made us dance because he thoroughly enjoys laughing at us and the darling young gentlemen of Peguche attempted to introduce us to the customs of social drinking/reciting poetry in girls ears/trying to kiss in Peguche. The wingman behavior of our group deserves a big medal. Sunday, we went on a four hour hike around Cuicocha lake which was rather intense (think constant wheezing) but a ton of fun.