¡Feriado!

After a seriously not-so-stellar week (several days of silence due to illness, 3 trips to the immigraton office, a new Visa that I STILL have to fix, working in the markets very little, some seriously ridiculous UBECI drama...et cetera?), I was super excited to celebrate the Ecuadorian holiday this weekend with one of my many families. Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead--kind of the Latin American equivalent of Halloween, but a little more symbolic in some countries) is this Tuesday, and basically the entire country had been in feriado mode since Friday night and will be until Wednesday.

My host mom, Diego (my older host brother) and I went down to the valley Tumbaco, where my host mom´s parents live, for a big family reunion on Saturday morning. The Ecuadorian tradition on Dia de los Muertos is to eat guaguas de pan, or bread in the shape of babies, with colada morada, a hot drink made of blueberries, strawberries, pineapple, and other fruits. In some areas of the country (indigenous-populated places, I imagine), locals take these foods to the grave to eat with their deceased family members. However, my family is not that into the soulsy part of the holiday and prefers to just take part in the commercial aspect :). So, after an extremely hearty lunch on Saturday afternoon, all of the cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents took a trip to the grocery store to buy an ungodly amount of flour, sugar, leavening, salt, fruit, etc. to make enough guaguas de pan and colada morada for a small army.

After many hours of labor--and a couple mess-ups along the way--we had approximately 2348579346 pieces of bread (though not all babies) and a giant cauldron of delicious fruit juice.

My "host aunt" and me kneading dough....


So...I had been told that the specialty of the house was empanadas. I had not been told that they had never actually made bread in the oven before. It took a while to perfect. But the seemingly burnt pieces were still delicious on the inside!


It got better and better every time!


My very own authentic guagua (okay, so it´s slightly burnt...and the eyes and buttons fell off in the baking process) and colada morada.


We spent the night in Tumbaco, and filled up (again) the next morning on the treats we had made the night before. I didn´t eat again until 8 pm that evening.

I had a super great time with everyone this weekend. But being with "my" entire extended Ecuadorian family made me really miss my actual extended family. It´s the "familial" feeling in general, I guess...being comfortable with friends, being in my own house, whatever. I have a while left here, but I really am looking forward to going home at this point. I don´t think that´s a good thing...and I´m hoping it´s just because I´ve had a lot of time to myself in the past several days. I guess I need to keep busy.