friday at work was for the most part in the office but in the afternoon two people from the foundation, jack and i all headed out to the streets to find some new recruits. we went to the streets of a mall which borders one of the poorest sections of town. under a freeway over pass we found about 15 kid vendors watching a game of street soccer. the soccer game was so good i could have sworn i saw ronaldinho. immediately all theses kids swarmed around us asking questions. they were particularly interested in jack and me. we were like aliens to them and they all asked us some very good questions about our homelands. while me and jack entertained most of them the other two members of the foundation told some of these kids what juconi could do for them. after work i headed home to get ready for a party at the house of one of coworkers. the party was supposed to start at six but i didnt even end up meeting up with all my friends until eight. when we finally got to the party three hours late (tiempo latino) the scene was dead. everyone was sitting around barely talking to eachother. we felt like we walked into a stereotypical bad party but after a toast to my coworker-who had just graduated college-they turned up the music and everyone started to dance. we danced merengue or i should say i learned how to not look like a fool dancing merengue. it was a good time. after that we went to another house for an after party party. saturday i woke up very late and then just hung out most of the day until i was informed that i would be going to a family event. my whole host family piled into the car to go to grandmas house and i can say that arriving at this party it felt a lot like going to a berg family event. there were so many people and i mostly didnt know any of them. i ended up sitting with all the uncles who broke out into a conversation about south american politics, chavez, and corruption. it was particularly interesting to me because of the guys sitting there was from columbia so i heard a different side to what president correa is doing here in ecuador. after that pepe and i ducked out to go to one of his friends houses and we stayed there until late. today was pretty boring and the only thing to speak of was me writting this. my spanish seems to be dragging at the moment. a week ago it seemed like it was better but now i am having trouble listening and understanding people. i know it will get better in a few weeks though. ciao
-mark