The Crazy Canadian

Friday, February 11, 2011: 

Today, I had a full day ahead of me. The plan was to go from school, to planting trees in Lumbisi (lower income area), go to my salsa lesson, then go out at night. All through this, I wouldn't be going home, so I made the decision to get dressed up in my orange button down and other relatively nice cloths in order to prepare for my end location. Unfortunately, this meant that I had to wear these cloths while working with dirty clay, planting trees, and sweating in my salsa class. I was lovely at night...  It wasn't that bad though. After my salsa lesson by Kiki Mendes (who is amazing by the way), I had 2 hours to kill before I was meeting up with people to go out. So, I did what any other person would do, I called up Ana Sophia's mom and went and hung out with her! She fed me then we danced! It was really goofy, but tons of fun. Finally all the people were arriving into Quito and I could meet up with them. I had 2 groups meeting -- one was from earlier in the week when I went salsa-ing. And the other was with Jill and her host sister, her friend and other gringas. 

Okay, I have to side track quick to describe this first group I was going to meet up with. I met them at a salsa club the Wednesday before and it consisted of 2 Ecuadorian girls, 2 Argentinian guys, and one Canadian guy. The Canadian guy…. Oh my gosh.

1.    He is white

2.    Couch surfing in South America

3.    Doesn’t speak ANY Spanish

4.    Traveling alone

Sound like a bad situation waiting to happen… yeah, I do too. Maybe it explains why he was robbed 2 nights before walking back from dinner… alone. He told me that they robbed him and stuck him up with a knife. They took his wallet and ipod, but before they left, he grabbed their knife when it was in their hands, snatched his ipod back and ran. Only someone who wasn’t told that these guys will kill you here for a dime would do that lol. They still had his wallet, but at least he had his music – that’s all that matter’s right?

Well, I didn’t end up meeting up with that group again, but we did have a big group to go out that night. The night map went like this:

1.    Laun: bouncers were stuck up – we left

2.    Love: not enough of the girls looked 23 to get in… comparison to girls that I saw that were at oldest 17 walking in – we left

3.    Blues (the place I went my first night out).

a.    They played American Rock all night

b.    We rocked out all night. It was great.