La Ley Seca

The presidential election is tomorrow, Sunday, February 17^th. Ecuador has a very passionate culture in general, and especially about its politics. So for the weekend of the election, they implement “La Ley Seca” (Dry Law) and it is illegal to sell, purchase, or consume alcohol from Friday to Monday. The Peace Corps also has an additional rule during this weekend called Standfast, in which all trainees and volunteers must stay within their site during this particular weekend, we are not allowed to travel even to nearby towns. This is a safety precaution in case there are any political protests or unsafe situations. For many of the volunteers, this translates to: BORING.

However, one of the other trainees was having a quincenera at her house for her host cousin and invited me! It was so much fun and so very different from the other one I attended. It had the great food and the yummy cake and the nice people and LOTS of dancing, but this one had much less pressure to drink. (Probably because of Ley Seca). Also, because there were 3 gringas, they were extra nice to us. They taught us to salsa and let us borrow a big sombrero to take pictures. They even did a shout out to “la gente de los Estados Unidos” and played a Rhianna song, which we then proceeded to sing every lyric of.

Also, this party focused on different traditions. Rather than the choreographed dances, instead, there were symbolic gifts that the “damas” (bridal party-like friends of the birthday girl) presented to her. And there were lots of “ligas” (garters)! Here, the birthday girl wears 10 garters (I think maybe it’s normally 15 but this girl had 10) and her “caballero” (sort of like a date except in this case, it was her cousin and in the previous party was just a friend) takes the garters off of her legs one-by-one and then gives them to the single guys at the party. The single guys then put the garters on the damas. However, at this party there were only 3 or 4 damas so they went around looking for different girls to put them on. The girl would have to stand on a chair in a dress and often in heels! And the guy would slip it on her leg as the crowd yelled “sube sube sube!” which means higher! Many of these guys and girls were about 15 years-old. Luckily, I was off in a corner and did not get pressured into this tradition. Then, we played a guessing game. They got all of the single girls to stand in a circle and we had to go around and guess which fruit the birthday girl was thinking of. I guessed cherry and ding ding ding! Cherry it is! I had no idea what I just won but they made me stand there in front of the whole party and went and found a single guy. What an appropriate guess because my face was red as a cherry. He was then advised to put the last garter on my leg! Chuta! (Spanish way of saying shit!) Luckily, I was wearing pants. And now I have a scandalous souvenir.

There was another guessing game after that, involving animals so I guessed vaca (cow) hoping I wouldn’t win and my trainee friend won and got a pretty pink bouquet! Chuta! They passed around shots of watermelon liquor and a cigar. I did not partake in anything as I needed to get home at a decent time and didn’t want to risk getting arrested on my way home. I was really wishing that it wasn’t the weekend of Ley Seca because the drinking options were great, but I had such a good time it didn’t even matter.

I felt bad about coming home late because the way the door is designed, I can’t just unlock it and come in, I have to have someone unlatch it, so I had to wake my host mom up at about 10:45. I’m going to make pancakes tomorrow morning to try and make it up to her.

Funny baby: I forgot to add this to a different blog, but Ayllen is learning to walk and has a brand new “andador” which is a little chair on wheels. She is such an adorable little menace wheeling around the house trying to destroy things. It’s so much fun. She wheels herself real fast over to my doorway and grunts and smacks the door, waiting for permission to enter. As soon as I say “hola Ayllen”, she comes barreling in, wreaking havoc. I’ll try to take a video at some point, it’s too cute to not capture on film.

Goodnight, United States. I miss you dearly.

<3 Chels