day eleven - too much fanta

I woke up this morning not feeling well at ALL. it may have something to do with the pizza and fanta i ate last night. I'm feeling a whole lot better now though. So last night we had a birthday party here for one of the Allan's sons, Isaac. They have a lot of kids by the way. Ten biological and i think two adopted? i've lost count. So we had over 50 people here from his street ministry to celebrate his birthday, and also another girls birthday from outside the Ark. I learned about two Ecuadorian birthday traditions. The first is that they get beaten with a belt, once for every year. I thought they were joking...no joke. This takes birthday bumps to a whole new level. The second is that they get their face squished into the cake...and then we all eat it. I like Ecuadorian birthday parties.





Tonight we went to a street church downtown Riobamba. It was easily one of the highlights of my trip so far. In town was pretty insane with all the traffic and people everywhere. There was a carnival going on and - hold on...ecuadorian carnival...as if canadian ones weren't sketchy enough...- there were concerts going on everywhere. Alicia, Jessalyn, and I went with Isaac downtown to meet up with the other people. There was a group of maybe 20 or something. We met in a park and sang worship songs and shared testimonies and prayed. Even though i didn't understand most of it, it was so moving. The Holy Spirit was so present. It was so noisy all around us but there was this little circle of God's glory shining in the middle of Riobamba. I loved it. It turns out one of the guys there was an undercover cop making sure we weren't dealing drugs.

After we were done it was probably twelve. We piled into Isaac's truck and we drove some people home all over Riobamba then we stopped at a bus stop somewhere and there was a man and a woman outside cooking on propane stoves. I don't know why...but there's just something about this picture i have in my head that i love so much. We got out of the truck and Naomi asked us if we wanted something to eat. He gives them food for free. Someone cleared a space for us at the table and we pulled up plastic chairs. "Do you want to try his fish soup (encebollado de pescado)? it's his specialty". It may sound sketchy but we were so hungry, i would have ate anything. It was actually SO good. I don't know if it's because we were so hungry or if i wasn't expecting anything spectacular...but i loved it. They put popcorn in their soup here. So fun! i highly recommend it. So we sat around for a while, enjoying our soup. Then we got back in the truck to drive more people home. It was actually really cold last night...it gets really cold at night, i think colder than in canada. But we rode in the back anyways, a bunch of us. If anyone knows me, they know that if you hang out with me past ten...you'd better watch out. I get pretty loopy. Apparently so does Alicia. So we were laughing so hard the entire time, with Jessalyn translating half of it to the Ecuadorians who thought we were crazy but laughed with us.
Anyways...it was a great night. We got back at two in the morning. And now it's Sunday. that is all.
Daniella