manta manta manta

This weekend i went to manta, a small coastal town with little to do but go to the beach, with none to low expectations, but this weekend turned out to be a real turning point in my ecuadorian adventures. It was a 10 hour bus ride there overnight and as we all know you can never really sleep on a bus so i arrive in manta in the morning with no sleep in 24 hours. Me and vania (a great girl from quito who i went with) meet up with a guy from AIESEC manta, we eat breakfast, go to the beach for like .5 secs and then head to the hotel where the conference is. The conference starts and i realize that this is essentially a repeat of my first ROKS, and even tho it was in spanish which makes it new it was the same old shit. I guess she could tell i was bored bc this girl from guayaquil came up to me and told me that there were other trainees from guayaquil and cuenca here but that they were at the beach if i wanted to meet up with them...let me just preface this with GOD BLESS THIS CHILD!!!!

So i get in a taxi and meet up with 3 trainees, 2 from guayaquil and one from cuenca, and one guy who is spending the next 3 months traveling s. america. These people were from all over the world from so many different backgrounds; from solvenia to estonia to norway to holland yet i felt completely myself around them from the get go. We talked about what we were doing in ecuador, complained about things only foreigners would complain about, shared life stories both related to and not related to traveling and proceeded to have the absolute best time in life. Each one of us was a different age, at different stages in our lives yet we all listened to and appreciated each other and our unique perspective. No one talked down to another because of age or background or (lack of) travel experience...everyone existed on the same plane. I cant even begin to describe this feeling, but i hope those of you who know what im talking about are having warm fuzzy feelings of nostalgia and those who dont know what im talking about have the chance to experience this visceral, intangible completeness and purpose.

Besides the eye-opening experience, it was also incredibly fun and entertaining! The highlight of the whole weekend was on Saturday night us 5 went out on the town (note: there was another guayaquil trainee from belgium who was also fantastic, but she was really really sick so she stayed in the hostal that night :() and by town i mean the beach bc the town doesnt truly exist (at least i dont think) when we all of a sudden encountered this HUGE family (like 50 people) just chillin the beach passing around a bottle of red label. We obviously caught there attention (5 gringos staring can do that) because all of a sudden jorge and betty (two of the family members) ran over to us and pushed the red label in front of our faces!!! What did we do next you ask? We took the generous alcohol gift...now under normal circumstances we would never have done this but these people were a huge family with lots of kids and this is part of there culture...sharing drinks with strangers you like. So after we accepted the generous gift we proceeded to have incredible conversation and more drinks with this huge family for about 45 minutes! We talked about where we were from and that jorge was not and i quote ‘double v bush’ and laughed and took about 70 pictures between all the family members who whipped out their cameras or phones. Then when we parted they asked for our email and cell phones and said that if we ever needed anything we should call or if there were in guayaquil, cuenca or quito they would give us a call...

Other things occurred that night (like Danny the guy from norway teaching this kid that was trying to sell flowers the ‘detachable thumb trick’) but this family experience was by far the most incredible. Im just trying to imagine a family in new york just chillin, drinking and inviting a group of 5 foreigners to join them in drink and conversation...it would just never happen.

So this entry is a little too long already so im going to stop here, but know that there will be more reference to more of these incredible trainees and the amazing norweigian conversationalist.