When Ela and I arrived in Guayaquil around 2pm we immediately checked in to The Sander Hotel, dumped our stuff off and cabbed to the colossal Mall del Sol, where we defied conventional wisdom and ate both Taco Bell and Dunkin’ Donuts in the same sitting. From the Mall del Sol, we cabbed directly to the merely huge San Marino mall until about 8:30pm. Back in the States, you cannot get me into a mall with anything short of a syringe full of whatever that stuff is they were always stickin Mr.T with on the A-team. Kind of ironic, isn’t it? Join the Peace Corps and end up boosting my visits to malls by like 10,000%? Back at the hotel we hit up another DVD on Ela’s laptop before passing out.

     The first place we hit was the Malecon 2000, a giant, sort of park/plaza along the river area that was recently revamped and that we always hear the mayor of Guayaquil gassing on about on TV in Tambo. We tore up trays of fast food at a globalized fast food chain present in Malecon 2000 and then drifted across the street to a massive marketplace so Ela could by a dozen or so $1 DVD bootlegs. We left and tried to visit a few museums, but all 3 were closed down, apparently for good, so we returned once again to the fast food restaurant for a huge pile of fries and a sundae followed once again by drifting across the street to the massive marketplace. Ela hunted down and purchased DVDs until after dark, at which time we returned to the Hotel Sander to watch said DVDs on Ela’s laptop.

     At 7:45pm, I taxied to the bus terminal and grabbed a C.L.P. bus bound for Libertad. 2 hours and one perfunctory police checkpoint later, I arrived in Santa Elena. From there, a camionetta got me to Tambo. It was 10:30pm when I rapped lightly on the side door and got Julio out of bed to let me in. Actually, rapping lightly was unnecessary as I was surrounded by yapping idiot neighborhood dogs. As usual, Julio loitered in my room as I unpacked my bags, only this time languid, rumpled and with puffy, uncomprehending dashes where his eyes used to be. After indulging himself in the most noteworthy highlights of the latter half of my pasiando spree, Julio shuffled out my door in the direction of his bed.

     At 9am, there was a big Plan International sponsored town-wide garbage clean up day scheduled to kick off. This was part of the reason I had to be home by today, Friday. Susanna had taken me outside earlier to point out to me that numerous figures in the distance were sweeping up the garbage around their houses and burning it in small piles. She pointed this out the way a child points out a bird’s nest they have, with no small degree of awe, discovered. For some reason, she found all the sweeping figures terribly exciting. Several times before 9am, she walked intently to the front porch, looked out at all the distant sweeping figures and made commentary aloud to herself about what was happening. I left around 9:30am to hook up with all the garbage festivities, but found that it was a thoroughly decentralized event. Unless I wanted to do something bizarre and pointless, like bust up to someone unsolicitedly and begin helping them with the small amount of garbage blown up against the side of their house, there was nothing for me to do. In spite of several attempts by Susanna to get me to share her exhilaration for all the sweeping going on outside, I retreated to my room, opened my laptop and began typing. Typing is pretty much how I spent the whole day, excepting about an hour or so when I was led outside by neighbor kids to see a bee’s nest, followed by a brief interlude of mayhem they commenced in my room. Much later, I read a little from the books I picked up at the Peace Corps headquarters in Quito.

     Around 8pm, I noticed the voices of Susanna’s sister, Merci, and her husband in the next room. They were watching a nighttime soap opera and socializing with Julio’s family. As Merci and her husband have dropped by this part of town only twice in the 3 months I’ve lived here and never to socialize, I thought I had a fairly good idea of what was happening. Julio had given me a heads up last night that they were planning to ask me to be the “padrino” of their son’s first communion. I asked Julio what that job would entail. He said it really doesn’t entail anything, I just present the kid and stand behind him. There would be 30 other kids present also taking their first communions. Afterward there is a party.

     About an hour after I had first become aware of their voices in the next room, the duo entered my room grinning nervously and fidgeting. They sat down on a love seat sized piece of furniture and after a pregnant pause, formally asked me to be the padrino for their son’s first communion. I was still completely clueless as to what I was getting myself into, but I consented on the spot. The parents were actually blushing. They were so nervous. How would I have told them no if I had been opposed to the idea? But anyway, consenting to participate in unsettling religious ceremonies is way more interesting than not. At least for 1 or 2 times.

     Sometime after 10 pm, I was typing in my room when came there a knock on the front door. This was immediately suspect. Whomever was outside was completely unfamiliar with the layout and habits of this house. Knocking on the front door is a poor way to get anyone’s attention in this house, especially after all have gone to bed. Everyone in this part of town knows that the front door here isn’t even on its hinges and is held in the doorframe at night by being barricaded in place. Anyone wishing to leave the house at night has to use the side door. I opened my front window and leaned out. 2 disconcerted women I had never seen before asked to see Julio. I got Julio out of bed and then went back to typing. When I heard the women finally leave and Julio begin knocking on his usta-be-sister-in-law’s shutters, I went to see what was going on. Apparently a little girl had been attacked by a dog or dogs out in front of the house today around 4pm. The women that had come to the house were not certain which dogs had done what, only that it having happened in Julio’s dog’s turf seemed to have narrowed down the list of suspects. At 4pm, I would have been sitting about 30 feet from the alleged incident, and though I had heard dolefully wailing children on several occasions throughout the day, it is a fairly commonplace occurrence here and I never heard the obvious sounds of dogs going ballistic on someone. Even more curious, I have never seen the dogs pay small children any mind at all. Small children seem to be totally invisible to dogs. As yet, the canine assailants remain unidentified. One final thing that doesn’t add up: this happens at 4pm and you don’t come around to address the matter until 6 hours later when everyone is in bed?

     When we left the school together, Guido did his usual and excused himself abruptly using some flimsy pretext, thereafter twitching around a corner and disappearing. A group of students sitting in the “park” motioned me over and had me teach them bad words. I had told my 2nd level course earlier in the day that it is important to learn bad words because the average person uses an abundance of them and being a puritan will only damage one’s comprehension what’s being talked about around them. I, myself, could not understand a word of what was being discussed in front of EcuaMom’s tienda until I brushed up on my profanity and whorehouse lexicon. It’s important, whether one likes it or not.

     After lunch I went into Santa Elena to crack into my overflowing email account. I bought some stuff in the new Tia supermarket and returned home in very amiable spirits. After dinner, I stopped by Lorena’s house for an hour, as I had promised her earlier I would. She left for Quito around 8pm and I headed home to get Julio to go to the birthday party Susanna’s dad was having tonight. Julio had already left. I fired up my coffeepot and while I was drinking it, received a phone call from Jeanne in the States. We ended up talking for 5 hours. When I hung up at 2am, I could hear that Susanna’s dad’s party around the corner going completely nuts and opted not to make my tired butt any part of it.

     At around 11am, I heard Susanna throwing up out her bedroom window, moaning deeply like a stuck pig just before it goes unconscious. Julio cooked lunch. Ivan cooked dinner. After dinner, Susanna threw up out her window again. This time I have no idea what to say it sounded like. It was so inhuman that I had to linger near her doorway to verify that it was her and that she wasn’t dying. A minute later, she shuffled out from her dark room with puke still on her chin, mumbled a joke at me and beamed. At 6:30pm, I finally quit typing and let the neighbor kids play video games on the computer while I attempted to prepare an English lesson from my English books.