Portoviejo and Roteract Day 1

So, for my first weekend I went to Portoviejo on the coast. It was for a Roteract conference. Roteract is like Rotary except for younger people. Your supposed to be eighteen but my sister and I are in it. Anyways it was for the weekend so on friday night my papi drove me and my sister to the Panamerica terminal where we caught a bus with the other people heading to Portoviejo. The buses run overnight in Ecuador, it is pretty cool. Essentially the hope is that you get on at 10:00 at night, sleep and wakeup in another city the next morning. The bus ride to Portoviejo is eight hours. I slept for probably half of it, it is hard to sleep becuase the roads in Ecuador suck. Also, dropping 10,000 feet kept waking me up. So when we got to Portoviejo I had about 4 hours of sleep. We got off the bus and were picked up by a roteractarian from the hosting club. She brought us to the hotel we were to stay at. I was practically delirious and didn't really understand what was going on but I followed some guy from our bus to a room on the third floor and fell asleep instantly. When I woke up I was so tired that I couldn't understand what he was saying, I didn't know where my sister was too. Well, after a few minutes of recovery from my english dreams. I was able to converse with him. He was from another Roteract club in Quito. Anyways, his name is Jorge, and he is probably in his mid thirties. We couldn't find my sister so we went out to breakfast at an openair restaurant next door. There I had my first taste of Coastal food, fish, rice and plantains, Ecuador is the king of bananas, I have had them pobably over ten different ways, and all are good. After eating breakfast we got a ride in the back of a pickup to the school were the conference was. I found my sister, but we were in different groups for the conference. So after recieving my nametag I was shooed into a room with a bunch of other people. There we recieved a speaker, I didn't understand much but the Powerpoint had some good pictures, it was about community service action. How roteract can help people. After the conference we had a short break, I talked with the other people and told people that they really did have to speak to me in Spanish, becuase it is really hard to learn a language when people are speaking to you in English. I talked with a person from Cuenca, the way that they speak is called cantando. To put it simply, they sing. It is really beautiful but I understood nothing... My other conference was boring... I didn't understand a thing. Lunch was cheap but in comparison to the conferences, I really enjoyed it. Later, my final conference was about colors and their meanings. I enjoyed it, because the lady used the 2004 presidential election as an example. So, I understood what she was talking about. There were supposed to be four conferences in one day but I left with my sister and a friend because I was dead tired. I rested for about two hours, each conference was a full two hours... I could have died and would have been happier. Sorry, anyways there was a dinner and party later. So I dressed up and sat around for about two hours, did I mention that as a point people are really slow in Ecuador. It was supposed to start at eight but didn't until Eleven, But it was chill because I got some quality time with another kid my age, he was 19, his name was Julio, but he wasn't born in July. We talked about all sorts of stuff as the women were burning their dresses with the iron and running around trying to find other items of clothing. It really wasn't amusing because I was deathy hungery. Once we arived at the location we sat around for another hour waiting for the rest of the people to trickle in. Once everyone was there, about a zillion people spoke before anything exciting happened, we were served champaign and for the first time in my life I toasted with champaign. I think the toast was for the life of roteract and the new president of the club. After the toast music came on and people got up to dance, I was not in the mood to dance, tired, hungery and loud music really aren't a good combination for me. So when my sister asked me to dance I rudly turned her down, this was not a good thing to do. I now know that when my sister wants to dance I better not turn her down like I did. In front of about 10 people I turned her down which embarassed her and reflected badly on me. She didn't talk to me for about an hour. Dinner was finally served and I ate two dinners, but the whole time I was preocupied with the fact that my sister was giving me the cold treatment. After dinner I apologised to her. I was really scared that she wouldn't forgive me. But she did, after I still felt really bad. The saying that you don't know what you have until you lose it is so true. In that case it was until you think you have lost it. Becuase, I am in Ecuador, seperate from everything known to me. My only anchor is my family and specifically my sister. My family here in Ecuador means so much to me. They have really become another family. I missed my family back in Ashland too. Because my family back home is excellent, I love my family. Anyways, I had a period of being very sad, it was the first time that I chose to speak english. I explained to my sister my feelings as we walked around the block. I cried too, but when we got back to the dance party there was a miniture parade of masked people. It was all fun but the fact remained that I was really, really tired. I left the party with my sister at about 3:30... and crashed, like a rock.

By the way you should be able to see a photo, but it doesn't show up on my computer