The first day we were doing service work in Ecuador was a pretty cool day.  We started work at 9 in the morning, ate lunch and continued on afterwards.  We heard some noise in the town square right outside of the school, so we walked out.  The band was practicing and a man in came up to us and gave us all a shot of some liquor.  We all accepted (it’s rude to turn down anything without trying it once), and went back to work.  20 minutes later we hear the band roaring closer.  In the middle of classes, the band and the town (maybe 30-40 people) paraded into the courtyard to celebrate, Holy Week Style.  The videos below show how it all went down.  You can see one of the local women come up and grab me for a dance.

They passed on a mask from person to person, as well as a cape.  One kid in our group got to keep the cape at the end of the day, which I guess was a big honor.  They also carried in a giant wooden barrel of some fermented fruit booze with chunk of fruit in it.  They wanted the visitors (us) to carry it back out to the town square.  3 other friend and I lifted the barrel onto our shoulders (suspended on 2 logs over our shoulders) and danced our way out to the town square.  They place the mask on me while carrying this barrel, which pretty much blinded me.  Blindly dancing with 50 pounds on your left shoulder is a challenge, but I managed (I’m a stud).  After finally moving the barrel to the town square, I was offered some of the Holy Booze.  If I had to guess what my piss tastes like, I would compare it to this.  After the town drunk traded me my fruit booze for some coke (which I just dropped on the ground), another kind local gave me a shot of warm pink liquor.  After 20 minutes or so of more dancing, we left the celebration and went back to work.  Definitely one of the most spontaneous and random things to ever happen to me.

Schoolchildren terrorizing the principal’s office.

View of the Indian Markets in Otavalo from a balcony.

The ring leader handing out shots as we had an impromptu party in the school courtyard in the middle of classes.