On the way home from Otavalo, our bus, which had before was fairly empty (we were sitting in the back), filled up with people, and families started heading back toward us. Because it is unsafe to store one's bags overhead (our wise hostmothers warned us with hallowing tales of lost bags/passports/friends), we had kept ours between our feet. Because of the crowding of the bus, the between our feet was too great a luxury, so we heaped the bags on me, as I was sitting by the window, and though from the picture you can't appreciate this, rest assured that only a sixth of me was uncovered by bags.

This sixth of me was delighted at how quickly and easily Kate took to this family, taking one of their children, Gabriel, on her lap, and comforting him in this most uncomfortable situation. In truth he was adorable, touching Kate's nose and ears and eyebrows and naming them in English. When I'm in foreign lands, particularly in those with rocky relations with the U.S., which is most every country in Latin America, I'm always wary about seeming patronizing or exoticizing or being exploitative. If Kate had been me, and I Kate, which is a long way of saying if Kate were a man, I wonder how well they would have taken to this impromptu English lesson. But, as it was and is, Kate was most not a man, and the family took a real shine to her.

The same night we got back, we went out on the town to dance. After one mis-step into a club for teenagers, where the DJ kept shouting for all the singly ladies to hollar, and then for all the single ladies to hollar, where I felt like I was in a displaced Bar Mitzvah, we left for the Black Party in la Floresta, at a place called the Balzac Opera Club. Here we danced mightily for hours and hours and met some very friendly locals. This is me with Andres, who studies international relations, in fewer words, dances with extranjeros.

I could post lots of silly bar pictures, but don't these look the same everywhere? Yes. Aren't these more a Facebook kind of thing? Perhaps. So it should suffice to say that we made it back home by 5AM.