Sunday September 22, 2013 - After the Party I got up at around 10:30 a.m., doubting whether I had ever managed to sleep at all. Craig was still in no shape to leave the casita. I wandered outside. Gina had already left via cab an hour earlier. There were a hard-core few partiers who had never left. They were still drinking alcohol and eating leftover pork and mote. Antonio called to me - Felipe was on the phone. I talked to him and gave him the update on the party and Craig's condition. I got myself a plate of pork and sat outside to eat it. There was no running water this morning. The rooftop water tank needed to be refilled. It was a casualty of the party. We had brought three small wooden puzzles for the kids. They only had four pieces each. I gave one to Tayanta to see if she liked it. It turned out that Yupanqui and Sisa were very interested, so I gave them each one. They were very excited. Aida brought out some chicken soup for me and delivered some to Craig in his room. His stomach seemed to have settled down, and he devoured the delicious home-made soup. I decided to try to write up the baptism in my journal (I hadn't done it at 2 in the morning when I went to bed). Sisa was interested in what I was doing, and went to get her diary. She got a pen and started drawing shapes. I realized that I was not paying enough attention to her, so I put the notebook away and we played together. Sisa went inside to get colored pencils. I traced the puzzle pieces and then colored in the drawings. Sisa looked at a picture of the parrot. In Spanish, she said, "My parrot's dead. He's buried over there (points to the garden). The pig is dead too. He's in here (points to her stomach)." She cracked me up. Yupanqui came over to join us coloring. The kids came into our room to see Craig several times throughout the day. They held his hands and danced with him, and they brought the little gray kitten to him. We gave the kids a granola bar, and Yupanqui noticed the chocolate cookie bars we had gotten on the plane. I gave each kid half of my cookie bar. We told them that we had gotten it on the plane and they found that very exciting. At 5 o'clock, I went with Aida to deliver party leftovers to friends and relatives within the community. She carried two 3-liter bottles of soda on her back and two trays of eggs in her hands. I carried two bundles of pork. Sisa and Yupanqui came with us. We walked all the way up the hill and through a field to deliver the food to two houses. I was certainly feeling the altitude as I heaved the heavy pork through the community. The late afternoon light was gorgeous, and the sunset on the volcanoes was breathtaking. As it got dark, Aida pointed out fire on the side of Imbabura volcano in the distance. It looked like orange lava and engulfed half of the volcano. When we got back to the house, I loaded up the photos from the trip so far onto my netbook. Craig tried to look at them, but he was getting dizzy. He hadn't been able to get up other than to go the bathroom all day. The chicken soup at lunch had sat well with Craig, so we brought him some dinner as well. After the quick dinner, everyone crashed early tonight, as nobody had gotten a good night's sleep while the party had been going on.

Aida and Shina Tayanta Yupanqui, Sisa, and Achi Taita See all photos from this day