Tuesday 1/17/17 - Pre-Baptism Meeting at the Church Today we woke up to find three of our beloved piglets gone. Rosa co-owns Juanita (the mother pig) with another woman from the community. The piglets are now old enough to be weaned, and they eat a lot of food, so they gave the co-owner her share of the litter. For breakfast we had omelets, cheese, bread, coffee, and juice. I walked out back to see which piglets still remained. They were all sleeping in a pile in their shelter with Juanita. Juanita saw me coming and jumped up, causing the piglets to go flying in every direction. It was a low-key day today. I ate lunch in my office - soup, steak, rice, mixed veggie salad, and red cabbage. Rosa went shopping after lunch, returning with baptism party supplies, including a huge block of solid honey and sugarcane to put into the chicha. After work, Craig and I took a camioneta (shared pick up truck) to Cotacachi with Sisa. While waiting for Antonio in the Plaza de la Matriz, we bought some snacks and sat on a park bench eating them. It was very cold and raw today. We met Antonio at the plaza and attended our baptism course at Iglesia de la Matriz at 6 o'clock. I'm not sure if it was the priest or the deacon that we met with. He spoke too rapidly in Spanish for me to catch most of what he was saying, but he was really funny and friendly. He is from Colombia. Antonio explained that Shina Tayanta's mother was in Chile, and that the grandparents and godparents would be overseeing the baptism. The priest asked what Shina's name means in Kichwa. Antonio explained that Shina means warrior princess, and that Tayanta refers to a Kichwa traditional medicine. There was one other family there for the baptism preparation. The parents of the child to be baptized were not married, so he spent a good deal of the time giving them a hard time and stressing the importance of marriage. We could have sworn he also mentioned beastiality, but hopefully we misheard him. He could tell that we weren't following everything he said, so he mainly addressed the other family. But toward the end, he addressed me and kept saying what sounded like "Drrrrumf." Then the other family started saying it, and they were all smiling. I had no idea what was going on until the other godmother asked me (in Spanish) "How do you pronounce Drrrrumf?" Oh, I get it. Trump. This was the first time we had really been asked about this. We said that we were not fans of Trump, and they nodded, saying that they weren't fans of their president, Correa, either. (They are having elections next month.) We all laughed and jovially parted ways, to reunite on Saturday evening for the baptism. Sisa was very well behaved for the over 90 minutes that we were there, sitting on our laps, hugging us, etc. She really is such a sweetie! We came home via taxi and Antonio went up to the community center. Yupanqui was already asleep, angry that he hadn't been able to go with us. But he would have been bored and unable to sit still. We had mora juice with quinoa, carrot soup with canguil (popcorn), and a potato and greens mixture for dinner.

Yupanqui, Shina Tayanta, and Sisa On our way to Cotacachi with Sisa Iglesia de la Matriz See all photos from this day