LIGHTS OUT

No sleeping in. We live next door to a high-school and each morning we are awakened with bells, sirens and the principal giving a very loud 'have-a-great-school-day' speech in a mega-phone. Halfway between dreaming and reality, I always think it's Joe yelling at me in Spanish to get up and cook breakfast. So I did. It was 7a.m.

Today was another hot one. Real feel was 105, according to accuweather.com. I was inside teaching online and Joe and Carlie were living it up in the pool, trying out Carlie's new dolphin float I bought her yesterday. It was hot, I was hungry and I was done cooking for the day. Time to go out to dinner. After Joe and Carlie showered and dressed, I texted my new British friend  Eleanor (who was raised in Zimbabwe and had me over earlier today for iced tea and lemon tarts) and she suggested we all meet at a burger joint called Brutus. (Yes, the one from Popeye) But it was closed, so we walked over to our favorite hang-out, Iguana.(Iguana is the same outdoor restaurant that a random six year old off the street walked up to our table the other night and finished drinking Jessamyn's drink and then walked away without so much as a thank you.)  Eleanor and her husband Gary never met up with us. Their car had broken down and they had bigger fish to fry.

At Iguana the American music was thumping and the BBQ wings were the best I've had in my life. Carlie was enjoying drinking her Nestea and Joe was wolfing down his cheeseburger. We were right in the middle of naming that tune (Beck, Spice Girls and Beyonce) when all of a sudden the power in the entire town of Tena went out. Little screams could be heard across the street at the park where about 75 kids had been playing. Each parent lit up thier cell-phones to find their corresponding kids. At Iguana, the music stopped and we were left to stop mid-chew staring at nothing but the millions of stars above us. As some of the other customers scrambled away in the darkness as to avoid having to pay for dinner, we sat there holding hands until our waitress brought us a candle--which only attracted a million mosquitos and other odd flying creatures. We ordered another beer and kept singing to inaudible music. Finally we paid and left. As we were walking through the middle of the street in the dark (to avoid stepping on dog poop or tripping on broken sidewalks) I couldn't resist the urge to relieve myself of some of the beer. Doing as other Ecuadorians do, I found a drain hole in the road that would serve that purpose. Midstream, a motorcycle flew past me with its brights on, lighting up all of Tena and...my backside. I've never heard Joe and Carlie laugh so hard.

Back on the main road, Quince de Noviembre, every resident of Tena was outside acting as if this was the event of the millenium. Apparently it isn't very often that the power goes out in the whole city, just certain areas. But everyone was prepared for just such an event. Food carts were lit with candles inside of plastic cups, diners still ate at restaurants lit with candles, teenagers roamed the bridge over the river with cell phones lit, a cart loaded with jungle trinkets was lit with a tiny flashlight overhead. It was something out of the movies with all the candles, and a lone bar that had a generator with the lights still on. We flagged a taxi in the darkness and took it to Jessamyn's house. She had no power either, but wanted us to briefly meet her dad and grandma who just flew in from the States. We laughed all the way there with the taxi driver who joked that the lights were out because Tena forgot to pay the light bill.

By the time our visit at Jessamyn's was coming to a close, the lights came back on. We were relieved, because Jess lives on a very dark road by the river and it would have been a fiasco trying to manuever our way back to the main road. All in all, we had a great time tonight and forgot we have to get up early tomorrow to go to Quito, 5 hours away, to register our Visas. Good thing we have an automatic alarm clock at the highschool on megaphone. We're still not sure how to explain it, but Tena keeps growing on us each day.