The art of gifting

When you think of the perfect present for someone, it is very exciting to give it to them. When you don´t know what in the world to get, in my opinion, giving a gift is not too fun. I spent some time yesterday afternoon looking for a gift for my family. I really didn´t know what to get - there´s a famous ceramacist in Cuenca, but their house is much more traditional than his designs and his studio was a 4 km uphill walk from home. So I went in to the city, where there are many more clothing boutiques than gift shops. I thought about a crystal bowl from a jewelry store across the street from school but decided to explore some more. Finally I walked by a little store where a guy was working on wooder inlaid things, like boxes and trays. I don´t know how to decredibe it - the patterns, instead of being painted on, are really thin pieces of wood on wood. So he showed me what different things were and I said I needed to think about it and walked on. I walked myabe 15 minutes before I decided: what was I holding back on? I didn´t have any better ideas, I didn´t really care THAT much what the actual gift was, the prices were reasonable and I´d much rather buy from a local person than an anonymous store. So I went back and bought a box that holds a bottle of wine. I´ve never seen them drink wine but they have a whole bar at home and there´s 3 bottles of wine that have been sitting on a counter in the kitchen. So I headed back and bought the box. When I told him I was from NY he said something I didn´t understand - it turned out he was asking ¨Where the twin towers fell?" I think that is what people from Ecuador most associate with NY.

After buying my box I headed for an ice cream place near my house that the family had said was just as good as the one I really liked. But when I arrived I saw that the prices were more than double what I´d been paying. $1.30 for a copa junior? Junior sounds small to me, and on principle I just couldn´t spend that much (its all relative, remember?). But by that time my mouth was watering. The problem with desserts is once you start eating them, you body craves it every day. So I thought about buying a packaged popsicle but nothing cheap grabbed my attention. Finally I bought a sweet roll for 12 cents.

Then I got home and no one was home. I put my key in the front door, opened it...and the alarm went off. I called the mom on her cell and she gave me the code, and it went off. Then the phone rang and I answered it, which I never do of course. It was the alarm company wanting to know if everything was ok. Being flustered my Spanish was even worse than usual, and I´m sure that assured him I wasn´t an actual robber. I think the family felt worse about what happened than I did - it wasn´t really scary, I just wasnt sure what was going to happen once the alarm went off. They said it has happened 3 times before and the company knows they have foreigners staying with them. The son was the one who turned the alarm on. Apparently he´d been told not to, but forgot. So it was all fine in the end. At least the police didn´t roar up, sirens blazing (which I haven´t really seen here.