No soap...radio!

Who knows this joke? It goes like this ¨There´s two elephants sitting in a tub. One says to the other "Pass the soap." The other says "No soap...radio!"

Get it?

Of course not, because it doesn´t make any sense, and it isn´t funny. It´s a "follower joke." In a group of people, you need at least 2 people who know the joke...one tells it, and the other one laughs. Then you see whether the people who don´t know the joke feel social pressure to pretend they know the joke by laughing too, even though they don´t get it. Well, that is how I often feel at the parties I go to with my family. The difference is that a) whatever story is being told is funny and b) I don´t laugh because I don´t think I could fake it well enough, and if anyone said anything to me about the story I wouldn´t have anything to say back.

So the worst time was at a dinner for the first birthday. I went in to the kitchen and sat at a table with about 10 people sitting at the table or standing around it, including my host mother. There was a woman there I´d never seen before and she was very animatedly telling a story. Apparently she was also hilarious, because everyone else was cracking up...and I was just sitting there. Then someone asked my host mom if I spoke Spanish, and the mom replied "un poco." (a little). And then the lady launched into a story about someone not speaking English well but she wasn´t telling it to me, it was to everyone else and apparently it was a funny story too, and everyone else laughed. Then an uncle came up to me, and said "I am brother Michael." Everyone else laughed uproriously. I had no idea what was funny - what is funny about being someone´s brother and having the name Michael? Turns out that he was trying to say he was "Brother Michael" like he is a (sleezy) priest, his name is Pablo and he was pretty drunk. Then he told me "This my wife," pointing to the first very funny story teller. "She speak English." But she made no attempt to speak to me. The only attempt to include me was a discussion of how old I was, with my mother asking people to guess. Apparently to Ecuadorians, I look like I´m 15. Maybe 18. How can that be????

One of the uncles, who has been the one driving us up to the city just north of Cuenca, has been better at trying to include me. He has a very cute granddaughter, Sophie, but I´m not sure I approve of the family´s child rearing habits. She´s 2 1/2 and is still running around at parties at midnight, I´ve seen the grandparents driving with her on their lap in the front seat, and at the most recent party, she was allowed to continually go up to the cake, wipe off a bit of icing with her finger and lick it clean. The grandfather was the one who showed her how to do that. But at the early party, the only joke I really understood was when she had a brush and walked around with it, and people would lean over to let her brush their hair. Then a guy who is bald said "Sophie, brush my hair!¨He leaned forward - and she stopped dead in her tracks.

So its just getting tiring not really knowing what is going on. I didn´t know until I heard people downstairs that the Saturday night party was at my house. I´m also ready to leave Cuenca...I feel like I´ve gotten all from it and the family that I can. Although I do also feel when I come back after a day trip away, or the Galapagos, like "oh, I´m home."

More on yesterday´s pretty non-evenful day trip. The most exciting aspect was trying ice cream at a place I´ve been wanting to try but have never visited. 70 cents for a bowl made out of waffle cone with two big scoops (pistachio and naranjilla, my favorite local fruit - Lonely Planet describes it as "bitter orange" but that isn´t exactly correct. It was soooo good. I am going back for more now. I´m glad I didn´t try the place 4 weeks ago, I´d engorda mucha (that´s probably not at all correct Spanish)!