We couldn't plan lessons because the press showed up shortly after breakfast. Since the whole province, from the red cross to the police to the indigenous people who live on the mountain and know it like the back of their hand, had come out to search for these three Americans, they all wanted to see them and to know who they had worked to save.
But seeing someone via cathode tube really isn't getting to know them. In order to allow for a face to face, more personal meeting, we decided to have a party at the hostel for all the people who helped us look for our missing friends.
We sat around the breakfast table cooking mad amounts of banana bread and chocolate cake and taco fixings for our incoming guests. All forty-some of them showed up around eight, beginning the biggest culture clash I have ever witnessed.
Someone pulled out their ipod and turned on old 90s R&B songs. Even without hitting the 150 beers we had bought for the occasion, we all started dancing and singing along beneath the wary gaze of the red cross, the police, and some indigenous mountain men. The guests all sat around the perimeter of the room while we took up center stage, both in physical location and in absolute volume.
It never really got less awkward, even after the beers came out.
First off, someone had great idea of serving the food buffet style. Buffet style, as it turns out, is an American thing. We couldn't convince anyone to get out of his chair to self-serve, so we all quickly became waiters and waitresses. Next, most people refused the alcohol. Red cross members can't drink in their uniforms, so we offered sweatshirts to cover them up.
Basically, the scene looked something like this by the end of the night: red-faced Americans singing and dancing with joy because their friends had been saved from certain death while the Ecuadorians looked on with what I hope was a more subdued brand of joy. Scratch that. I know it was a more subdued brand of joy.
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