Bailoterapia

Bailoterapía

There are three things here in Ecuador that are each of the utmost importance. They are, in no particular order; soccer, religion and dancing. Soccer? Check! Religion, mmm, not so much. And dancing? Well, I’m pretty sure my Spanish seriously outranks my dancing skills, which when you think about the fact that I’ve recently confused the verbs “to fall” and “to get married”, that I can not explain when a pot is boiling over, but instead can only say “look! Look!” and frantically point at the stove which is sure to erupt and spew its contents everywhere any moment, this does not mean good things for my dancing abilities. But, as with everything, Ecuadorians laugh and smile and kindly say “poco a poco”. So. Being that dancing is among the top 3 things of utmost importance, there’s groups and studios all over for dancing, aside from discos (clubs) where people go out do dance. And the name of these aforementioned institutions is… “Bailoterapia”. I think this is one of those names that I just can’t get over. It’s funny every time. Dance therapy. Well sort of. I think that the idea is that it’s more of what we’d consider to be work-out dance classes in the States. But still. I can’t shake the idea of dance therapy from my mind. That is, until Bailoterapia is happening IN OUR HOUSE! It’s 10:00p.m. and once again I’m home getting ready for bed when I hear the music. Slowly it gets louder. Another knock on my door that I finally hear and it’s my host sister Karly inviting me to join her and her friends in the living room for some dance time. I respectfully decline, explaining that I have no rhythm and am very afraid of damaging either myself or some part of the house if I were to attempt dancing here. It takes a little convincing and the help of my host mother who is laughing at the situation before I get off without having to join. This makes me feel better and relieved until I get back to my room where I can hear the music start to crescendo (whooo! Check me out using a music term! Despite not being 100% on its meaning, I think Wade would be proud).  Either way, this situation is not conducive to my sleep schedule.  Eventually I admit defeat and head out to the living room to watch for a few minutes before attempting another shot at a REM cycle. The resulting 10 minutes were highly entertaining and fully of twists and turns! Eventually though, time got the best of me and shoved in some squishy purple ear plugs (thanks Dad!) and drifted off to sleep.