I woke up on the morning of February 14 to the sound of love songs in Spanish coming through my most definitely closed window. Cheering followed the end of the song, at which point I had managed to roll over, sit up, and peek out from behind the golden curtains that hang in my room. A group of Ecuadorean men was standing around a parked car-turned speaker system in the middle of Juan de Velazquez, the dead-end street along which my host family and I live.
They were singing and laughing, and a lucky woman inside one of the homes across the street was probably blushing or something because the love of her life was serenading her in the wee hours of Valentine's Day morning. When I say wee hours, I really do mean sometime around 3am. In Cuenca, apparently it is a tradition for young men to go around serenading their girlfriends in the middle of the night. Super adorable and lovey-dovey, right? Definitely not if it wakes you up four times in the course of six hours and you have an exam the next morning at 8am... Otherwise, I absolutely support it. Long story short, to the boyfriends in the United States who may or may not need some help in their relationships: if you play an instrument and sing (or can find a group of male friends who do), and your significant other doesn't have an exam/reason to wake up early the next day, serenade her in the wee hours of Valentine's Day. As for you single ladies, the chocolate here is just as good as at home, but the sales are practically nonexistent (but no matter... tía, which is basically like CVS here, sells Oreos for $3 here). And now I'm off to eat...
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AuthorKate Hiller is a wannabe world traveler studying journalism and Spanish at Ohio University. This blog is about her experiences living abroad in Cuenca, Ecuador for a semester. (Spring 2014) Archives
May 2014
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