Sábado en Cuenca

Today we spent the day chilling in Cuenca. We woke up late, and I cooked breakfast while Slocomb did some of our laundry.
We met up with one of our co-workers from the school, Pepe Luna. I always say his first and last name because it sounds cool. Anyway, he's a professional concert violinist, but since the market for violinists isn't huge in a town of half a million people, he also teaches private lessons and works as the music teacher at CEDEI school. He's really good with the kids, but he happens to be a night person (like many musicians), meaning that the waking up at 6am isn't super fun. One night last week, he had stayed up all night composing and spent the whole next day at school wearing his sunglasses. Jen (one of the other international teachers) is already taking violin lessons from him, and I'm hoping to do so as well.
We went to his office (on Juan Montalvo, on the west side of the historic center) and met a couple of his friends who were hanging around. His office is decorated with tons of posters of Cuenca and its film and music festivals. It seems like the annual film festival is in December, so I'd like to have enough Spanish by then to enjoy it.
From Pepe's office we walked to Parque Calderón (or the Central Park) to meet up with another of Pepe's friends, Juan, who is a tour guide in Cuenca. He also happens to speak English (which Pepe is trying to learn). We all went to this vegetarian restaurant on the east side of downtown. We found out that Pepe thought that I was a vegetarian, not Jen, but we cleared that up. The restaurant was still really good, and I really want to go back to try some of their fruit and yogurt desserts.
After a leisurely lunch talking about troubles speaking Spanish and English as well as American politics, Juan wanted to take us to Turi, the "balcony of the city." When he first said it, Slocomb and I didn't know where he was talking about, but once he described it some more, we realized that we had been there the first night we were in Cuenca. We still decided to go because the view during the day and the company of two Cuencanos would be very different that our first trip there. The bus tour we took the first day in Cuenca was mostly tourists, and it was completely dark by the time we got there. The view was still beautiful, and I could point out a lot more of the city this time. Juan quizzed us a little, asking us, "Where is the airport? Where are the Inca ruins? etc." It was cool to be familiar with the city this time.The company was also very cool this time. We talked about Spanish and English swear words as well as other idiosyncrasies of the languages we speak. One of the most interesting things that we talked about was how much Juan and Pepe want to go to the US. Unfortunately (and we've heard this a couple of times), it is almost impossible for Ecuadorians to get even a tourist visa. One explanation I've heard is that lots of Ecuadorians want to come to the US to work, so they've taken advantage of tourists visas and just stayed. I think about how easy it was for Slocomb and I to get our visas to come here to work (after we got the paperwork from CEDEI); it seems a bit unfair that the visas shouldn't be reciprocated.
Anyway, having been able to see the some of beauty of Pepe and Juan's country, I hope to be able some day to show them the beauty of the US. But for now, I'm just enjoying getting to know some Cuencanos and hanging out in their city.