I don't look for trouble, trouble finds me

Guess what? I'm not dead! Yet.

Ecuador was certainly an unusual experience...I didn't realize until I went there how boring I really am. I love the country and have every intention of going back. I just need to maintain the image that I'm awesome because the friends I made there are under the impression that I'm not a complete and total geek.

Remember how I said that Ecuadorian Friend didn't quite wrap his head around my transition? Well, he gets it now. I'm actually quite flattered, because after we'd been hanging out for a day or two, he told me, "When you came here, I was expecting (girl name). But now I only see Pete." Yeah, thanks for finally getting what I told you a year ago.

In all honesty, though, I'm f*cking thrilled. I had expected clashes, even arguments about it. We had none. And all I had to do was be myself for him to understand me. Why can't everyone have that kind of revelation?

But I think Ecuadorian Friend underestimated his friends' capacity to understand, let alone accept, my transition. All of them were completely fine with it. If I tried to give them my generic explanation, "En mi cabeza, estoy un chico," (translated: "In my head, I'm a boy") they would just nod and say, "Yes. I understand. That's okay." I hardly got any questions at all about my gender identity. People were more curious about my sexual orientation, to be honest. The majority of questions I got consisted of:

a) "You want more rum?"
b) "Do you like boys or girls?"
c) "How does sex work if you have girl parts and you're with a girl?"
d) "Is there anyone here you have a crush on?"
e) "You want more rum?"

All of which I was okay with answering. I'm not sure if they were expecting me to be an American prude, but they seemed fairly surprised/impressed when I answered honestly and rather graphically.

People in Ecuador stared at me a lot, and my immediate assumption was that it was because they couldn't figure out my gender. When I commented on this to Ecuadorian Friend, his response caught me off guard.

Ecuadorian Friend: Oh, they are staring at you because you are white.

Me: ...not because they can't figure out if I'm a boy or a girl?

Ecuadorian Friend: Probably they are not even thinking about that. It's strange to them to see someone so pale.

It was weird. I've never been on that end of racism, if "racism" is even the proper term for it. Not really racism...just being judged by my color. Yeah, I've never had that happen before. I'm used to being judged about my sexual orientation, gender identity, maturity level, and even my height. But not my race.

Granted, I'm pale even by Caucasian standards. I have about as much color as a sheet of blank paper, and if I'm out in the sun for more than three seconds, I get a sunburn. My friends have commented on it before, mostly childish jokes that I'm a vampire or a ghost. But I've never walked down the street and had dozens of heads turn in my direction for the sole reason that I look like I'm made of snow.

Although, to be fair, my skin color did get us into a scrape or two, and out of a few scrapes as well.

Within a day of me being in Ecuador, I was dubbed El Gringo ("the white boy") by Ecuadorian Friend and everyone we hung out with. I don't understand why...

Anyway, Ecuadorian Friend and I went out with two pals of his, one of whom was a modern-day hippie and the other of whom I didn't get to know very well. The four of us decided it would be a good idea to go bar hopping in downtown Quito and get royally hammered. The problem arose when Ecuadorian Friend and I decided to leave Modern Hippie and Other Friend to head for a nearby gay bar. I was excited to check out the LGBT scene in Quito, and Ecuadorian Friend (although rigidly straight) was interested in seeing what the gay bar was like. We were about five feet out the door of the last club we visited, heading in what we thought was the direction of the gay bar but in retrospect was probably just any old random way, when we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by five very threatening-looking people.

Apparently when you get mugged in Ecuador, you're supposed to let the muggers take what they want and not fight back, because muggers could potentially have knives/guns/weapons and that's the safest thing to do. Well, apparently a drunk Pete is a hell of a lot braver than a sober Pete. And also a hell of a lot stupider. When I saw one of the guys going for Ecuadorian Friend's wallet, what immediately went through my mind was NOT, as is logical, "Let him take it and we can get away safely." No. What went through my stupid brain was, "Ecuadorian Friend needs help! I need to save him!" And I grabbed the mugger by the arm and hauled him away from Ecuadorian Friend.

I'm not entirely sure why the muggers went for him and not me, considering that whenever anyone in Ecuador sees a gringo, the immediate assumption is that they have money. But whatever their reasoning for not paying attention to me before, I sure had their attention after that. Ecuadorian Friend had enough sense to haul me across the street and run for the nearest police car. Unfortunately, we were both inebriated enough that one of the muggers caught up with us easily and grabbed me by the throat.

Imagine a six-foot-two-inch tall grown man who clearly either works out or leads a rough street life (or both) attempting to strangle a five-foot-tall, drunk white (seemingly) "girl" who looks as though "she" is about 16 years old. Now imagine a just-as-small Ecuadorian kid who weighs even less than said "girl" pouncing on the mugger and hauling him off. That's what Ecuadorian Friend did for me.

After this incident, in which a nearby couple managed to flag down the nearest police car and the police failed to find all but one person involved, Ecuadorian Friend told me that none of his other friends would have done the same thing for him that I did. I got called a hero multiple times that night. Now, I can't deny that I like the attention. But I do wish Ecuadorian Friend would give himself some credit. I stopped someone from stealing his wallet; he stopped someone from strangling me. Sorry, Ecuadorian Friend, but I value my own life more than I value your wallet. You're a hero too, whether you like it or not.

On a more positive note, me being a gringo is also the reason that Ecuadorian Friend's car wasn't impounded.

We were going to the beach, and it's about a 9 hour drive from Quito to San Vicente, where we were planning to stay in an apartment with about a thousand other people. This was a holiday weekend, and the beach town we were in was packed. EVERYONE went to the beach for the four day long holiday weekend, and just about everyone was tipsy--if not all-out drunk--for the entire weekend.

There are certain hours of the day in Quito when certain cars are not supposed to be on the road. Due to the 9 hour trip ahead of us, Ecuadorian Friend, three other people, and I packed ourselves into the car and took off, regardless of the law. Needless to say, we hadn't been on the street even half an hour before we got pulled over. Ecuadorian Friend got out of the car to try and reason with las chapas (Ecuadorian slang for "cops") and try to keep them from impounding his car. One of the first things Ecuadorian Friend did was point me out to las chapas and repeat a lot, "Es para èl." ("It's for him.") It was explained that I was a gringo on vacation and the group was trying to show me a good time. Ecuadorian Friend succeeded in coaxing me out of the car, at which point las chapas got a good look at me, and it sunk in that I really was a gringo on vacation.

They wandered away from the car and whispered to each other for a few moments before approaching us again.

Five minutes later and with my wallet $80 lighter, we got a police escort to the nearest highway.

I haven't really enjoyed the beach since I was a child. I spent most of my childhood vacations being forcibly dragged to the beach by my mother when I would have much rather spent my time reading. My idea of vacation is relaxing. Books = relaxing to me. Therefore, me + books + free time = perfect! But no, instead I was trapped on a vast expanse of death sand, death sun, and death water, all my whining and complaints being either ignored or silenced. I usually either resigned to tears or ignoring my parents.

But this vacation was very different for me. Ecuadorian Friend had activities planned every single day. I barely had time to wind down, let alone work up the energy to complain about it. Which, it turns out, I wouldn't have anyway because I was astounded to find myself loving every moment of the excitement and chaos and noise.

I was relatively shocked to discover that I had one of the best times on the beach that I'd ever had in my life.

There were two things that tainted the beach. One was death. Seriously.

We were packing up to leave, just about getting ready to walk out the door, when one among our giant group of friends happened to glance out the window (our apartment was about 20 feet from the sand) and point out the crowd gathering down by the water. Naturally, curiosity got the best of us and we all had to cram ourselves against the window to see what was happening.

The friend who was hosting us in his apartment and his girlfriend headed down to the beach to see what was going on. Meanwhile, from the third floor window, the rest of us watched as two police officers attempted to interact with a very small, completely limp body. We saw the small, limp body being loaded into a fire truck and be raced off to (I assume) a hospital. Group of Friends and I were under the impression that it was a child that had been loaded into the fire truck, possibly a child who had drowned. Then Host Friend and Host Girlfriend came back and gave us the full story.

A 12-year-old boy who had come to the beach with his parents had gone too far out into the water. The parents had called the lifeguards. By the time the lifeguards arrived, the kid was nowhere to be found. The lifeguards went searching for the kid, with no result. Upon hearing this news, the kid's mother had fainted (that was who we saw being loaded into the fire truck). We saw a boat out in the water for a while, that had been sent to search for the kid, but it eventually came back to shore, presumably with no results.

I haven't heard anything about the kid since this incident, but the consensus among Group of Friends was that the boy had probably drowned. This threw a heavy blanket of solemnity over our last few hours at the beach. I, at least, was near to tears at having witnessed such an event.

So my vacation was undoubtedly the most interesting I've ever taken. I'm excited but also a little scared for the next time I go back to Ecuador, which is a necessity now that Ecuadorian Friend and I are working on starting our own business. Things could calm down a lot from the last time...but on the other hand, things could get just as hectic, or more so.

The other thing that tainted my beach experience also took place on our last day there. I was warned about 8,000 times not to drink the water. I was very careful not to. And then, as we were eating our breakfast and packing up to leave, Host Girlfriend presented us all with a big container of juice that she had made. We were all grateful, and several of us drank the juice eagerly. It wasn't until an hour or so later that we discovered that Host Girlfriend, upon finding out that we were out of bottled water, made the juice with water from the faucet instead.

So now I'm going to die of dysentery. This sucks. Death by velociraptor is the only acceptable way to die. I'll have to make sure that whoever puts my obituary in the paper lies and tells people instead that I died of being eaten by velociraptors.