Mayor´s birthday (AKA municipal holiday)

I came into the office yesterday expecting to work the entire day. I had a full day of stuff to do, from making a poster board for a community banks presentation to transplanting some basil to visiting with presidents of the neighborhoods, I barely had time to eat lunch.

After giving a speech to 120 high schoolers and watering my garden, I walked into the municipality at 9:30 and my coworker handed me an invitation to the mayor´s birthday party.

It was supposed to be a surprise for the mayor, but it was just as much of a surprise to me. The invitation said the party was at 9:00 yesterday morning. Well, it was already 9:30 but operating on the hora Ecuatoriana, we were about a half hour early.

I thought that this was nice. Maybe we´ll go eat some cake and hang out for a couple hours, maybe even get the morning off work.

Then my coworker asked me if I was getting in the bus outside to take us to the party.

Wait!

We´re not just doing a little cake thing in the office. We have party bus. We took a bus to a touristic site with a pool and petting farm on the outskirts of town.

Before boarding the bus, I had to run back in the office to pick up my backpack and realized that all of the offices in the building were closed. When I boarded the bus, I saw that the entire municipal staff had checked out and boarded the party bus.

The municipality had shut down to celebrate the mayor´s birthday.

We arrived at the tourist site at about 10:30 and sat around for about four hours before the mayor or anybody else arrived. No one told me about this, so I didn´t bring my swimming trunks. I offered to play cards with some of my coworkers but they were simply interested in doing nothing.

Then, at about 2:00, they started lunch - goat meat. So I loaded up on some rice and yuca. Then the Pilsener came out. Some of my coworkers started singing boleros and love songs. By now it was 3:30 and I decided that as much as I love these ridiculous parties, I actually have some work to get done.

So I left the party and went about my day - I wanted to try a new irrigation strategy in my garden and get the materials for my presentation. The municipality was completely closed and I couldn´t get into the office, but, because I have the key to the nursery, no one can keep me out of there. So I did what I could and called it a week.

This morning, I met up with some of my coworkers to go give the presentation, and they said that they were dancing all night long. With meant that not only did this party shut down city hall, but aht it also lasted upwards of 12 hours.