Today's word is... Salsa!

This past weekend was spent enjoying beautiful Quito. On Saturday we attended the birthday party of our host Mom Veronica. This had the facade of a simple, classy, boring dinner party. Complete with with Ramada Conference Room B level catering and awkward dry conversation, but that huge dance floor speaker in the corner belied more sinister intentions. And indeed once the plates were cleared and small talk fizzled out the music came on. And in a matter of about 10 minutes the house turned into a hot Latin dance club, hips in full swing. This vodka fueled dance party lasted until about 2AM and actually turned out to be much more fun than I had expected. My program director Maria showed up, and it turns out that she was the life of the party. A full on Latin mama, Maria was stomping those boots and swinging those hips long after most people had collapsed from exhaustion.

One thing about the party that really surprised me was just how stereotypically Latin everything was. I have to give kudos to American comedy shows, because they really are not far off on their Latin American impressions. The title of this post comes from a classic bit on the Colbert Report, where Stephen interviews his Latin-American counterpart, Esteban Colberto, host of the Reportero Colberto Gigante! And his character was pretty spot on, I would say 75% of the guys at the party looked and acted exactly like his impression. I didn't take any pictures from the party, as I didn't want to be that kid standing around snapping photos of other people dancing. So I've added a still from the Reportero Colberto Gigante to give you an idea of what the party looked like. For your reference I have included a link to the bit (Here).

The best facsimile of a picture from the party.