Depues de la entrada

Home sweet home. My first taste of Ecuadorian food was a bag of popcorn and some candy roasted peanuts in the Guayaquil bus station. Now my host mom offered some food, but I really wanted to lie down. I think it was just an offer anyhow. She had only woken up for the doorbell because the neighbor had been pounding for an hour. She showed me three open beds in the apartment behind the main house, I picked the best feeling mattress and made it home.

But I had to make it across this enclosure. Chispas territory.

I slept like death. The odd type of sleep that is so intensely relaxing yet with a wakeful sensitivity to each sound. My window and door were open; I prefer to sleep that way if it's not too cold at night.
I had never met the little girl that I was staying with. I didn't know that cute, 9 year-old Sonita sat down before school every morning at six fifteen in a seat at the breakfast table facing an open window directly across from mine and opened up her vocal chords at full throttle to dispute the necessity of breakfast. Sonia isn't much more subtle. This is a routine.
Somewhere there was an accordion playing, with guitar and spanish singing straining the speakers to their raspy, rattling limit. And somebody was moving around: a head in the window of a short, stout, black haired woman, pushing about, turning on machines, then disappearing. I could sleep some more....
"Arnold? Buenas dias. Tiene que encontrar...."
8:30am. Felt like noon. Must be time to go to work.