DAY 15: My morning started as always: getting out of bed to take a piss. However, this day it was different. In the center of the bathroom, atop a small drain gate, were three turds.

"Uh, pienso Cometa hace una cosa en el baño", I said to Blanca making breakfast in the kitchen.

"Ay! Es Tina, el gato!"

While she went to get a broom and a dustpan, Arne woke up for his morning piss. I banged on the door to warn him.

"Que?"

I pointed at the turds.

"Oh."

IT WAS MONDAY, the third day of a three-day weekend in honor of La Dia de los Muertes, or The Day of the Dead. Unlike the big street parades of Mexico, La Dia de los Muertes in Ecuador is a quieter affair, an opportunity for people to go to the cemetaries to visit their loved ones and have picnics on their grave plots, so they can share a meal in spirit. Should I ever be buried in Ecuador, I'd like a surf and turf platter, please. Oh, and an order of that Bloomin' Onion thing from Outback steakhouse.

To some people La Dia de los Muertes was a sacred day, but I discovered that to most people, La Dia de los Muertes simply translated to "The Day I Don't Have to Go to Work." And what else is there to do on such a day? Go away to the beach for three days, or go shopping.

QUITO IS A GREAT PLACE. I mean, where else can you go riding down the side of the tallest active volcano in the world one day, and the next day hang out in a modern mall amongst alienated youth? Not even in New Jersey I can tell you.

I walked down to the Mall El Jardin, just a ten minute walk from mi casa. With the city practically empty, there was little air pollution and a nice change for my lungs.

Mall El Jardin (picture above) is more or less your basic modern American mall, complete with the stores no mall can do with out: Cinnabon, GNC and Radio Shack. Well, we could do without GNC but definitely not Radio Shack. Anyway, I went to a small bookstore to buy an Ingles/Español dictionary and found one for just $3.70. Of course I only had a new twenty dollar bill on me and the woman just stared at me with this disappointed look in her face, like I had thrown a bright red sock in her laundry's white load. She picked up the phone and made a call like I was a wanted criminal -- "It's another one of those punks with a twenty dollar bill" -- and had to leave the store to get my change.

I WANDERED AROUND THE MALL'S THREE LEVELS, and discovered that there was a supermarket called SuperMaxi. It was just like any old supermarket in the States, only with a much bigger Spanish section. I blended right in with my Latino façade -- no one gave me the kind of stares that someone like Arne would get -- and I simply bought some supplies with no problem. I was even able recognize when the cashier asked me if I had a frequent shopper card.

NO MALL IS COMPLETE WITHOUT A FOOD COURT, and no food court is complete without a Taco Bell. There was also a Pizza Hut and the obligatory salad/sandwich places run by people who most likely hated their jobs.

The smell from KFC beaconed me the way an animated odor does in a cartoon, and I couldn't resist but go there. I managed to order -- in Spanish -- two pieces of chicken, fries, a Pepsi and a cookie. This was extremely easy to do as it only required me to say, "Uh...combo dos, por favor."

As I ate, the original recipe was a bit bland, and I figured Colonel Sanders probably had some customs problems exported all eleven of his secret herbs and spices.

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL DAY OUTSIDE and I intentionally got lost in unfamilar neighborhoods. No one was around and I almost felt like the guy in that Twilight Zone episode. Unlike that guy, my glasses didn't break -- but my bowels did. I walked like a robot trying to get my ass to "reverse swallow" it all, but luckily I was in the vicinty of the South American Explorers clubhouse and dropped my load off there.

Membership definitely has its privelages.

THE REST OF THE DAY was pretty boring. I just wandered around like a sophomore with nothing to do on a college campus. I ran into the two Danish blondes from the volcano trip, and Navid as always. For dinner, Blanca made a mashed potato loaf thing -- it looks exactly as you picture it -- stuffed with chicken and vegetables.

I was pretty exhausted after dinner and just passed out on my bed while doing my homework.