Faith.Hope.Love.: Ecuadorian Breakfast Club

So, as everyone well knows, the longstanding Breakfast Club tradition held on game-day Saturdays at Purdue University is a favorite pasttime of mine...one could even go so far as to say it is a cherished passion in my heart. Dressing up in homemade costumes, waking up at 6 in the morning to stand in line, getting all messy dancing around in Where Else? and then bar hopping until getting kicked out of Jakes when "normal" customers begin arriving around 11am., I have very fond fond memories of those Saturday mornings. So, when walking to work on various Saturday and Sunday mornings at 7a.m., I noticed that a local little tienda called Viveres Lorena hosted some sort of crab breakfast, and there were often people visibly drinking outside on the sidewalk. I thought, "bingo!", there is my Breakfast Club location. I had already brought beer pong to Ecuador, or at least to José, and thought it was time to move on to a bigger challenge. Unfortunately I have a very small pool of people to inform here in good ol' Quito Sur, so I ended up only peaking the interest of four other people. That did not stop my dream!

We arrived at Viveres Lorena at 7:15 in the morning (without los disfraces, or costumes), and promptly had a bowl of crab broth with a crab sitting on top, set in front of us. I ordered the one 24 oz. beer, which we all split. Unbeknownst to me, everyone who came with me actually had other plans for that Saturday which they had to attend to after our breakfast, and could therefore not partake in some friendly chupando, or a slang term for drinking (it really means sucking, but in certain context it is used to say drink some beers). I was sadly disappointed by the amount of meat in the crab, because their wasn't much, but it was my first time eating a crab and therefore my first time whacking the crab with the little mallet, which is super fun and a totally redeeming quality of eating a crab! The crab boil that Viveres Lorena has every weekend is called "una cangrejada", el cangrejo is spanish for crab. I could probably have done without the "caldo de cangrejo", or crab broth, because it was filled with conchas, or mussels (I think), and I am not very fond of those. All in all my "Ecuadorian Breakfast Club"only met one of several requirements to actually be considered Breakfast Club. That is, I taught my fellow BClubbers to play a card game called Screw The Dealer, which is an extremely easy game that can be played with large groups of people and in loud settings, which makes it perfect for bar scenes. Costumes, no. 5 a.m. wakeup call, no. Drinking, no. Loud, noisy bar scene with 80s music and crazy dancing, no. Laughing, yes. Card game, yes. Good times with friends, yes. I guess it met more than one requirement afterall! See photos below:

Outside of Vivires Lorena. Lorena, the store owner, is sitting on a stool just inside the door, like always. I have chatted with Lorena a couple of times. She told me the weekend before there had been a Gringo (white male) at the cangrejada. Unfortunately, she had no other details to share with me, so he is now "mystery Gringo". I think the lady serving crabs is her sister, and the little boy in the green sweatshirt is that lady's son.