Failure

Growing up, failure was never a very welcomed word. I quickly learned here in Ecuador it was something I would have to get used to, along with the mosquitoes, rice and bats it would be a incessant obstacle. Not long ago during our Peace Corps Mid Service Conference we received a letter we had written to ourselves during the first week of training. I had mentioned I was elated and proud of myself because I was able to successfully exchange a notebook in my inadequate fragmented Spanish. Even then it was apparent that this journey would be wrought with failure, in turn the triumphs would be all the more glorious.

A few days ago I had as you may say, a “huge party foul.” It was the birthday of one of my many second moms here in town, so I decided to bake (obviously). I did not know a basic yellow cake recipe and decided to use my pineapple cake recipe, just leaving out the pineapple. Everything seemed to go relatively well until I flipped the cake out of the pan and realized it had been sitting lopsided while baking. I managed to bake a lopsided, unrisen, triangle cake. To make matters worse, my frosting was a bit too thin and it slid down the cake into a huge pool of icing surrounding the base. Well, if I was back at home this cake wouldn’t have gotten further than the trash can, but here I had to make due with what I had. I didn’t exactly have the option of running to the nearest bakery to pick one up as a plan B. So I headed to the neighbors, melting cake in tow. Though the cake was not aesthetically pleasing it brought us all together on the neighbors porch for an amusing birthday celebration. I guess it’s true, we must first fail before we succeed. What I first wrote off as an utter culinary disaster turned into an evening of laughter and celebration.