how about a shoe shine?

This afternoon I ended up in the historic center of Quito in a quest for opera tickets. Unfortunately, the theatre box office was closed, but as we were already there, my friend Carrie and I decided to take advantage of the people shining shoes in the street. The boy shining my shoes asked if I wanted him to use the paste on my shoes, and I said yes. He then removes the shoe color powder and mixes three different colors to create brown to match my tall brown boots. He used the powder and clear paste and polishes my boots. After he finished, I looked down and noticed that the lower part of my boot--the part he polished--was now a lighter shade of brown than the upper part of my boots, which had not been polished. I now have nice clean, shiny boots that I will be re-polishing with my dark brown paste before I wear them again.