Gloria Uyaguari, Evelyn’s favorite Spanish teacher, requires her students to write a diary in Spanish. Evelyn takes private Spanish lessons twice a week at Gloria’s home. Here’s a recent page from Evelyn’s Spanish diary: 29 de Marzo, el sábado Gloria y Adrian nos invitaron a su casa de campo cerca de San Bartolomé a recoger […]
Cooking Made Easy
[Update Aug 24, 2014: I have just been told that this Instant Pot can be bought at the SuperStock on Las Americas in Cuenca.] In 2002, it seemed that I should learn to cook. I won’t go into the whole story here, but there were tears — of WTH, joy and laughter — in the […]
Honey, I Shrunk The Condo
More than a year after we started packing to move to Ecuador, and four months after arriving in Ecuador, our container with all our worldly possessions was delivered today! And somehow, the condo suddenly looks a lot smaller than it did this morning, now that it is buried deep in boxes… ☺ Our container actually […]
I Could Feel The Soap Melting…
I could feel the soap melting in my ears, after the vicious attack of el diablillos (aka “the little devils”) as we wandered into an unexpected battle zone. Carnaval had begun! ☺ Evelyn had seen some barricades going up earlier today on Parque Calderon. After dinner at Cesar’s (a friend’s restaurant around the corner that […]
30 Days of Madness
The last night of election campaigning included several fireworks displays, including this one shot from our living room window. Ecuador has an interesting election cycle — I think the USA could learn something from their process. Nobody is allowed to campaign until 30 days before the election. All campaigning must stop 48 hours before the […]
Opening Bank Account
We now have an Ecuadorian saving account, which gives us a Debit Card and online ability to pay Ecuadorian vendors, as well as the ability for free ATM cash access. There are a few bloggers that have detailed how to go about this in the past, so we had a pretty good idea of what […]
Volcano Erupts
Volcano erupts (image courtesy El Mercurio newsaper) Truck in our parking lot with fine layer of volcanic ash We lived in Beaverton, Oregon in 1980 when Mt St. Helens erupted. We could see the eruption from our house, and ash covered the town several times over the following weeks. Today we had a small […]
Vilcabamba
We took the bus to Loja, and then a taxi to Vilcabamba for a few days this past week. We have heard quite a lot about the area and decided we wanted to check it out. As is common on inter-city busses in Ecuador, the driver put a DVD on for entertainment. Usually it […]
Our Life in a Box
Our container was loaded today in Berkeley, and will now work its way towards our new home in Cuenca. It is both a relief, and a bit humbling to see everything we own fit in little more than half a 20 foot shipping container… Either way though, our life in Ecuador is starting to more […]
Earthquake!
I have lived in earthquake zones in California for most of my life. I have felt many quakes in that time, including the Loma Prieta quake of 1989 that did major damage in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tonight, sitting in my office in Cuenca, Ecuador, I felt the chair start to rock. I paused […]
