Shopping, Field Service, y mas…

It is a little different getting into the groove of things without anyone local here to take us around.  I think normally if we were here, Rose would be helping us with when and where to meet for service, find stuff we need, etc.  Without her we are relying on our American neighbors (Ben & Sheila) and also Jill Ankerstein, who lives about 15min away in Ibarra.  However, we are trying not to overwhelm them too much with all of our questions, so mostly we end up sort of figuring a lot of things out on our own.  But we’re getting along ok; in fact, sometimes I think it’s actually kind of fun to wander around and be forced to fumble through our Spanish to ask people for info.  The hard part is making sense of the response! 

It is, however, a little ridiculous how long it takes to buy the simple and normal things.  When you go to the store, you end up finding what you think you want, but then you need to look up and translate all of the other words that happen to be on the label just to make sure there isn’t something about it that might be completely NOT what you want.  Case in point, I’m looking for rubbing alcohol at the pharmacy for Sam.  First I had to go through every single aisle of the store to not find it. Then I have to track someone down to ask about it.  Unfortunately, there is no translation for ‘rubbing’ in my dictionary, but the word alcohol worked and a nice lady clerk pointed me in the general direction of where it was (I didn’t have a clue what the accompanied verbal directions were).  I found the one shelf in the store that I hadn’t looked at thoroughly on my first pass and there they were, a whole bunch of different alcohols, most of which said ‘antiseptico’, but NONE of which said anything like ‘rubbing’.  Hmm, so I sat there with my dictionary for 10 minutes looking up every stinking word on every one of the different bottles.  Still none of them translated to anything near ‘rubbing’.  I gave up and just brought one home – Sam never said anything so I guess it was ok.  You can imagine how long it takes to shop when you pretty much go through some rendition of that experience for every item you are looking for.

Speaking of shopping, it seems to me that the styles are a little different here than home.  I took this picture below when I was at the little (and only) Plaza mall in Ibarra.  I don’t know a single straight guy on the planet who would wear these pink-ish underwear/shorts/whatever they are things but they sure were advertising them like they were the bomb.  Who knows, maybe I’m just old and don’t get it (you know, 25 is pretty old).

Well, on Wednesday we finally made it out in service!  What a blast.  First of all, they don’t always meet at the hall here.  This particular day, they were meeting at a local park across the street from a church about 6 blocks or so from our place.  I got rough directions from a local elder on the phone and we set off on foot.  When we had walked about 10 minutes (up the hill mind you) and weren’t seeing a park I thought maybe I misunderstood the directions en Espanol.  We figured the service day was shot but kept walking a little further anyway.  Eventually we crested the hill to a flat area and there they were, sure enough on a couple park benches just finishing up.  I was hoping that there would be someone there who spoke English (there are several in the cong), but nope, not today.  So, our first day in service here and we were being thrown in the fire – Spanish territory, with Spanish-only speaking brothers & sisters, and not even any Spanish literature on us (sans the Spanish bibles we brought).  The 18 yr old brother conducting arranged for Sam to work with a sister named Norma and I worked with him (Abraham).  We set off again on foot, this time even further up the hill, and started knocking on doors.  Abraham didn’t speak any English but it actually worked out pretty good.  I would try to tell him something in my horrendous Spanish, and when he eventually would figure out what I was trying to tell him, he would then tell me how to say it correctly.  Between this and him teaching me a short presentation to offer the magazines and tracts, I ended up with an intense 2 hour Spanish lesson.  My head hurt by the time we finished up around 10:30a.  On the other hand, the territory was pretty close to what we were expecting, which was really cool!  We were soon off the cobblestone-esque street and walking dirt roads and driveways.  Lots of dogs, although none of them seemed to bother us any more than barking at us.  Chickens and cows were the norm.  We came across one woman who was washing her family’s clothes in a stream next to the road.  Apparently this is normal! (I tried to use this as an opportunity to help Sam understand how good she has it with a washing machine, but I could tell by her reaction that she was not getting my point)  Here are some pics:

     

On Monday we needed to hand off our visa paperwork to the brother who is the branch rep in Quito.  So, we took the bus down there, a couple hours ride for $2.50 each, and met up with his wife at their home.  Nelly, the brother’s wife, met us, as well as her son.  Nelly had a couple cute dogs like Corrie Ferguson’s in Redmond. Her son is from Cuenca (in Ecuador) and serves in the Chinese group there.  Here are some pics of the dogs, Corrie!

Afterwards we went to visit Josue & Jania Fontanez in nearby Tumbaco.  Kim Salee, who is from Redmond Spanish, is staying with them for a couple months so we got to see her too.  Tumbaco and Cumbaya, the next town over, are basically the rich areas and have really nice restaurants.  Ahh, it was so nice to be at a decent restaurant!  I didn’t pick the best dish but enjoyed the wine and tasted Kim’s chicken – that's what I should have ordered!  The next day, we went to the same area and had an awesome breakfast for about $12.  This is the only place so far that the coffee has been really good – definitely the best cappuccino I’ve had in a long time!  So I had two.

 

Sam has really gotten into the cooking thing here.  She’s been using a blender to chop up tomatoes, garlic, onions, etc, either to make salsa or just to put it in jars for cooking later.  Today she got a wild hair and picked a whole bunch of hot red peppers called ‘aji’ that Rose has growing in her garden outside the house.  She chopped them up in her Magic Bullet blender, added some stuff, and now we have some seriously spicy picante sauce!  The first batch she made easily rivals the ‘meet the man’ sauce back home (yeah Jonah, you need to try this stuff!).  She toned the 2nd batch down and we gave some to the neighbors and Jill.  Here is a pic of her in her spice-making-loco-glory…

BTW, following up the last post, here are some pics of Rose’s house where we’re staying.  This is NOT the norm here…

That’s it for now…look forward to hearing from you all.  Hopefully, I can get Sam to write some stuff soon so you can get her perspective, not just mine…Ciao!

Good start

After months of preparation, including a ridiculously frantic last couple of days packing that stretched all the way to an hour and a half before we had to leave for the airport (3:15am), we made it to the airline check-in!  Somehow we managed to pack a 2 bedroom 1 car garage townhouse into 4 suitcases of 70 lbs each.  It just so happens that there’s a luggage embargo and we can’t even buy more space on the plane for additional luggage.  I hope Keith, Chelsa, and a couple others who are planning to visit soon don’t change their mind, otherwise we won’t be seeing any of the stuff in the other 3 suitcases we left behind (ok, so we packed the house into 7 suitcases, not 4)!  So, despite the 1 1/2 hours of sleep, we made it to the airport on time, all 3 flights were on time, and next thing you know we’re in Ecuador – home sweet home for the next year or so.  I thought we might have to find a place to stay in Quito since we arrived so late in the evening, but a sister here was able to get a brother that she didn’t even personally know pick us up from the airport and drive us the 2 hours from Quito to Atuntaqui (thanks Jill and Roberto!).  When you’re packing 4 large suitcases, 2 small ones, and a couple backpacks, along with 3 people in a typical little car here – it gets kind of tight.  We did the drive with my knees jammed in the dash and seatback all the way forward in the front passenger seat and Sam smashed against the door by the suitcases in the back seat.  We actually managed to get in a little sleep in those contorted positions.  Between the lack of sleep the previous nights, though, and the altitude (over 9,000 feet) I had a raging headache when we arrived – nothing that finally getting a decent sleep wouldn’t cure.

I have to tell you that we feel so fortunate to be staying in Rose Cyrus’ house right now.  Her house is one of the nicest we’ve been in in this country between both trips.  It’s a comfortable, modern oasis in the middle of an often dirty, typical developing country.  When we’ve ventured outside and ridden the crazy buses or walked around the town dodging dog and cow bombs on the sidewalks (cows can make a seriously large mess on a sidewalk) or get engulfed in the black smoke and nauseating smell of exhaust from a passing diesel smoke factory (aka bus) while walking down the street…there is this huge sense of relief that comes over you when you walk in the front door into a CLEAN home that is modern and decorated and comfortable just like what you might have in the States (will take more pics later – the one below shows a little of the house).  Maybe its a crutch – I don’t care, its helping us break into this place a little more softly.  I hope that whatever we find to rent is at least somewhat similar to this one. 

There are lots of reasons that it is inexpensive to live here in Ecuador.  One is the cost of food.  We went to the SuperMaxi the next day in Ibarra (next town up), which is usually the more expensive place to buy stuff (compared to the local market) and we still walked away with a ton of food for a fraction of what it would have cost in the US.  Sam was so impressed that she had to take a picture after we had spread it all out on the counter.  This will last us for a month!  QFC eat your heart out!  (sorry Mike :) )  Oh yeah, and the market!  We went to the market yesterday and Sam bought three huge bags full of fruit and veggies for $9…just crazy!  Here are a couple pics of the market.

Afterwards, a bunch of us gringos packed into a sister’s Jetta Ecuadorian style – EIGHT of us…NOT Ecuadorian size though…

(Sam was taking the picture and afterwards piled on top of us in the backseat)

Our Spanish improvement is starting to pick up a little already in just the 5 or 6 days of being here.  As you would expect, seeing and hearing it all around us is having its positive impact.  On the other hand, the discouraging part about this learning process comes when you know the Spanish words for what you want to say, you actually say them exactly how you know they should be said, and the person you’re talking to just stands there and looks at you like you’re a Martian.  Que?  Ok, maybe I just didn’t enunciate well enough…lets try again.  Nope, same deal, still a Martian.  So, with a dejected sigh you resort to the usual hand signals, grunts, finger counting, and nods to communicate.  How long is this gonna take, anyway?

That’s all for now – will add more pics on the next post – things have been too crazy to take many pics so far… :(  We miss everyone and look forward to hearing from you…email us!