Ecuador 11/16/2019 - 12/1/2019 |
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Sunday, November 17, 2019 - Getting SettledAfter such a long day yesterday, we slept late to try to recover. We woke up at 9 a.m. feeling a bit sluggish from the altitude. It always takes us a couple of days to adjust, even after so many visits.Antonio had borrowed a motorbike from a friend for a month so that he could get back and forth to his job at Lake Cuicocha. He runs boats there five days per week. Taking taxis or camionetas is just too expensive twice a day. We heard him start up the bike and drive away as we got dressed. For breakfast, we had fried eggs, ham, cheese, bread, juice, and glorious COFFEE! There have been lots of changes since we were last here in January! The kitchen has a new tile floor and larger windows, and the counters and cabinets have been reconfigured. A fresh coat of cream-colored paint brightens up the walls. The children have all grown much taller (Sisa is almost as tall as Rosa)! Yupanqui now knows how to ride a bike. And Shina is reading and writing very well. Sisa's English is coming along nicely, and all 3 kids get a weekly English class in the community. The family now has 5 piglets (they sold Juanita the mother pig), and the piglets have a pen in the back yard. In sadder developments, Cachupin the family dog unfortunately passed away earlier this year. We miss him. El Señor Chipikins the cat came to greet us outside. I picked him up and noticed that he had a couple of puncture wounds on his back leg. It obviously hurt him when I touched his paw, and he was limping. Aida told us that yesterday he had gotten into a bit of a scrape with another cat (fighting over a mate). Especially with the news that Cachupin had passed away unexpectedly of an unknown ailment, we felt that we needed to do whatever we could to help Chipikins. He had responded surprisingly well when I had to give him a cold water rise after one of the kids had spilled juice on him several years ago, so there was at least a precedent. I cleaned his wounds the best I could and applied some antibiotic ointment. He handled it quite well and didn't scratch or bite me as I tended to his wounds. Hopefully he heals quickly. We spent some time getting settled in the casita, getting items out of storage bins and making the place our comfy home for the next 2 weeks. (Last night we went straight to bed without doing anything). Lunch was cauliflower soup with popcorn, pasta with litle bits of beef and chicken and veggies, and guayaba juice. We had made a photo book of our trip to the Galapagos with Sisa this past January. We wrote the captions in English to help them to practice. We presented the book to the family and they read through it. Sisa was very happy to see these memories preserved. We gave the kids gifts from our recent Australia trip: a football jersey for Yupanqui and T-shirts for the girls. The kids broke out a memory/concentration game that German tourists had given to the family in July. The pictures on the tiles were sights from Dusseldorf. It was pretty challenging, as many of the photos looked similar. We came up with funny mnemonics for some of them based on what they resembled (Millennium Falcon, igloo, etc.) The kids were much better at it than we were (though they do tend to cheat a bit). We were especially impressed by Shina, given her visual disability. She has a great memory and attention to detail. Sisa laughed and brought up a memory from the Galapagos: we were ordering drinks at a restaurant, and the guys all ordered Pilsener beer. When it was her turn to order, she pounded her fist on the table and confidently ordered "Pilsener!" before stating that she was just kidding and really wanted a Coke. I got my computer and we watched videos we had made: Sisa in the Galapagos, Sonam Tshering visiting Morochos in January 2018, Craig and I visiting Sonam Tshering and Sonam Choki in Perth Australia, and Craig and I skydiving in Puerto Rico. Abuelita, Antonio's elderly mother, tended her fire in her outdoor kitchen. El Señor Chipikins joined her, enjoying the warmth of the fire as the day became cooler. Antonio got home in time for dinner. We had chard soup (Sisa looked up the word in English for us, as we didn't know the Spanish word that they were saying) with popcorn, along with chicken, pasta, lentils, and rice. Everyone was tired after our late arrival last night so we retired to our respective rooms at 8:30. Heavy rain overnight resulted in a single stream of water dripping from the ceiling between our room and our bathroom. Craig put down towels to wipe up the drips on the tile floor, and he placed the trash barrel under the drip, a strategy which successfully contained the dripping water. |
 Breakfast: Craig, Yupanqui, Rosa, Shina, and Sisa  Yupanqui models his Australian soccer jersey  Playing a memory game: Shina, Sisa, and Yupanqui  Abuelita and El Se&ntlide;or Chipikins warm themselves by the fire See all photos from November 17 |
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