Ecuador 11/16/2019 - 12/1/2019 |
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Monday, November 18, 2019 - Working Remotely, Sisa's English ClassToday I worked remotely. I woke up at 8 a.m. and went over to the main house. The kids had already let for school. I climbed the stairs to the second floor. The door to the spare room which doubles as my office was closed. I opened it to find El Señor Chipikins sleeping on one of the beds. I got settled at a small table. Chipikins was happy to see me and purred, touched his nose to mine, and sat on my lap while I worked. The wounds on Chipikins' back leg look much better this morning, and he is putting more weight on the leg than he was yesterday.For breakfast we had oat and egg pancakes, guayaba yogurt, ham, cheese, scrambled eggs with veggies, strawberry juice, and coffee. Antonio has Mondays and Tuesdays off, so he was home today. The kids got home from school, and we had lunch: soup, steak, rice, potatoes, and veggies. After lunch, Yupanqui went to a homework group at the community center. Aida took Sisa to English class in Ibarra. I finished up work and then helped Shina with her math homework (grouping by hundreds, tens, and ones). I love helping with homework, as I am trained as an early childhood educator. It is a challeng, however, for me to try to explain mathematical concepts in my limited Spanish. But together we finished the homework and Shina thanked me Yupanqui returned home from the community center. His remaining homework was to build a house out of cardboard. He was uninterested in the project and refused to participate. We thought it was sad that this assignment, which we would expect to be any little boy's dream homework, couldn't capture his attention/interest. Antonio, Aida, and Rosa pitched in to do the work on his behalf. We were sitting outside and saw a small animal run by. It turns out that it was one of the family's 5 piglets. Rosa was bringing them from the front garden to their pen out back to protect them from the rain. Rosa ran by a few seconds later, followed by the other 4 piglets. We followed her out back to the pig pen. She put a large dish of food in the pen, then extracted the runt of the litter and let it eat from its own bowl outside. It needed more food and less competition from its larger siblings. The pigs were wearing rope harnesses. The end of the rope gets tied to stakes when the piglets are outside their pen. Inside the pen, the rope trails behind them and gets dirty and tangled, so Rosa wrapped the length of rope loosely around each piglet's abdomen and tucked the end in so that it won't unwind. She took an old metal gate and leaned it against the door opening of the pen. She used a log to prop up the gate, and then used a cement block to prevent it from slipping if the pigs try to escape. Shina came out and asked if we wanted to play and then took Craig's hand and led him into the kitchen because he didn't have his cane. She is being very cuddly, especially with Craig. We played the memory card game with Yupanqui and Shina. Yupanqui tried to cheat by surreptitiously peeking under a corner of a card, but Shina was not going to have it. She slapped his hand as he attempted to peek, and he withdrew his hand as if he had touched something hot. I had caught this on camera, and we all got a lot of entertainment watching it back on a loop. Sisa and Aida came home and told us the news that in January, Sisa will go to Quito for an English placement exam. She is the top student in her class, and her teachers think that she may be better served by studying at a higher level. We are so proud of her! For dinner, we had carrot soup, chicken, salad, melloco, and rice. We had brought a big jar of Chinese pepper sauce from home, as we know that Rosa likes to add spice to her food. Even Antonio and Aida now swear by the stuff! Rosa usually makes her own aji (pepper sauce) from home grown peppers, but their pepper bush won't produce any more until March! The kids call black pepper "pepper for kids" and aji pepper sauce "pepper for adults." Chipikins sat on the bench next to Craig while we ate, eyeing his plate. That cat is such a character! Soon after dinner, we all went to bed. |
 Achi Taita and Shina When your little sister smacks you down for cheating  Dinner: Craig, Yupanqui, Aida, Shina, and Sisa See all photos from November 18 |
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