Ecuador 11/16/2019 - 12/1/2019 |
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Friday, November 22, 2019 - Working Remotely, Ashley, Kelly, and Elian VisitToday I woke up at 6 a.m., as a charity auction for an afternoon with Michael Palin in Greenwich, England was ending. We still didn't have power, but I was able to use the 3G on my phone to put in a final bid just under the wire. Unfortunately, though as expected, I was outbid.We got up and I wasn't sure how I would be able to work today without internet. Rosa couldn't call their internet provider because she was out of phone minutes. So she went to Cotacachi to buy more minutes. Luckily, I was able to work using my 3G connection until service was restored. Aida made us breakfast: fried eggs, hot dogs, fries, bread, cheese, ham, and coffee. We weren't able to have juice because they couldn't run the blender. The power came back on, but still no internet. The kids came home from school, joined by Ashley and Kelly, as well as Elian, the 4 year old son of Aida's half sister Cecilia. His mom had to take his little brother to the doctor, so the family babysat him. We had last seen him when he was an infant, and he still has the huge inquisitive eyes he had then. He was not shy at all, and we had fun playing with all six kids. The internet came back in name only; it was still virtually unusable. I relied on my 3G to work and join meetings. For lunch we had soup, potatoes, corn on the cob, fava beans, beef, and juice. The kids had fun playing together. Sisa lined everybody up by height and we took some amusing photos. Cecilia came to pick up Elian, and she brought their adorable puppy Scotty (with their accented Spanish, they pronouce it "Escotty", and at first I thought they were calling him "Biscotti", which actually would be a pretty cute name for a puppy). The kids ran around the yard and Scotty enjoyed chasing them. We then rolled a soccer ball and he chased it, eventually catching it and rolling over it, and often snarling and barking at it in his tiny puppy growl. Ashley and Kelly are getting quite comfortable with us, and they hug us often. Craig and I took a siesta in the room, and the internet finally came back after about 23 hours. When Antonio returned home from work, he told us that it had been sabotage; that someone had cut the wires coming from the antenna on the mountain. It takes a while to access the location, which accounted for the long outage. Sometimes you just can't make this stuff up. For dinner we had chicken soup, breaded fried eggplant, broccoli, rice, and melloco in cream sauce and juice. The man who usually stays overnight at Lake Cuicocha as a watchman had another obligation tonight, so Antonio and Yupanqui took the moto up there and spent the night. We went back to the casita and Sisa sent us a photo of Shina in the laundry basket. We replied with a photo of Craig with our laundry basket on his head. We could picture the girls giggling up a storm when they saw that. |
 Playing with the cousins  Yupanqui and Antonio preparing to spend the night at the lake See all photos from November 22 |
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