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| Welcome home gift for Kate (ssh, it's a surprise) |
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| A "Welcome" sign in Otavalo (written in Queshua, indigenous language that Annalise and Emmett are learning in school) |
Thursday, September 29, 2016
La Ronda pictures
La Ronda is the street surrounding the colonial Central Plaza in Quito
A few days in Guadelupe pictures
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| Emmett, Annalise and friends playing at the river |
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| Salome, Annalise and Emmett crossing the footbridge over the big river on the way to the swim river |
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| Mercedes, the women who teaches Kate and Annalise how to bead jewelry, braided Annalise's hair |
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| Church decorated for St. Teresita Novena prayers |
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| Salome likes to braid Annalise's hair |
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| Emmett, Salome and Annalise at the river swimming |
a few days in Guadalupe
Kate has returned to Tacoma and we very much miss her. The routine of school, playing and church helps, though. The week started with a bang. On Monday evening, two extremely loud firecrackers went off very close to our apartment. We've grown accustomed to how different life is here from home and while the firecrackers were startling, I was not surprised. Walking to the river the next day, Emmett and Annalise's eleven year old friend, Salome, answered my question about the loud noise from the night before. The firecrackers are part of the celebration of St. Teresita. St. Teresita is the patron saint of the Hermanas Teresita, the order of nuns living and working at the Catholic mission. We are in the midst of a nine days of Novena prayers. On Tuesday night, Annalise and I went to the service at the smaller church located in the center of Guadalupe. Emmett played soccer with his buddies in the "concha", or enclosed athletic court, also located in the center of town. During the service Annalise sat with Salome and some girlfriends and I sat nearby. Of course, there were prayers and music. A Sister (nun) spoke about the challenges for girls and young women living in Africa, where she also served as a missionary. I am grateful that Annalise has the opportunity to live and feel welcomed among devout women who are committed to their community, family and service. The church was filled with mostly women and Sister Julia presided over the service. Salome was among many who recited prayers during the service. The church was filled with many familiar faces and women whom we interact with regularly: two shopkeepers, Angelita (who cooks lunch for us) sang in the choir and the women who Kate works with at the mission clinic. Before the service church music on loudspeakers which could be heard throughout the center of town (this music can be heard during the first video of Emmett playing soccer). On the next night the choir guitarist played some music at the concha while socializing and watching the local boys play soccer. I am grateful that the community of Guadalupe warmly accepts us
Sunday, September 25, 2016
La Ronda
On Friday night we went down to La Ronda, a famous street in old town Quito that houses work space for lots of artisans, and that comes alive with music and restaurants on weekend nights. It is kind of a hot spot for going out on weekends, and we wanted to see what it was like.
The thing about old town Quito is that it has looked very much the same for hundreds of years. It is apparently the most well-preserved Spanish colonial old town in the world. For that reason, it is a UNESCO world heritage site. You can walk around and almost imagine people in colonial clothes walking around. It's pretty great.
We got hungry and had dinner at a restaurant in La Ronda. We decided to go for some traditional Ecuadorean food. John and I ordered stewed goat with rice and potatoes, and the kids had the most enormous cheese empanada in the world. It was the empanada that ate New York.
I also ordered a traditional hot drink called "morocho," which is slightly sweet and made of milk and soft corn. It was a little bit like drinking thin rice pudding -- it was pretty good.
The kids got a traditional form of hot chocolate that was to die for -- nice and thick and chocolatey, but not overly sweet. It was a really fun evening.
And here are a few more shots of old town Quito -- just to give you the flavor of it. It is famous for incredibly ornate churches (in many of which you are not allowed to take photos).
The thing about old town Quito is that it has looked very much the same for hundreds of years. It is apparently the most well-preserved Spanish colonial old town in the world. For that reason, it is a UNESCO world heritage site. You can walk around and almost imagine people in colonial clothes walking around. It's pretty great.
We got hungry and had dinner at a restaurant in La Ronda. We decided to go for some traditional Ecuadorean food. John and I ordered stewed goat with rice and potatoes, and the kids had the most enormous cheese empanada in the world. It was the empanada that ate New York.
I also ordered a traditional hot drink called "morocho," which is slightly sweet and made of milk and soft corn. It was a little bit like drinking thin rice pudding -- it was pretty good.
The kids got a traditional form of hot chocolate that was to die for -- nice and thick and chocolatey, but not overly sweet. It was a really fun evening.
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| La Ronda at night |
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| Spanish colonial architecture |
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| Now a museum, this building functioned as a hospital for 450 years |
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| The chapel inside the old hospital |
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| This hill is called "El Panecillo," or the little loaf of bread |
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| Old Quito rooftops |
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| One of many churches in Old Town |
Soccer in the park
This week in Quito has been a nice change of pace -- we do love the quiet and slowness of our life in Guadalupe, but shaking it up with some fast-paced city action can be fun too.
One of the things we have been doing this week in Quito is some more Spanish school. Wed - Fri mornings we spent 3 hours each day in private Spanish lessons at Beraca Spanish School, where we studied Spanish in July and August. We really like the staff and teachers there.
One afternoon, John's teacher Patricio, and Emmett's teacher Vinicio, met us in the Parque de Carolina to play some soccer. It was quite the match! Carolina is in the middle of the city, with about 15 small turf soccer fields that anyone can use. John and Emmett had a great time running around.
They even scored a sweet goal together. GOOOOAAAAAL!
Emmett absolutely loves his Spanish teacher, Vinicio, and he was a very happy guy (with turf smeared on his face) to be able to play some ball with him.
Meanwhile, Annalise gets tired of watching soccer, so she played on the playground at Carolina.
I am often struck by how different urban life is from rural life -- it is true everywhere all over the world, and no less so here in Ecuador. It's very cool to be able to experience and enjoy both perspectives of Ecuadorean life.
One of the things we have been doing this week in Quito is some more Spanish school. Wed - Fri mornings we spent 3 hours each day in private Spanish lessons at Beraca Spanish School, where we studied Spanish in July and August. We really like the staff and teachers there.
One afternoon, John's teacher Patricio, and Emmett's teacher Vinicio, met us in the Parque de Carolina to play some soccer. It was quite the match! Carolina is in the middle of the city, with about 15 small turf soccer fields that anyone can use. John and Emmett had a great time running around.
They even scored a sweet goal together. GOOOOAAAAAL!
Emmett absolutely loves his Spanish teacher, Vinicio, and he was a very happy guy (with turf smeared on his face) to be able to play some ball with him.
Meanwhile, Annalise gets tired of watching soccer, so she played on the playground at Carolina.
I am often struck by how different urban life is from rural life -- it is true everywhere all over the world, and no less so here in Ecuador. It's very cool to be able to experience and enjoy both perspectives of Ecuadorean life.
Back in Quito
We have been back in Quito (the bustling capital city of Ecuador) this week, working on getting our more long term visas. Since I am volunteering at a Catholic mission clinic, we qualify for "missionary" visas that will allow us to stay in Ecuador for the entire year. We came back to Quito this week to get our visas going.
We arrived in Quito on Monday morning. First we had to go to the Conferencia Episcopal Ecuatoriana, the main office of the Catholic church in Ecuador. (It is a quiet place bustling with nuns and priests -- I have easily seen more nuns in the past month in Ecuador than in my entire life in the U.S.) They took our passports, some other documents and the visa fees, and advised us to come back the following day at 11am so that they could escort us to the Ministry of the Exterior to start the visa process. So that is what we did -- and waited for a good 45 minutes before she got there. Apparently she had been at the US Embassy, which had taken her longer than expected, and we had missed our appointment at the Ministry. She wanted us to come back again the next day ("mañana" was becoming a familiar refrain). The following day we waited again for about 30 minutes, and then went down to the Ministry with a Venezuela nun and priest, and the priest's nephew who works with him. After another round of waiting, and taking official photos, I am happy to report that the visas are underway. The kids really were troopers.
We felt like we deserved to come home to this beautiful sunset...
So, on to more fun items... Wednesday we went to an interesting place called the Teleferico, which is a gondola that takes people up a mountain at the edge of Quito. The city itself spreads out in a valley at an elevation of 9,300 ft. The Teleferico takes you up to an elevation of 13,500 ft. That is almost as high as the peak of Mt. Rainier -- it is HIGH. The views of Quito are amazing.
The kids were super exicted to get on the gondola and ride up the mountain!
The views from up there are really spectacular -- the photos really don't do it justice. On one side is a panoramic view of the city of Quito, extending out into the valley...
And on the other side is a view of the mountains, with clouds at or below the level where you are, as well as a little chapel.
There are hikes that you can do up there, but we were not prepared for hiking so we didn't do it. Also, the sun suddenly went behind a could and the temperature suddenly dropped 10-20 degrees! Funny how that happens when you are at wicked high altitude.
It really was a very cool experience -- well worth doing if you are ever in Quito.
We arrived in Quito on Monday morning. First we had to go to the Conferencia Episcopal Ecuatoriana, the main office of the Catholic church in Ecuador. (It is a quiet place bustling with nuns and priests -- I have easily seen more nuns in the past month in Ecuador than in my entire life in the U.S.) They took our passports, some other documents and the visa fees, and advised us to come back the following day at 11am so that they could escort us to the Ministry of the Exterior to start the visa process. So that is what we did -- and waited for a good 45 minutes before she got there. Apparently she had been at the US Embassy, which had taken her longer than expected, and we had missed our appointment at the Ministry. She wanted us to come back again the next day ("mañana" was becoming a familiar refrain). The following day we waited again for about 30 minutes, and then went down to the Ministry with a Venezuela nun and priest, and the priest's nephew who works with him. After another round of waiting, and taking official photos, I am happy to report that the visas are underway. The kids really were troopers.
We felt like we deserved to come home to this beautiful sunset...
So, on to more fun items... Wednesday we went to an interesting place called the Teleferico, which is a gondola that takes people up a mountain at the edge of Quito. The city itself spreads out in a valley at an elevation of 9,300 ft. The Teleferico takes you up to an elevation of 13,500 ft. That is almost as high as the peak of Mt. Rainier -- it is HIGH. The views of Quito are amazing.
The kids were super exicted to get on the gondola and ride up the mountain!
The views from up there are really spectacular -- the photos really don't do it justice. On one side is a panoramic view of the city of Quito, extending out into the valley...
And on the other side is a view of the mountains, with clouds at or below the level where you are, as well as a little chapel.
There are hikes that you can do up there, but we were not prepared for hiking so we didn't do it. Also, the sun suddenly went behind a could and the temperature suddenly dropped 10-20 degrees! Funny how that happens when you are at wicked high altitude.
It really was a very cool experience -- well worth doing if you are ever in Quito.
Sunday, September 18, 2016
A day in the life
We have been in Guadalupe for about 3 weeks, and so we are settling into a routine a little bit. Since some of you might wonder what a "normal" day is like for us, I will give you a sense of what we are up to.
We have to get up early, because school starts early here -- Emmett and Annalise have to be at school at 7:30am. Ecuadorean schools don't really have the resources or infrastructure to feed kids at school, so they start early and finish early so the kids can go home to eat lunch (they are home by 1pm). So we are up at 6-6:30am to have breakfast and get ready for the day. The kids are in charge of getting dressed, putting on their sunblock (good old SPF 50 is part of our every day routine, like brushing teeth), washing their breakfast dishes, and getting their school stuff together.
Once they are out the door, I get ready to start my work at the clinic at 8am. My commute is about 2 minutes, walking across the river on the foot bridge, and up the hill to the mission. There is a crowd of people waiting outside the clinic when it opens. People come to see me ("general medicine"), the dentist (there is a steady stream of dentists that come for a month at a time, mostly from Austria and Germany), to buy medicine at the pharmacy, or to buy eye glasses.
I step into my "consultorio" and get ready for the day. The patients have to stand in line at the pharmacy to register to see me and/or the dentist, so it takes a few minutes to get them signed up. There is a simple electronic health record, which is basically just a list of SOAP notes. The patients pop up on the electronic system when they are signed up and ready to be seen, and I call them into my room in the order that they were signed up. I believe they have to pay $1 to see me or the dentist, and sometimes up to $5-6 more depending on the treatment plan. I believe it costs $5 for the dentist to fill or pull a tooth. For me, if I do a minor office procedure like a skin bump removal that requires a sterile tray, the patient has to pay $5 for a sterilization fee. If we decide to do a cortisone injection in a knee or shoulder, they have to pay $6 for the steroid that I then inject into their joint that day. The pharmacy is reasonably well stocked, and medications are sold at low prices.
We have a very limited number of point-of -care tests that we can do -- a urine pregnancy test costs $2, and we can do a urine dip, a spun hematocrit, or a blood sugar for $1 each. I could do a wet mount free of charge. That is it for office diagnostics. A small handful of times I have sent someone out to a lab to get some blood work done (mostly at their urging) -- but they then have to return to the lab a couple of days later to get their results, and then bring them back to me. I have not yet had anyone return with their lab results. I am really relying heavily on my clinical experience to make treatment plans, and I am trying to just do the best I can.
The size of the crowd in the morning is highly variable -- this past Monday there was a bus that had come from a town about 3 hours away, so it was busy and I saw 18 or 19 people that day. For the rest of the week I saw 3 to 5 people per day. I would say the average so far has been about 8-10 patients per day. The goal is for me to be done by 3pm, though often I am done well before that. When I finish, I can go home and hang out -- and they will call me if more patients show up.
While I am at the clinic, John is normally at home -- studying Spanish, exercising, reading, etc. The clinic closes at lunch time, from 12-1pm, so I come home for lunch. There is a lovely local woman whom we pay to cook us lunch, help clean our apartment and do our laundry (until recently the washing machine was broken, so it all had to be washed by hand). So there is a yummy a hot lunch waiting for us every day -- which is a nice luxury.
In the afternoons, the kids do their homework, whatever they may have from school that day and also a couple of pages of their math books from Tacoma Public Schools. Then they relax and play with friends. Emmett and his buddies play soccer, or to go the river to to swimming. Two days per week at 3pm, Annalise and I have beadwork lessons from a local artisan who makes really beautiful work. It's fun to be learning a new skill and doing something creative.
John is teaching a conversational English class to some people from the town two evenings a week, and Emmett usually goes to help him out. The people in the class are really appreciative of their time, and John and Emmett seem to really enjoy teaching them. John may well start helping teach some English in the kids' school as well.
I have been doing my best to make tasty and healthy dinners from our local resources -- I can usually get fresh chicken (with the feet still on -- it seems that people eat them here), carrots, potatoes, onions, rice, plantains, tomatoes, cucumbers. The variety is OK but not awesome, and I have to get kind of creative to not make it seem like we are eating the same thing over and over. I have been baking some good banana bread and apple bread, and we even managed to bake some brownies from scratch.
So, we are slowly settling in to a new pace of life, with different demands and different blessings from what we experience back in the U.S. While we miss the variety of foods and a good glass of wine, we are also really happy to have a more relaxed existence with less focus on "stuff" and "productivity."
That said, we are headed back to Quito tomorrow, to stay a week and to work on converting our tourist visas to "missionary" visas -- an important task if we want to stay for the year. Stay tuned!
We have to get up early, because school starts early here -- Emmett and Annalise have to be at school at 7:30am. Ecuadorean schools don't really have the resources or infrastructure to feed kids at school, so they start early and finish early so the kids can go home to eat lunch (they are home by 1pm). So we are up at 6-6:30am to have breakfast and get ready for the day. The kids are in charge of getting dressed, putting on their sunblock (good old SPF 50 is part of our every day routine, like brushing teeth), washing their breakfast dishes, and getting their school stuff together.
Once they are out the door, I get ready to start my work at the clinic at 8am. My commute is about 2 minutes, walking across the river on the foot bridge, and up the hill to the mission. There is a crowd of people waiting outside the clinic when it opens. People come to see me ("general medicine"), the dentist (there is a steady stream of dentists that come for a month at a time, mostly from Austria and Germany), to buy medicine at the pharmacy, or to buy eye glasses.
I step into my "consultorio" and get ready for the day. The patients have to stand in line at the pharmacy to register to see me and/or the dentist, so it takes a few minutes to get them signed up. There is a simple electronic health record, which is basically just a list of SOAP notes. The patients pop up on the electronic system when they are signed up and ready to be seen, and I call them into my room in the order that they were signed up. I believe they have to pay $1 to see me or the dentist, and sometimes up to $5-6 more depending on the treatment plan. I believe it costs $5 for the dentist to fill or pull a tooth. For me, if I do a minor office procedure like a skin bump removal that requires a sterile tray, the patient has to pay $5 for a sterilization fee. If we decide to do a cortisone injection in a knee or shoulder, they have to pay $6 for the steroid that I then inject into their joint that day. The pharmacy is reasonably well stocked, and medications are sold at low prices.
We have a very limited number of point-of -care tests that we can do -- a urine pregnancy test costs $2, and we can do a urine dip, a spun hematocrit, or a blood sugar for $1 each. I could do a wet mount free of charge. That is it for office diagnostics. A small handful of times I have sent someone out to a lab to get some blood work done (mostly at their urging) -- but they then have to return to the lab a couple of days later to get their results, and then bring them back to me. I have not yet had anyone return with their lab results. I am really relying heavily on my clinical experience to make treatment plans, and I am trying to just do the best I can.
The size of the crowd in the morning is highly variable -- this past Monday there was a bus that had come from a town about 3 hours away, so it was busy and I saw 18 or 19 people that day. For the rest of the week I saw 3 to 5 people per day. I would say the average so far has been about 8-10 patients per day. The goal is for me to be done by 3pm, though often I am done well before that. When I finish, I can go home and hang out -- and they will call me if more patients show up.
While I am at the clinic, John is normally at home -- studying Spanish, exercising, reading, etc. The clinic closes at lunch time, from 12-1pm, so I come home for lunch. There is a lovely local woman whom we pay to cook us lunch, help clean our apartment and do our laundry (until recently the washing machine was broken, so it all had to be washed by hand). So there is a yummy a hot lunch waiting for us every day -- which is a nice luxury.
In the afternoons, the kids do their homework, whatever they may have from school that day and also a couple of pages of their math books from Tacoma Public Schools. Then they relax and play with friends. Emmett and his buddies play soccer, or to go the river to to swimming. Two days per week at 3pm, Annalise and I have beadwork lessons from a local artisan who makes really beautiful work. It's fun to be learning a new skill and doing something creative.
John is teaching a conversational English class to some people from the town two evenings a week, and Emmett usually goes to help him out. The people in the class are really appreciative of their time, and John and Emmett seem to really enjoy teaching them. John may well start helping teach some English in the kids' school as well.
I have been doing my best to make tasty and healthy dinners from our local resources -- I can usually get fresh chicken (with the feet still on -- it seems that people eat them here), carrots, potatoes, onions, rice, plantains, tomatoes, cucumbers. The variety is OK but not awesome, and I have to get kind of creative to not make it seem like we are eating the same thing over and over. I have been baking some good banana bread and apple bread, and we even managed to bake some brownies from scratch.
So, we are slowly settling in to a new pace of life, with different demands and different blessings from what we experience back in the U.S. While we miss the variety of foods and a good glass of wine, we are also really happy to have a more relaxed existence with less focus on "stuff" and "productivity."
That said, we are headed back to Quito tomorrow, to stay a week and to work on converting our tourist visas to "missionary" visas -- an important task if we want to stay for the year. Stay tuned!
Tzanka wildlie refuge in Zamora
This weekend we made a trip to Zamora (about 45 minutes away) to shop for school supplies for the kids. Much like they do in Tacoma Public Schools, the kids' school handed us a list of school supplies to bring for the year (notebooks, colored pencils, folders, etc). We were successful in getting all of that -- and we also decided to do something fun while in Zamora.
There is this funny little wildlife refuge tucked away on a steep hill in the middle of town called Tzanka. They apparently rehabilitate injured animals and try to release them into the wild again. Like many facilities in Ecuador, it seems kind of run down and halfway finished -- but it is a fun and funky little place. There are tortoises walking around free, and you have to watch your step to make sure you don't stomp on them. Here is a sample of what we saw:
There is this funny little wildlife refuge tucked away on a steep hill in the middle of town called Tzanka. They apparently rehabilitate injured animals and try to release them into the wild again. Like many facilities in Ecuador, it seems kind of run down and halfway finished -- but it is a fun and funky little place. There are tortoises walking around free, and you have to watch your step to make sure you don't stomp on them. Here is a sample of what we saw:
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| An old busted-out speaker that is clearly now a bee hive (though you can't really see the bees in the photo) |
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| Parrots climb up the pillars |
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| "Nocturnal monkey" with huge eyes |
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Free-range tortoises |
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| This guy was following us around |
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This beautiful and noisy guy was in a tree -- I'm assuming his wings were clipped     |
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