Hello everyone! It’s been a while…and so many things have happened! The past weekend was the most exciting, crazy, dangerous, exhilarating weekend of my life! I cried a couple of time too…which I will tell you about. The poles of emotion were defiantly in play. AND God was very faithful to me. You will see how as I begin. 

THURSDAY 

• Heather and I had been thinking for two weeks that we were going to go to Manta-we even set up a reservation for a hotel. But one of our friends from class, Diego, let me know that there had been multiple landslides due to the excessive rain…and the roads were completely gone! They built some kind of one-way bridge, but it was very dangerous and slow-moving. So, instantly, we had to make new plans…we bought midnight bus tickets to Cuenca which is South of Quito. We were HYPED at the thought of leaving. 

• Now, Heather and I had resolved that as soon as we arrived at the station, we wouldn’t speak a lick of English. Myrian had warned Heather to make sure to seem very Hispanic…so that we wouldn’t be targets. WELL… We arrived at the station at 9:30 after desperately trying to find a taxi (which by the way is a bad idea, and I don’t think I will do it again) And the first person we met was my friend Antonio who I have written about before. He was very buzzed…and bought a bunch of the national pride, Pilsner, (the worst beer in the world) and he offered everyone who passed a beer. We were surrounded by Americans, in front of everyone who was staring, and then Antonio gets a bright idea. 

• “Won’t you read a poem for me, Kiki?” So, I did in the most animated, theatrical, precise, elocutionary way that one could possible read TWO PAGES of small printed Frank O’Hara. After that, I definitely deserved one of those nasty Pilsners. 

• We left on the bus…that housed only two Gringos. And we were rather uncomfortable because the altitude was changing so rapidly, but our problems were about to get worse little by little. First of all, there were three men who were infatuated with Heather and tried to take pictures of her. Secondly, there was a landslide that made us stop dead in our tracks at 4am!! Needless to say, the trip lasted 14 hours. We didn’t get started again until about 9 the next day. AND OF COURSE, I forgot all of the provisions….so we had to eat unripe bananas. 

FRIDAY 

• When we got to Cuenca at about 1pm, we instantly went to this hotel that Patricio recommended. It was very nice. (keep in mind this is room #1) For some reason, we decided that we would switch hotels the next night and see how many rooms we could lodge in during one vacation. This was not the best idea, and to this moment, I don’t know why we did it! But anyway, we walked about the city…words couldn’t describe the beauty, nor the festivities of Carnaval. 

• A Spanish and Latin American tradition is throwing water on people….A LOT OF WATER. So, we got bombed from the 5th floor, out of store windows, people walking on the streets, and cars and buses passing. I actually fell trying to escape getting doused. I was getting more and more possessed with having revenge, so when this one little boy was all gleeful trying to hold this enormous bowl to get my wet, I dumped it on him instead!!! He actually got really mad, and told me that was mean! Hahahaha!

• After walking around the city on Friday, we went back to the room to take a nap. It was about 4pm. Then, we determined that we would “go out” and paint the town red after, getting out beauty rest. WELL. Didn’t set an alarm, and we didn’t wake up until Saturday at 6am!!!! 
• On Saturday, we basically tooled around, got lost multiple times, and found another hotel. We actually saw quite a few of our classmates, and our druggie teacher who never shows up to class! It was sooo funny and odd. He was like, “I don’t see you in class, but I see you in Cuenca!” HAHA. 

• We were walking around this river and this broken bridge and taking pictures. You have prolly seen them if you looked on fb. Well, there was this guy and this younger boy who were skulking around the river bank. They asked us if we would take a picture of them, so I asked them if they had a camera. They were obviously locals and didn’t look like the type to take pics. They guy told me yes and we walked a little farther along the river. I aksed them again, Where is your camera, and he said he didn’t have one. I immediately suspected that Heather was going to take the pic and then they were going to try to steal it. So, I decided that I wanted to be in the pic with the robbers too! Well, as soon as Heather took the pic, they ran up the bank faster than I expected, but I over took them before they made it to Heather. They kept asking, How is it? Can we see it? I wedged myself in between them and Heather and positioned myself uphill from the guy. Suddenly the guy grabbed it, and in that instant I put both my hands around his neck and pressed in harder and harder. That surprised him, but he tried to stuff the camera up his sleeve. I repeated in the deepest, sternest, but quiet voice I could muster, “NO!” Heather quickly grabbed the camera out of his hands, and said, “!No es justo!” “That’s not right!” And we ran!!!! They didn’t try to follow us. They seemed ashamed. 

• The hotel we stayed at was nice enough…cheaper…and HUGE! In its day, it prolly housed over a hundred people. I realized pretty quickly as it got dark that we had an excellent view of the street from the 8th floor….so what do you think I did??? That’s right! I got my little glass and started pouring water on people! It was amazing!!!!! 

• Well, after pouring water on people to my heart’s delight, we got ready to go out. We had bought one shirt a piece at a Chinese store, and so we decked ourselves with our new attire and headed out to dinner. We ended up eating at this Colombian restaurant by that broken bridge…which was very sketch. We got a taxi after dinner, and went to a famous Salsa club, called Café Eucalyptus. It was amazing! They started live music that was sooo cool and beautiful. There was also this older gentleman who danced every dance for 3 hours! It was cool to watch everyone dancing. We left about 1am, got a taxi, and went to our hotel…which was almost completely dark. 

• As soon as we got in there, Heather said, “No tengo la llave!” She didn’t have the key to our room. It had gotten lost in the taxi while we were rooting around for change! The guy told us that he didn’t have any replacement keys…so we went out into the street and tried to stop another taxi so that he could call all taxis on the intercom, but he wouldn’t do it! Even for money! Anyway, we stayed outside for almost an hour by the Cathedral that was right in front of our hotel, so that the guy would feel sorry for us and not charge us for another room! Well, he didn’t even walk to charge us for the room, cuz as we found out…THEY WERE NO ANOTHER PATRONS!!! This was the sketchiest place I had ever been in….It had narrow hallways with lights that were burned about and a creepy elevator whose capacity was four people. We tried for about an hour to jimmy the lock of our old bedroom with the curtain hook that Heather pried off. We finally had to go to our new room. The hallway was pitch black, and I was really spooked! By this point it was about 2am. Our room had four oddly positioned beds, and a huge window that looked at this alley way and a concrete wall. The only thing I could think of was the movie, Psycho! Heather got pretty scared too, when the guy cam upstairs to TURN OF THE LIGHTS that we had LEFT ON….ugh!!!  

SUNDAY 

• Well, we made it through the night although we didn’t get to bed until 3am and we had to get up at 6am to catch our bus. Supposedly, there was a lady coming at 7am with the keys…and our bus left at 7.10! We got up and rooted around the city for some breakfast..but everything was closed but the churches and cathedrals. We ended up buying a package of vanilla wafers from a street vendor. When we got back to the hotel, this lady arrived…but she was not the one with the keys!!! However, she suggested that the keys might be in the bathroom, WHICH THEY WERE. We quickly went up the creepy elevator and pack all of our stuff. When we went downstairs, suddenly, I realized that I had lost my camera and I had to go back up to our #2 room to search for it….thankfully, I found it right away, but I did shed a few tears at first! 

• Meanwhile, Heather was realizing that it was 7:10 and we didn’t have the right bills to pay the hotel! They didn’t have one single cent in their machine. We had to run to the nearest bank and take out 10 bucks….but when we finally got back to the hotel, they didn’t have change for $10 either!!!! So they called a taxi to get us change, and we bought like 4 bottles of water to make up the difference. We went to the bus station, late, but before even going inside I realized I didn’t have my ATM card. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! We got another taxi and went back to the bank…but it was gone! The machine had eaten it…it had never even given it back to me. 

• Very sad, we made it to the bus station again…and had to pay for two more tickets to Guayaquil. Our bus left at 8:30…and the trip lasted 4 hours. We had the best seats in the bus…We had two huge windows! We got to Guayaquil and went to a hotel that the guide book recommended, called DreamKapture. When we got their we had to haggle with the guy for a room, and he was very rude to us. The weather is Guayaquil was like Miami, but the city looked like the worst parts of Philadephia. We did not feel safe walking around at all! 

• Once again…we were walking along this river that was kind of like a commercialized board walk with lots of shops and a mall. We were taking pictures and this man started noticing us and talking to us. He kept his distance at first, but soon I realized he was following us. He would go up ahead, sit down and when we passed he would keep going behind us. At one point he was behind us to the right, and I suddenly saw him start to run. He planned to run diagonally- and pass me, and grab my purse that had my camera! Instantly, I turned to the left and walked straight into Heather and we turned around and watched as he passed us at that moment running. To be safe, we turned and went the other way, but it was kind of scary. 

• The highlight of our trip to Guayaquil was taking a double decker bus for two hours around the city…and we had this delicious yogurt that was Crema de Cacao. Pretty early we went back to our humid room though, and slept…soooo tired.

• The next day, we flew out on a little plane to Quito We couldn’t bear the thought of sitting for another 14 hours in a bus. We felt so happy to get back to Quito. Lol, on the way back from the airport we actually got lost! The bus we were on emptied of all the people except us, and stopped. I asked the lady, where the bus was headed next and she said to lunch! We had to catch another bus and it took us a good 1.5 hours to make a 10 minute trip!! Later that day, the Child’s invited us out to dinner and then we went back to their place. We had an amazing time…we told them about the adventures we had had…and had coffee etc. WOW! That was a long update, and you know, it doesn’t even mention it all! I am very glad to be back in Quito, although it isn’t quite home! 

Thank you all for reading my posts! 

<3>

Otavalo

On Saturday morning, Heather and I took three buses to Otavalo, Ecuador. We arrived after about about 4 or 5 hours of travel.... This is a picture of the market! This was an indigenous market...Kichua or Quechua

This is the hostel we stayed at...the bed was rock hard, but it was nice! $6 bucks!

I will post more stuff soon...It's late! When I got back from the bus about 5:30pm, I just crashed and slept until almost 9:30! I have about 123 pics from this weekend...it was an awesome adventure and Heather and I have spent aome time musing about the trip and the things we have learned. I laso have to add pics and commentary about Friday night, which was a huge college graduation party for Heather's host bro...All that will have to wait until a later date though.

Good night everyone!

Well…I cannot BELIEVE that is already February 12! I have been doing very well since my last post—Adjusting. Learning the ropes. Assimilating. Coping. Learning.

Thank you all very much for your prayers for me and for my family as my mom is in Arizona for my great-grandfather’s funeral. My grandpa was very special. I can remember him and granny coming to our house in NH when Josh was born. They gave me purple panda pajamas. Also, I remember the yearly box of Christmas goodies…doll houses, jax, candy, hand-made ornaments, puzzles, and books. My great grandpa tried to teach me how to sketch with perspective…he told me stories about WWII and didn’t like it when we played “war” with a deck of cards. He told me that war was an ugly thing. He loved my granny a lot, and he liked to read. He loved going to museums with us, like the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, PA. I am really glad my mom can be there in AZ, but I wish I could be there too. I already miss them both a lot. It is a hard thing to lose a person who has been there for you your whole life.

I am delighted to announce that I have not gotten sick again! Heather and I have a really full month ahead of us…On Friday our families are having another HUGE party (hopefully not serving shrimp) for Andres’ graduation from college. Then, early Saturday morning we are going to Otavalo, which is a large Quechua market. Then, next weekend on the 20th we are going to Manta which is on the coast. It will probably take us 10 hours to get their by bus. We have Carnaval vacation so we are going to stay until Tuesday. Then, two days later, on the 27th our class is going to the jungle…to visit the territory where Nate Saint and Jim Elliot went. It is called the Huarni territory---and it will probably be like living in hammocks and huts! Lord willing, that summarizes our plans for the month of February.

I thought I would tell you about some of the people we have met.

Mareya

I met her first while working at the soup kitchen with Pan de Vida. She is remarkably sweet and friendly and has a passion to learn English. She is pretty young, in her 20s. Heather and I felt an instant connection. So, we invited her to English Listeners Club, where we teach classes. To our delight, she came to the meeting and we got to know her a little better. She lives in La Mariscal, which is to the south of where we live, and tomorrow we going to met up with her and have a coffee or something. We hope to have some oppertunity to speak to her about Jesus.

Antonio

What can I say about Antonio? Cool chap. Wears suspenders and a woolen hat. Studies American lit and Spanish. Knows the poets from the 1940’s inside and out…probably because he wishes he was a contemporary of Ezra Pound. We have talked for a few hours at a time—mostly because we were either stuck in the same corner waiting for something or because the Ecuadorian sun is nice in the afternoons. He wants to travel the world before going to grad school. (a pretty common wish) but of course, since he is a waiter at Ruby Tuesday’s, that just might not happen. In any case, Antonio is agreeable and funny. He wrote down a list of must-read authors for me on an old receipt.

Zareena

Heather and I were sitting by our FAVORITE ice cream shop, Helados Amazonas. Well, while we were sitting there, an elderly, regal lady showed up out of nowhere and started talking to us. She instantly told us that she was born in India, but she was British. Her name is Zereena—I think it’s Indian. Our friend, Nashaun, repeated, “Oh, Areena?” and the lady responded, “No! That means ‘bloody sand’!” She sounded quite scandalized.

Anyway, she was dropping her beloved dog off at the vet’s because he had a cough, but she gave us her number so that we could learn how to cook some Indian food. She told us “how delightful it was to hear someone speaking English.” She only speaks 7—SEVEN—languages! (5 different dialects of Indian, Spanish, and English) Apparently her son is a pilot instructor who teaches in Guayaquil, Ecuador. We were delighted to meet her, although her demeanor is very formal.

Jorge

He likes to be called George, and he has a weak desire to learn English and a stronger desire to pick up Angloparlantes using that famous pick-up-line, “You caneh teach me inglishe?” Well, within five minutes of meeting Jorge, he was like, “When are we going to see each other again? Can I have your number?” And—I don’t mean to be mean—but we have had some various and sundry issues with the whole telephone thing…So, I just said, “No.” He was shocked. “But how can I see you again? When will I get to see you?”

I was like, “Well, I really don’t know. Somewhere! Maybe around campus….chao!”
Today, he saw me again. “KIKI!” This time he knew better than ask for my number again. This time he got smart. “Kiki, where do you normally pass by so that I can see you again?”
….
So what do you do with that one!?

Alejandra

I had initially met her at the university clinic when I was sick about a month ago. She wrote down her number for me, and even though I didn’t talk much to her, she was very nice. I had no idea why she actually wanted me to contact her! She invited me to come to her house and mentioned that she was glad because she had wanted to invite me to live at her house. I thought that was a nice gesture, and Heather and I set up an appointment for today at 1pm. I had arranged to meet, and she kept asking if we wanted to get to know the house. We were like...sure?

We went to her house which was gorgeous, sprawling mansion in the countryside about 10 minutes from the university. Huge windows, hard wood floors, flying stairs…stainless steel kitchen…the whole bit. Well, to my surprise, instead of offering us a meal or anything, she gave us a tour of the house, and kept saying this room is free. I thought to myself, “OH no!” Well, folks, as it turned out, this was not a “social” event. I thought she just wanted to be nice to some foreigners! Alejandra actually wanted to rent a room to an American girl…and she asked me straight out if I liked the house and if I wanted to live there. Just imagine how uncomfortable this was! I managed to get out of it by sort of saying how hard it would be move to a new house…how beautiful this one was…but how I didn’t see how it could work! I was thinking, “Help! This lady is trying to make a real estate sale! AAA!”

Fernando

I met Fernando two weeks ago at the English Listeners Club. Didn’t talk to him much, but he was in my class and seemed quite nice and educated. This week he greeted me, “Hello, Teacher!” which was kind of funny. After class, he told me all about his mom from Colombia and how he wants to learn French. We talked about learning other languages, Salsa dancing, his catering job, and my brief knowledge of one chanson by Pink Martini. While we were sitting there, I was thinking, “okay…he is nice enough…but please! Don’t turn creepy!” He asked me if I was going to the Valentines Banquet at the church, EFC. And I took the opportunity. (You may debate whether that was a good idea or not…but I did it!)

I told him straight up that Heather and I didn’t feel comfortable going to a Valentine’s day banquet because we had already encountered plenty of issues without it being Valentine’s day! He was really good about it. Understanding. He made some weird muffled sounds, but that was all. Tried hard to be sympathetic. Hopefully, he wasn’t recalling the last time he had called a young lady 3 times a day. In any case, I was happy to have avoided the whole what-is-your-number issue, and I still have a friend for next time!

Thanks to everyone who reads this…I have a few interesting things to comment on, although I have my first exam tomorrow, so I cannot write too long. I’ve done some cool things since my past post: took a cable car up the side of a mountain, went to the center of the earth, and survived over a month now of Ecuadorian life! 

One cool thing is that I have had the chance to witness to two different people this week. One of them was a man from Venezuela who struck up a conversation with me at the Center of the World. I was with a group of Americans who live here in association with HCJB, and he wanted to hitch a ride from us back to Quito. 

He made me a little nervous in the car because he kept talking about the dangers of living in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. Robbers, knifings, murders, police extortion…his conversation was very morbid, but it was occasionally offset by these exclamations how “lindo, hermoso” Quito was and the beautiful flowers along the side of the road. That made me feel a little better—he was a regular go green nature lover. 

I mentioned that I had a friend who is from Venezuela and that she is a missionary and that sparked a conversation of the differences between Protestants and Catholics. He asked me straight up what Christians believed, and I was able to explain the Gospel. At the end of the conversation, he sort of admitted that he didn’t have all the answers—especially due to the diversity of religion and philosophy. I was able to reiterate the Gospel and the doctrine of the Bible, and who knows maybe God will use that for his good. He was a actually very sweet person, he introduced himself and shook all of our hands when we dropped him off at a bus stop. Before he left the car he bowed to us all. I don’t think I will forget Tomas Mathias—his friends call him Mati. 

Another thing that is stuck in my mind is something I saw yesterday while walking around Quito. It was on the road Amazonas (if that makes any difference to any of you) I saw two grubby kids playing on the side of the road. The one looked like he worked on the streets selling stuff. Despite all the noise from the traffic and people, I heard a baby wailing. I saw that it was a little boy sitting with the other kids on the side of the road. Even though it was getting towards dusk, I could see he was covered in dirt and eating a mangled cookie. I can still hear him crying in my mind. I told Heather that that baby must be really upset because the Ecuadorian kids never cry. They are strapped to their mommies with cloth and shawls—and never utter a peep. But this baby wasn’t with his mommie—he was all alone, looking around wildly at the crowd. Before I turned away, I saw the street vendor kid pat him on the head as he ran off down the street. 

One thing that is funny…I just have to tell you even though it doesn’t go with the tenor of this post. I had a dinner at this fancy restaurant—which by the way costs a fraction of the price here! I ordered this Lomo de San Telmo—a really nice steak. And I was trying to tell Heather that with steak, a good red wine helps the flavor, so I took it upon myself to ask for una copa de Merlot. And following my example, Heather said she wanted the same. 

WELL

Imagine my shock—when the waiter comes with two large glasses of frothy orange stuff. I was like…doing a double take! Foamy, orange, fragrant…juice??? I think I breathed ridiculously , “Is this the wine?” before I tasted it with the fancy straw. 

It was freshly squeezed cantaloupe juice. I couldn’t imagine how the waiter could have confused my intentions until I realized that in an imperfect world of Gringa meets Ecuador “Melón” and “Merlot” probably sounds an awful lot alike. I couldn’t help laughing throughout dinner….eating my purée de potatoes, mixed stir-fried vegetables, wheat bread, phenomenal steak…and cantaloupe shake!! 

~Kiki