Ecuador II

By tourist standards, we didn't see anything amazing in Cuenca. But that's not to say that the city was dull. Cuenca was a very charming city. I truly enjoyed it and really liked the way it felt small but developed and quaint but not too poor all at once. We spent time every day walking around the city, seeing it's many old churches and cathedrals, and sitting in its parks and squares. We saw the soccer stadium with double barbed wire fences to keep the fans separated.

We also took a bus to Cajas National Park. There we hiked through the mountains, went wading in a lake, and bushwhacked our way down mountainsides. And as we did nearly everywhere we went, we saw donkeys. They actually interrupted our picnic lunch. The park was at 13,000 ft (4166m, according to the sign,) so everyone had horrible headaches from the altitude.

On the way home we tried to stop at a little village famous for las truchas (trout) but the restaurants were all closed. So we hitchhiked home in the back of a pickup truck.

Ecuador I

I made it back from Ecuador in one piece. It was an awesome trip. However, my to-do list was only partly successful; I forgot to watch the toilet flush; I did eat cuy; I really didn't speak much Spanish.

But of course this trip had much more to it. We spent the first few days in Cuenca, which is a moderately-sized, middle class city at 8000 feet in southern Ecuador. We had lots of great, cheap food.

This included good bread shops, gelato, seafood, produce, and of course cuy. At the market we bought all sorts of really good produce. We also bought 15 eggs for a dollar and had to find change because the egg man couldn't break a five dollar bill. Ecuador uses the US dollar and all of our coins. I know there were news stories a couple years ago about those Sacajawea gold dollars being a waste. But they're making good use of them in Ecuador.

vaya con dios

Tomorrow I'm off to Ecuador. I don't know exactly what's on the agenda for the trip, but I'm hoping to accomplish the following as soon as I get there:

1) Flush a toilet. Southern hemisphere. Which way's it gonna go??
2) Eat cuy. I hear it's the thing to have if you're going to Cuenca.
3) Learn Spanish. I've always wanted to learn. I'm hoping a week in "Southie" will be enough.

Box of staples

I passed a milestone at work today. I finished a box of staples. I had been waiting for this time to come. And to be honest I never thought it would be possible to go through 5000 staples. (Sophomore year Mike Don took a box of staples from the English department, and I don't think we used more than 30 staples between the two of us. He still had a very full box of staples when we graduated.)

But in the work I do every day at The 'Tas, as it's known in my apartment, I use a lot of staples. Actually I use one staple every time I pay a bill (it's kind of the cherry on top of the sundae...)

Now, I'm not celebrating this event, per se. That would suggest that I use accomplishments such as this in my work to measure my worth as an individual. Or even that I pay attention to such inane facts as how many staples I've used. (Who would do that.) This is somewhere between an achievement and a mile marker on my road to... um... somewhere that I'm going. It is what it is. And it's a lot of bills.