Driving around Quito

Here are some photos of the colonial center of Quito.

First day in Ecuador

Today is our first full day back in Ecuador. We woke up to a beautiful, sunny day. It is nice to be under the tropical sun again. Lucho’s sister had to pay her electricity bill so we all piled into her little car (Lucho drove!) and headed towards the city. We stopped by the “Megamaxi”, one of the big supermarkets. I found a lot of items that I thought weren’t available in Ecuador. I even found some macaroni and cheese for Christina. I guess a lot has changed since I last lived here 12 years ago. One thing that hasn’t changed is the bad air quality in Quito. The streets are full of diesel buses spewing their fumes. That, combined with narrow streets, makes it pretty difficult to get a breath of fresh air in some places.

Christina is doing well and doesn’t seem to be overwhelmed by all the Spanish. Today she used the word “jugo” instead of juice and she asked me how to say “I have it” in Spanish. Right now she is downstairs playing with a little girl about her age. The other little girl doesn’t speak English and Christina doesn’t speak Spanish but they are having a great time together. Even though they are speaking different languages they somehow understand each other. I just went down to check up on her and she was about to watch “The Little Mermaid” in Spanish. It appears that an appreciation of the Disney “princesses” is ubiquitous among little girls.

The trip to Quito

We got up early today (8:00 am Miami time but only 5:00 am our time), checked out of our hotel and took the shuttle to the airport. The trip to the airport was quite a ride. Our driver decided to take some sort of shortcut and went flying through the city streets, swearing at the other cars in Cuban-accented Spanish. We made it to the airport with plenty of time to pick up the rest of our luggage and check in. While we were waiting to go through security the electricity went out. We didn’t know it at the time but it was a huge outage throughout southern Florida. Luckily the airport’s generator kicked in and we only had to wait a few minutes until their x-ray machines warmed up. The flight itself was uneventful. Christina slept most of the way. We were treated to some deluxe airplane cuisine. It was a 4 hour flight and we arrived in Quito around 7:30 pm. We had no problem going through security. No one opened our bags and we were relieved because we had a couple of extra laptops and camcorders that we were bringing to family in Ecuador. The prices of many consumer goods are much higher in Ecuador so everyone wanted us to buy them something at US prices and bring it to them. It was raining when we got to Quito and a little cold so we bundled up and went straight to Lucho’s sister’s house. We will be staying here for a couple of days before we fly to Loja.

My Ami

On the plane today Christina looked up at me and asked “Does your Ami speak English or Spanish?”. I wasn’t sure what she was asking me so I just told her “English”. Later she was drawing some pictures and she wanted to draw one for “Your Ami”. It finally dawned on me that we had been telling her that we were going to “Miami” and she thought that we were going to visit someone named “Ami”. She was remembering the last time we were on a plane and we were going to visit “my Dad”. Then Lucho said something about landing in Miami and Christina said “No, its Mommy’s Ami!”. Lucho and I had a good laugh over that one.

My Last Day at Work

Today is my last day at work. It is very strange to be leaving after working here for 7.5 years. My co-workers took me out to lunch at a sushi restaurant and gave me a card and a $100 visa gift card. I'm looking forward to my new life in Ecuador but it was hard to say good-bye to so many people, especially the ones who I have been working with for many years. I have a lot of good memories of working for the Regional Board and I have learned a lot. Hopefully I will be able to put my experience to good use in Ecuador.

Moving out and shipping our stuff

The last two weeks have been very hectic. We spent the weekend of February 9th and 10th packing up our household. We discovered that it takes much longer to pack when you are shipping something overseas than it does when you are moving across town. Everything had to be bagged, wrapped and taped very well. Lucho is a much more meticulous packer than I am so it took longer than I expected. Luckily I had Tuesday off (one of the perks of working for the state - we get two days off for Washington and Lincoln's birthdays) so we had an extra day to pack. We still ended up packing until midnight a couple of nights.

On Friday the shipping company dropped off a 20' container at our friend's house in West Sacramento. Lucho was there to meet it. Then on Saturday a big group of friends came over and helped us move the boxes from our apartment to the container. Then on Sunday we finished packing the computer and some odds and ends and took another load to the container. There was still plenty of room in the container so we decided to bring our couch and chair. We also took a big load of furniture to the Goodwill. By the time we finished with the container it was about 10 pm and we all just crashed. The next morning the trucker came by and picked up our container. As we watched the truck drive down the street we wondered if we would ever see all our stuff again.






So yesterday we spent the day cleaning up our apartment. We finished just in time to meet our friends at a pizza place and celebrate. We were exhausted but relieved that all the packing and moving is over. It was a long weekend.

Today Lucho is on his way to San Francisco to get our list of items certified by the Ecuadorian consulate. That way we won't have to pay taxes on our goods when they arrive at the port in Guayaquil.