Category Archives: Ecuador

In Ecuadorian Spanish, when you’ve got a cold, you say, “estoy con gripe.” When translated, it ends up being a very British-sounding proclamation: “I’m with cold.”

This week, Eileen has a really bad cold, leaving me “with cold” in the more literal sense of American English, as in “I’m with stupid.” It’s a bad week to have a cold, as she is subbing today, tomorrow, and Friday for four hours each day, doubling her work schedule.

I’m in the midst of perparing the computer for an Ecua sale. We’re gonna try to sell it down here to avoid the hassles of 1) carrying one more bag back home, and 2) selling it on ebay when we get back. We’re hoping to get about $1100 for it. Today, I meet with a prospective buyer named Lucky. He’s Bill and Andy’s roommate.

In the meantime, we’ve started advertising it via word of mouth at our gym and at Eileen’s school. The gym will also allow me to post a sign.

My brother Will has a flight out of Lima for Quito on the 16th. He’ll come back, spend a few days with us, help us clean the place, and then fly back on the 20th, same day as I do. Once home, he’ll be helping me re-roof my house!

steph and morgan’s bday

This past Saturday, we went to a party at Steph’s place. She and Westra threw a birthday/fourth of July party. It was Steph’s birthday, and this coming Thursday is Morgan’s birthday. The highlight for us was when they brought out the sparklers. Nostalgic.

For us, the party kinda sucked. We got there way earlier than most of our friends and we were both somewhat sick. And tired. Not to mention tired of being sick. So we didn’t have a lot of energy to interact with new people. Had we stayed another couple of hours, we probably would have had fun, but Eileen was started to fall apart. So we left before the big fireworks send-off. Steph had bought some major fireworks and was planning on setting them off from her roof.

Last night, I did see some fireworks nonetheless. Apparently, there was another inaugaration of the “teleferico,” the cable car they just constructed on Pichincha.

Man, I tell you, it’s getting hard to live here. I mean, it’s getting hard to keep our minds here, to appreciate and soak up our final experiences. We’re thinking of home a lot. It’s not that we are desparate to leave Ecuador. It’s that we’re both starting to dread the fall so much that we just want to get home so we can get settled and relax for a bit before we start up with school. I’m having more and more nightmares about teaching. In one, I was in the English department office and I couldn’t open my eyes.

haw flakes

So on Friday I was in the WorldTeach office working with Molly on the WorldTeach Ecuador website, when Kathy came in. Kathy is a fellow WT vol who has been placed in Puerto Lopez, Cuenca, and now Quito. It’s a long story. Anyhow, Kathy makes me laugh constantly. She really reminds me of my good high school friend John Szafransky. I think it’s the way she talks, her inflections and intonations and self-degrading humor, I don’t know.

Anyway, she comes in and says, “you want an Asian treat?”

“What are they?” I asked.

“Haw flakes,” she said and proceeded to give me one of the little burgundy-colored wafers. It was pretty good.

“That’s good. What’s ‘haw’ mean?”

“It means ‘haw,’ I don’t know.”

“What?”

“Yeah, here. You wanna take one home for Eileen?” She handed me a little packet of haw flakes.

I read the ingredients: haw, sugar. Sure enough. “Wow, haw and sugar.”

“Yeah, see?”

ingredients for haw flakes

camila pre-haircut

The landlords kept one of Bella’s pups and named her Camila. She was the only tan one of the bunch, and she kinda looks like a teddy bear. She was a furry little thing.

Most of the day, the two of them are up on the roof. Camila is very playful and Bella humors her. From the kitchen and our bedroom, you can sometimes hear the skittering of animals. It always gets me. My first thought is that there are squirrels or mice in our house, but then I remember where I am and realize it’s just the dogs on the roof.

Last Sunday, just as I was about to go to bed, I heard the two of them up there making a lot of noise, whining and prying at the gate that leads to staircase to our apartment. I went up to see what was wrong, and I discovered the following horrible transformation (see picture below). The two of them were at the gate, shaking at the sight of me, hoping I’d maybe let them out, or restore their dignity. Poor dogs.

can you believe what they did to me?

camila pre-haircut
Originally uploaded by wiscostorm.