Let's Play Ketchup

In second grade, Mrs. Washicko would occasionally put a ketchup bottle, made of laminated construction paper with a magnet on the back, on the black board.  Then, she would declare the day a "ketchup day," which sounds a whole lot like "catch-up."  So, here we go.

1. The Hail Storm

Last Friday the clothes were drying on the line as rain clouds gradually appeared in the sky.  Later that afternoon we chanced to look out the window as precipitation started to fall.  "The clothes before it rains," I shouted.  We dashed outside and found ourselves in the midst of light hail.  No sooner had we gathered all the clothing and re-purposed our chairs as drying racks, the hail whipped down from the sky before it turned to rain.

This is a shot of our street.  The white gathering alongside the wall is hail.

Here it is gathering on the grass by the front entrance.

This is the water that leaked through our front door.

This is the hail that gathered outside our door.

It was a crazy, somewhat frightening storm.  And yes, obviously we lost power for the third time that week.

2. The Stomach Bug

Monday we went to the orphanage, and, in desperate need of vegetables, decided to stop at Mega Maxi, the store within the mall, on our way home.  Well, it poured as we were leaving the orphanage, and one of the tias, fortunate enough to have a vehicle, picked us up off the side of the high way and dropped us off there.  My stomach was gurgling (from hunger) before we even left the orphanage.  After our extensive shopping trip, I was fully famished and grumpy.  I remembered fondly that Nana, my grandmother, always foresaw a drop in my blood sugar.  When we shopped at the mall and I started to fade, even before I recognized it, she'd plop me down on a bench and whip out some snacks.  It always worked, and Monday I wished she could magically appear to rejuvenate me.

Anyway, I showered and Andy prepared spaghetti with a tomato and spinach sauce and buttered carrots and green beans.  It was delicious.  But at 2:30am my stomach gurgled again and this time, it wasn't hunger.  Thus began my night of alternating sleeping in front of the toilet (thank goodness I bleached the floors over the weekend) and having Andy trying to warm me up (gotta love the fever, aches, and throw-up combination.)  Our week, therefore, has been spent recuperating from that night.  It has involved many movies including Cars, Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles, and Toy Story 3, (catching up with Pixar anyone?).  It has also involved Andy becoming a theoretical expert on bread making.  Without an oven, the only hands-on experimenting we can manage will be home-made English muffins.  Seriously, looks do-able.  Too bad we don't have a toaster.

3. The Propane Tank

Last night was the first time I thought I could handle more than a few bites of food.  From my original proposal of pancakes, (which we decided wouldn't work without leavening), emerged scrambled eggs with queso fresco and crepes with strawberry jam.  Of course, no sooner was Andy half-way through the crepe batter and a crepe itself, did our burners go out.  Have I previously describe the difficulty of lugging in the propane tank and installing it in the first place?  Well, it was tough.  Okay, it was tough for Andy.  It involved twisting, disconnecting, cutting, carrying an empty tank to our local Micro Mercado, buying a new one, carrying the thirty-five pound tank home and up the flights of stairs, then re-connecting, shoving, and twisting again.  (And that description makes it sound easy.) Again, we thanked his Dad for sending us with tools. 

4. Scabies (What!  Yup, scabies.)

I got the stomach bug and we concurred, "darn kids."  Then Andy woke up with a rash on his hands that hydrocortisone cream did nothing for.  Then Andy woke up with the rash increasing in concentration and moving up his arms.  Then we worried, googled rashes, and skyped a follow-up consultation with Dr. Erickson.  Well, those "darn kids" seem to be at it again.  But scabies?  Yuck.  It's basically lice that's underneath your skin.  It took three pharmacies (the last of which we traveled to the mall for), to have a cream for "sarna."  I still haven't had a normal days worth of food or much normal food for that matter.  Andy is very itchy, looks like a plague victim, and is just as weary.  It's been an up-lifting week.

Enjoy the following, rather benign looking images of Andy's hands.

Anyhow, much to my delight, scabies is highly, highly contagious.  So the fact that I currently don't look like I've been attacked by midges means it's just being polite and waiting out the stomach bug.  Tonight, we begin full-body treatment.  Oh no, there is no quick fix pill.  There is a cream you apply to your entire body (even where you don't have a break out) and you wear it for 8-14 hours before washing it, and hopefully the mites under your skin, out.  We then must attempt to sanitize our clothing and bedding.  We're going to pass on the cold-water and by-hand method and truck to and splurge on a laundromat.

Addendum (12/2): Andy's hands six hours later.  All in all, I'd like to use the words of my father to sum up our scabies experience, "NASTY!"

Addendum (12/2): The bedding and clothing back from the laundromat.  Here, you drop off your clothing and pick it up later in the day.  We (Andy) hauled one of his big, black duffel bags twice.  I carried our two pillows.  Each load cost $8.80.

5. Is the week over yet?

Oh yeah, Happy Thanksgiving to us!  But an actual heartfelt Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Orphanage Routine

At last, I reveal the long awaited description of our happenings at the orphanage.  Unfortunately, it's nothing as interesting as the first sentence might suggest.  We are, wait for it, glorified babysitters.  (The insertion of glorified there is completely my emphasis.) 

There are twenty-three individuals, ages approximately six to twenty-eight that cover every slot on the gradation from severely handicapped to as normal as Andy and I are (which is both fluctuating and up for discussion).  We have had some bad days where we've found ourselves separated from each other and locked into different cabins with unruly kids without knowing when the tias (the rotating two women who run a cabin each during the day) would return.  We've been the target of, as my brother, Christian, termed, "human flame throwers" (an aerosol cockroach spray lit with matches anyone?).  I have been slapped on the arm and slammed on the back by an eight year old boy multiple times.  We often break up fights or find ourselves in the middle of them.  Although we can say things like, "You know better, it's not worth it, you're bigger, that's not okay, stop, leave him/her alone," our words are often fruitless.  Rather, we usually find ourselves clutching a child (is there something about boys ages six to eight?) and holding tight as they struggle to get out of our arms.  Sometimes, their balled fists ease up.  Sometimes, we need to take one to see a tia.  Usually they cry, always they try to get loose, and split evenly the fights are instigated or accidental--just yesterday a boy stepped backwards and crushed a paper plane another had left on the ground and today one boy put another in a head lock for fun.  Each and every individual, the girls included, down the most severely handicapped, will defend themselves with punches and kicks without a second thought (or even a first one.) 

Yet, although they are tough (character wise and for us), they also look out for one another.  They share food, they help each other get dressed, they play together, and they back each other up in fights or even separate them.  Which leaves us to do whatever the tias ask us to do while we are there.  I would estimate that half the time we play with them and the other half we help with homework.  Last week, a young boy had homework to add three, three-digit numbers, but he had not (and still hasn't) grasped that each hand has five fingers and always will or that the amount of fingers on both hands is always ten.  The same child, along with many others, have homework that involves writing a single number, today one child worked on the number 9, and they fill a sheet with the number, over and over again.  The same goes for learning their letters. 

When we walk the miserable stretch between the bus stop and the orphanage, we never know what kind of situation we will encounter that day.  It hasn't been fun or exciting, rather, it's been difficult to want to return each day--the commute a large deterrent.  Yet, we go and we'll keep going, because they smile when we arrive and just need all the attention we can give. 

How 'bout that weather?

The weather here has been roughly seventy degrees and sunny for the past three weeks.  Until, you will recall, Saturday's rain that skipped over Sunday, plummeted down on Monday, and yesterday, caused a power outage.

Now first things first.  For those crying, "Seventy and sunny?  That's my favorite combination!"  Just stop.  Consider the following.  The heat and necessary sun screen applications wouldn't be so bad if we could wear shorts, but we can't.  One, because we don't have any shorts with us, and two, they're not socially acceptable (hence us not bringing any).  Thus, us having to hoof it to orphanage alongside a hot and dusty highway, not fun.  More importantly, we're talking about a guy from Montana and a girl from Connecticut (both states considered Northern) who have spent the last four years in New Hampshire (also considered Northern).  So, the little thing called seasons, the two of which many of you are currently living through, that would be fall and the pending winter, are near and dear to our hearts, not to mention our personal thermostats and wool sweaters.

So, despite the fact that we got caught in the rain on Saturday and Monday, without any form of outer layer, we were quite taken with the change in temperature and the increased cloud coverage.  Even yesterday when I opened the refrigerator to take out cookie dough and noticed the light in the fridge did not go on when the door was open, and when I tried the kitchen light, no go, the wet weather was a welcome change.  It was about this time that the rain hammered the street, the wind wrestled the metal television antennas on top of the adjacent apartment complex, the clothes left out on the line began a second cycle, lightening creased the sky, and the thunder made us realize that perhaps walking to the bus stop, enduring the ride, and walking along a highway in this weather for over twenty minutes was not in our best interest.  We stayed put, saved our computers, put our sweatpants back on (we take it up a notch for the orphanage and rock our jeans), and while Andy read, I sat at the window watching the storm unfold on our street.

Wonders of wonders, the electricity returned a few hours later.  We happily enjoyed not dining in darkness and the return of our access to the internet.  Today, the streets remain wet but our rain clouds have deserted the sky.  I eagerly await their return.

Uneventful Events

Good news! Andy made it out of bed long enough to go to the grocery store, and not just the local Micro Mercado or even the mid-size spot we found, but Mega Maxi, you know, the Walmart-like-place that I think I failed to mention is within the only mall in Ambato, Mall of the Andes, which adds a certain something to the traffic dimension around the joint.  Most importantly, we now have three boxes of whole milk, one bag of cream (I know right, a bag?), and two mounds of butter.  In short, the necessities. 

Of course, right before we left for the store I said, "It looks like it's going to rain."  But, did that spur us to grab a rain coat or layer?  Absolutely not.  Thus, while we flagged down a bus that glanced at us and zoomed right by, it began to rain.  A little dribble-drabble until it started pittering and pattering and ultimately, it rained so hard that it transitioned from background noise to a full-on onslaught of precipitation.  We hid under an overhang and eventually caught a cab.

As you can tell, it was a highly eventful day yesterday. 

This morning we went to church.  We left two and a half hours later.  I know what you're thinking: but I managed to stay within the same two foot radius for two and a half hours, while Andy obviously had no problem with the movement constraints.  Oh, that wasn't what you were thinking? You were thinking, "Good heavens, a two and half hour church service?"  Don't worry, we were thinking that too.  But all in all, it was just fine.

Up Late

Well, we're up late tonight.  The stuff dripping down the back of Andy's throat kept him from sleeping last night, so the plan tonight is to stay awake until his body is so tired that it does not mentally register the dripping, thus allowing him to sleep.  I am also awake out of sympathy and  partially powered by caffeinated tea (apple cinnamon-hi Vanessa!) and Oreos.  Yup, I sunk to Oreos.  It's because I already made those no-bake cookies today, which I admit that 1) I ate them all earlier today 2) I never actually formed the "dough" into cookies (not today or any time in the past few weeks).

We are on approximately page 335 of over 800 of Harry Potter.  I say approximately because Andy and I sometimes have to read on separate computers and that's our median page number.  Oh wait, I didn't mention that we're reading a downloaded pdf off the internet?  Free book, bad translation anyone?  But we tend to read at different paces and to look up different words (okay, we've only looked up a combined total of maybe five words so far purely out of laziness, plus our dictionaries, even the ones online, don't have an extensive magic vocabulary.)  Also, my attention span, not as committed as Andy's, so I like being able to take internet breaks and search food blogs.

I really began this post with the intention of telling you more about our time at the orphanage, because it seems you may be curious about that since it is the main purpose of our time here.  Yet, it's 12:30 am and as you can probably tell, I'm a little loopy.  Therefore, I plan to elucidate on that point later, so hang tight, or loose, whatever you prefer.

We Got Caught Up

It's been a little while, we got caught up in the sixth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter y el misterio del principe.  And by got caught up in, I mean we finished all 430 pages in practically four days.

Furthermore, our weekend was fairly uneventful.  Exhausted by the prospect of having to go to MegaMaxi, have I made the following analogy yet?  It's like going to Walmart on the weekend, spending an hour and half there, yet everything you look and hear is in a foreign language, and oh yeah, you don't have a car to carry everything home.  But instead, you must let the person who packs your bags push your cart to an elevator where you inevitably wait with a crowd of people and carts, until the elevator finally arrives to bring you down to the inside of a parking garage where you must then wait for a taxi (with the bag packer and cart) until a taxi arrives.  Then, you must tip the bag packer and direct the taxi driver as he navigates an enormous crowd of people and vehicles.  Thus, when we noticed on our bus ride home from the orphanage that there was another grocery store about 10-15 minutes away on a nicer walking road, we gave it a try.  It was all in all pretty successful.  Their selection of food and items indicated their much smaller size, but we basically got everything we needed, and rejoiced in the fact that we would not spend the rest of the day recuperating from our shopping trip.

Alas, we only made it until Tuesday night until we said, "We need to go to MegaMaxi for a few things (namely a large bag of oats, butter, which, already pricey, was more so in the smaller store, and that's all I remember.)

However, on Tuesday Andy started to feel gunk dripping down his throat and woke up this morning feeling bad.  And so began the day of Andy reading in bed with a constant supply of tea while I decided to use the time to do laundry (well, that was more of a necessity), sweep and mop the kitchen floor, and thoroughly clean every inch of the kitchen--including the stove top!  I then experimented with a lentil stew, made no-bake cookies (without cocoa, it's basically brown sugar, butter, milk, oats), and made spaghetti and meat balls for dinner!

Now, Andy is thoroughly engrossed in the final Harry Potter book, and I'm about to join him, which means, we'll talk to you in a few days.  :)

Happy Birthday Kate!

Today is the twenty-third birthday of my best friend, Kate.  Thus, I deviate from my Ecuadorian ramblings and, instead, provide the following poem composed in her honor.

At Dartmouth I met a girl name Kate.
I thought she was really great.
I said, "Be my friend."
She said, "To the end."
And then we ate some cake.
[Though it was probably brownies]

Katherine Young Vonderhaar.
How marvelous you really are.
You're funny and sweet,
and awfully neat,
yet I admire you from afar.
[That'd be a continent of separation]

Today you turn twenty-three.
What a cool age to be.
Happy birthday to you.
I love you, it's true.
Now eat some dessert for me.
[Preferably something chocolate.]

Yay!  Happy Birthday Kate!

M-F Pattern, ctd.

Apologies for stopping midday, but at least now you get a glimpse of how our 2-3 hours go after we finally arrive at the orphanage.  We always plan to leave at 4:30pm, but it rarely happens.  We've concluded that instead of asking the tias if it's okay for us to leave and offering any excuse to leave on time, we're just going to tell them we're leaving, end of story. 

After we leave the orphanage, we walk the same miserable 15-20 minutes (we get slower as the day goes on) back down the highway to the bus stop usually going over the days events at the orphanage.  Today's discussion involved much more despair and frustration than normal.  I believe my comment was, "I don't want to go back."  We eventually flag down a bus, pay our 40 cents, collapse in two seats, and endure the long, long ride back downtown--complete with seemingly pointless dallying at certain bus stops and an enormous amount of rush hour traffic.  When we finally get off the bus, it's another 10ish minute walk home.

One of us starts dinner while the other hops in the shower, then we switch.  Dinner gets eaten pretty soon thereafter, and we have the rest of the night to return to studying Spanish or posting on the blog as it would seem.  We're ready for bed at 8:00pm, but usually make it to 10:00pm, which you may calculate given the previous post, is a whooping 10.5 hours of sleep.  Yet, even this past Monday where I actually slept for 11.5 hours, I still managed a 1.5 hour nap during the day while Andy read.

So that's our typical weekday schedule, riveting I realize.  If I had to turn our typical day into a formula it would be:  weekday = anticipation + at attention + exhaustion²

Not bad, but certainly mischievous

Oh man.  Our time at the orphanage today resulted in a moment when Andy and I looked at each other and thought, "What are we doing here?"  and then we forwent our Spanish attempts and broke out in English, "What are we supposed to do?"

Today's walk was particularly miserable with a bit more heat and a lot more wind.  Andy's eyes have been bothering him every since.  Yet, it wasn't the walk that left us completely dumbfounded.  Rather, we arrived at the orphanage and the tias (Spanish for aunts, but that's what the women who work at the orphanage are called) told us it was time to do the kids homework which was what we have been planning to assist with.  Then a couple of the older girls took my hand to show me something and led me from the boys cabin to the girls cabin where they tried to lock me in the building--twice.  Fast forward two hours later, the girls have been running around inside, jumping on beds, arguing, and bargaining, because guess why?  Only the two oldest had any homework.  Thankfully, the psychologist arrived to take one of the younger girls, and I followed them out of the building and in terrible Spanish managed to interrupt the director's meeting where the tias were and to obtain the key to get into the boys cabin.

I unlocked the door and was immediately met by Andy who frantically asked, "How did I end up alone for the past two hours?"  Apparently, Andy had the worst end of things.  His crew, of which only two of them had homework, (which involved Andy coloring twelve computers for an hour and a half), involved an older boy incessantly shooting a sling shot at the deaf/mute girl among other fun incidences in which all Andy could manage in Spanish, to no avail was, "Stop!"  No sooner had I gotten there, then four of the boys went into the kitchen and stole matches.  Then, they proceeded to spray an aerosol can and light the spray on fire, which, as anyone whose seen some action movies, produces an enormous flame.  It got scary when they pointed the can at Andy and started spraying it.  Now mind you, those involved in these actions were the non-special needs kids (or at least in the way of physical or mental handicap), yet there was an older special needs individual who was going crazy over the boys going into the kitchen and about what was going on.  I had to go fetch a tia from the meeting.  After she had made the boys sweep the floor as punishment, she looked at us and said in Spanish, "They're not mischievous boys."

B.S. is all that came to mind.

Monday-Friday Pattern

We are starting to get into a wee bit of a rhythm, though most of us know once you get into any form of rhythm something will come along to knock you out of it, but so far so good.

Anyway, we start our days about 8:30am.  Andy gets up and goes into the kitchen where he boils water for tea and oatmeal.  Over breakfast he reads one of the books in his current rotation--either Harry Potter en Espanol (though he's almost done with it), the King James Study Bible, or Karl Barth's The Epistle to the Romans.  While he does this, I make the bed and then do my physical therapy stretches and exercises on top of it.  They take me about fifteen minutes.  By the time I'm done, Andy's finished breakfast and he comes back to the bed (I told you it was also our living room) to continue reading, and I go into the kitchen to make myself breakfast.  Really, we've been practicing this each morning and it's pretty seamless by now.  Dirty dishes can cramp up the timing a bit, but we're learning how to incorporate them.

Then we have all morning to study Spanish, read our new homepage on the internet-- the BBC news in Spanish on Latin America, clean the apartment (the amount of concrete dust that comes in through the windows is remarkable, as is the amount of hair that falls off my head without me noticing), and eventually make lunch.

We usually leave for the orphanage about 1:45pm.  It takes no less than 50 minutes to get there--a 35 minute bus ride and a 15 minute walk (if we're cruising).  Andy refers to those 15 minutes as "the worst 15 minutes of our day."  The bus drops off us, and we cross four lanes of highway traffic to get to a little walkway alongside a larger highway, what we think is the Pan-American Highway.  On that highway, we cling to the left side of the road and brace ourselves.  What are we bracing ourselves for?  Well, let's set the scene.  You're about to walk in the emergency lane opposing traffic on a major highway.  Think back to the driving etiquette I described in my second post.  Sometimes, for the heck of it, cars or buses or motorcycles or trucks decide they'd prefer to drive in the emergency lane (even when there is zero traffic on the actual road).  They also routinely emit disgusting amounts of fumes.  It's been good, "How long can I hold my breath?" practice.  Worse still, is that it's like you're walking through a dump.  Despite the $400 fine for littering (clearly not enforced at all), there is trash EVERYWHERE.  And it smells like trash often does.  Yet, the stench aside, there is broken glass with every step, which blows up at you when vehicles pass you and if you're not wearing pants (hey, hey, as in I wore a skirt once), you kick it up against your legs when you walk.  In addition to that, the ubiquitous dust found in this country attacks your eyes. 

Now that we've set the scene, let's walk through that for a mile.  But wait, because of the aforementioned driving practices, it's not so safe to walk in the emergency lane, though I often do because our alternative is a choppy, dusty, narrow beaten foot-path on which one can encounter heaps of trash, the actual broken glass bottles, piles of dirt that require circumnavigating, etc.  When we're hustling, it takes us a solid 15 minutes to walk this stretch.  Thus, I figure we're doing about 4 mph, though probably covering just short of a mile since walking on a treadmill (my point of reference although I admit it's been a long time) the pace is more consistent because it doesn't quite have the same obstacles the highway does.

Phew.  I am exhausted just describing it and knowing that three hours from now it will again become my reality.  No but really, I'm not kidding.  I'll have to continue with our daily pattern later.

Happy Halloween (a day late)

Bah, humbug--oh wait, that's what the Grinch says at Christmas.

Here are the weekend highlights:

1. All six Harry Potter movies in Spanish.
--We were able to stream them free over the internet, but you can only watch for 60-72 minutes at a time before the website makes you wait 54 minutes to continue watching or pay to become a member.  The waiting made Friday night a late night as we watched the first two films, but we got the system down for Saturday and Sunday and would watch, then clean the kitchen, watch, start dinner, watch, move all the laundry inside.

2. Laundry
--Our first time doing laundry down here.  By hand, outside on our rooftop, leaning over a cement basin to reach the faucet to fill a bucket with water, soaking a small amount of clothes in said bucket, using a bar of soap to start scrubbing stains and armpits, rinsing clothes under short faucet, squeezing dry, hanging them on the line only to have a non-breezy, cloudy day.  Fast forward to Harry Potter break right before dark, "We need to get the clothes."  We go outside.  The clothes are not dry.  We improvise.  We weigh down two chairs in the kitchen (one with a big water jug, one with the remaining dirty laundry we didn't do), Andy makes a circular laundry line.  Not enough space.  Andy strings a line across the foot-posts of our bed for the underwear.  Not enough space.  I open the seven vertical doors of our closet space and throw shirts over the top of them.  Right now, the next morning, everything is still damp.

3. Sugar Update
--Major breakdown Saturday night when the raw cookie dough I was making didn't turn out.  All the ingredients are different.  I don't even have a mixing bowl.  Lots of tears.  But, what are these six months for?  Adaptability, perseverance, apparently finding a new hobby.  Or, maybe just switching to caramel.  1 c. brown sugar (the fact that the grains are enormous compared to the States doesn't matter when they are boiled), 1 can sweetened condensed milk (really expensive but after the Saturday night disaster...), 1 stick butter (of course they don't have sticks of butter, I used a tablespoon and knife to individually pack and level each of the 8 tablespoons), 1/2 c. honey (also quite expensive and what nearly caused another disaster because for whatever reason it is scented florally).  The result.  It'd be amazing if not for the floral hints, but I am accepting it as an Ecuadorian quirk and focusing on tasting the brown sugar instead.  I asked Andy if he thought it better not to eat fruit at all or to eat an apple with 2/3 c. of caramel--he thought not at all.  Oh well.

4. Church
--Pro: conveniently next door is Guillermo's church.  Con: conveniently next door is Guillermo's church.  Although Guillermo is in the States right now with the Ericksons, we were strongly encouraged to go.  In case you're curious, it's affiliated with the Church of God.  They have a bass guitarist, keyboardist, and vocalist.  It was like a rock concert to start, you know, heart palpitations from the acoustics, but the music part was actually pretty fun--following and attempting the Spanish lyrics (on a screen in the front of the church).  It is actually quite similar to the Erickson's home church in Montana.  Of course, unless there's an organ and lots of liturgy, a church doesn't feel like church for Andy and I.  Not that it wasn't fun and moving.  We'll continue to go, but we also hope to supplement it and go to church with Anita and Fabiola.

5. An amazing black bean dish.
--Seriously.  We are looking for cost-effective foods, and I've been researching lentil, bean, pasta, and rice recipes.  It tasted great even though it did not cook fully in three hours and should have taken one.  Have I mentioned the altitude here is 8,500 feet?