Ecuador Days 8, 9, and 10: Shoes, Seminary, and Ceviche

It's been several days since I posted partly because we've been somewhat busy, but I haven't had a great deal to post. Part of the reason for this is that a family that is moving from Quito to Orlando stayed with us for several days. The husband is from Ecuador and the wife is from Illinois. Their kids, while American citizens, have grown up in Quito and are essentially Ecuadorian. They owned a hair salon here catering mainly to Americans. As Americans have left the country due to the government here being less friendly to Americans and American business, their business has declined. Because of this, they've felt that moving back to the United States is a better option for them and their family. It's been interesting seeing the family saying their goodbyes to friends and family here while preparing to transition to life in another country. Their kids were asking me lots of questions about what it's like to live in America and what Orlando is like. While they've travel to the US some to visit family, they've never spent a significant amount of time there. To make matters even tougher, they are not Christians. They Lamberts have spent years developing a relationship with them, but they have not been terribly open to Christ. My prayers go out for them during this time of transition that they not only find Christ, but that they find a place to settle and jobs.

Their last night here, we all went to a restaurant called La Ronda. La Ronda is a restaurant that serves traditional Ecuadorian food. Fritada is one of their specialties as well as a very traditional Ecuadorian dish. I decided to order that and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. Fritada is a dish that is made of pork that has been boiled and then fried. It was served with fried bananas, a type of corn cake, and hominy. I've had hominy multiple times, and have never been a fan until this time. It was pretty fantastic. My only complaint about it was that it had quite a bit of cilantro on it and I'm not the biggest fan of cilantro. Over all though, I was a big fan of the food. I would eat there again in a heartbeat!

The best part of the restaurant was the live music. They had a group of six men who went table to table playing traditional Andean music. They were all dressed in matching ponchos and hats, and played quite a variety of instruments. They had guys playing quenas, pan flutes, guitars, drums, and even a charango. One of the guys who played the charango played it the fastest I've ever seen. It was truly impressive. They were not the only life music though. There was also a group of three guys who played Spanish guitar and sang ballads. They were quite excellent as well. It was a truly enjoyable experience.

The next day (Wednesday) after the families departure to the airport, we headed out to run errands. Our first stop was at a shoe store to price out school shoes. Hands for Ecuador has been raising the money to buy school shoes for children in the churches here. They had hoped to raise enough money to buy 220 pairs of shoes. Cindy called a couple of days before to tell us that they had managed to raise more than $5,300. With this number in mind, we set off to see how many shoes could be bought with this money and to put a deposit down. After picking out styles for both younger and older boys and girls as well as sizes, one of the salespeople set off to see how much 200 pairs would cost. He came back 15-20 minutes later with the quote, and we realized we could buy at least another hundred pairs. The salesman went off and came back a few minutes later with his total. 305 pairs of shoes came out to just under $5000. This meant that we still had $300 left to spend. While he had been putting together the quote, we had been looking around the shoe store and found some really awesome shoes that looked like Chuck Taylors and had dinosaurs all over them. I'm still kind of wanting them… Anywho, we also found a clearance rack with some shoes from last year. All of them were 50% off. Karen told the guy to get us every pair he could find as long as the total was under $300. Several minutes later, we were walking to the register with another 30 pairs of school shoes, the most expensive of which was $10. Keep in mind that all of these shoes are made of leather and are pretty good quality. Karen paid for the shoes and then put down a deposit on the rest of the shoes. The salesman seemed pretty excited for his sale and event through in 200 plastic rulers with the Bunky logo (the shoe manufacture) on them. We'll had back tomorrow to pick up the other 305 pairs of shoes.

After that, we grabbed lunch at a Chinese restaurant and then headed to the Seminary so Jon could attend a short meeting. While he did that, I helped Karen go through all of the Children of Promise files to look up the birth dates of all of the children in the program. I enjoyed getting to see all of their pictures and hearing about some of them. Some of them, like the kids at Meridiano, have grown up a great deal since I last saw them nearly 8 years ago. It was also a good time to learn more at the Children of Promise program. I didn't realize just how little I knew about it.

After Jon's meeting, we headed back to the house. They worked in the office some and I studied some for my upcoming classes. I might have read a little bit of Harry Potter as well. Ok, I read a little bit of Harry Potter. After Danny got home from working at the hospital, we had supper. As we were finishing up, Jon was commenting about how nice it would be to have some paila for dessert. Sadly, there was no place to get paila nearby, or so we thought. Danny told us there was a place only a few minutes away that looked pretty good. That was enough for us. We grabbed our shoes, jumped in the car, and were off with Danny at the wheel. As we got there, the owners were just leaving the shop and were in the process of locking the doors. We inquired about their hours, and it turns out they close at 7:30 and we had gotten there at 7:35. They then told us we'd be welcome to still come in and get some if we'd like. They had a ton of flavors to pick from. I ended up getting a scoop of taxo and a scoop of guanábana served in a tulipan. A tulipan is an edible ice cream bowl that looks a little bit like a tulip. All I can say about the paila was that it was absolutely delicious. It wasn't as pretty as the one I had at Mitad del Mundo, and didn't have all of the extras on it, but it didn't need it. I suspect I will be getting paila there at least another couple of times before I leave Ecuador.

On Thursday, Jon and I started off the morning by heading to the Seminary to drop a hand truck off so that Mariano could go get the gas cylinders filled for the kitchen at the seminary. Mariano is the man who was stabbed, thrown off a cliff, and left to die several years ago. I've only met him briefly before now. Our next stop was Mega Kywi. Mega Kywi is the largest hardware store in the city. It may be the largest in the country (Jon isn't sure if the one in Guayaquil is bigger).

Mega Kywi is a lot like a Home Depot or a Lowes. They have just about everything you could need ranging from desk to plants to mowers to hardware. The biggest difference between Mega Kywi and hardware stores in the US is the prices. Many items such as lawnmowers are much more expensive here than they are at home. Karen pointed out to me later that while the prices may be significantly higher, at least you can get all of these things now. In the past, it was almost impossible to get much of what Mega Kywi carries. On the way back to the car, we stopped by a little stand that had really great vanilla cake donuts. Jon knows of all the best food places around!

After our trip to the store, we headed back to the Seminary to drop stuff off. We had purchased a desk and a file cabinet for the office, so we left those with Mariano to put together. Then we headed home for lunch, and what a lunch it was! Karen had cooked ceviche for lunch. Ceviche is a traditional Ecuadorian soup that is served cold. Karen made ceviche that was tomato based with shrimp and chochos in it. Chochos are a type of bean that you can only get here. It was very, very good.

After lunch, we headed back to the Seminary so that Jon could meet with some installers who are putting in internet at the Seminary. The internet they're getting is the cheapest available. It's 256K and cost $80/month! It's still cheaper than the other option which was a blazing 512K and cost a mere $175 a month. When the told me the cost of the more expensive one, I about fell over. That just seems like highway robbery to me.

Once we were done with the installers, we headed to Santa Clara to hit up the market to buy some pots and pans for the seminary. Some of the cooking utensils have a habit of walking off, and some larger pots and pans were needed so that the cooks can prepare food for more than 40 people. We went to three different shops to compare prices and ended up getting some stuff at each one. With that out of the way, we headed to Bosque, one of the malls in the area. We went to a computer store first to purchase an ethernet cable for the Seminary. I was expecting it to be really expensive, but a 10 foot cable was only $4. It turns out that the cable is imported, but is not considered a luxury item. Because of that, computer cables can be made here very cheaply. While Jon was buying the cable, Karen noticed a rack of jackets on sale for $10 a piece. She looked at all of them and mentioned that they'd make great Christmas presents for some of the older girls in Children of Promise. She ended up picking out 10 of them. It was fun helping play Santa for some of the kids. We're hoping to hit up the Christian bookstore soon to pick up presents for the rest of the children while the store still has some good stuff in. We then ate dinner at the food court in the mall.

We ate supper in front of some big windows that face out over part of Quito as well as the airport. As the sun went down, we noticed that one of the valleys out past the airport was positively glowing. Over the next 15 or so minutes, we watched the light creep up the side of the mountains. The light turned everything gold and it cast deep shadows helping to see the topography of the land. Sadly, the show was over pretty quickly. The sun sets and rises incredibly fast here on the equator. Once we were done eating, we wandered into a movie store for a few minutes. They sell DVDs for $2.50 each, and have tons of them. They also sell games for computers and many gaming systems (also for $2.50). You can guess where the DVDs come from. It seemed funny to me to see two such stores in one mall.

Once we were finished at the mall, we headed back to the house for the evening. I worked a little bit on stuff for my classes and then played on the computer some. We had hoped to get some paila, but were not able to make it to the shop before they were closed. Maybe next time…

Today, I've just hung around the house reading for school and for fun and worked on finishing up my lectures. I also did some laundry while I had the chance because life starts getting much busier tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the meeting of the National Committee. We also need to run pick up the rest of the shoes, all 305 pairs of them. Sunday, we're going to church at Ofelia where Jon will preach both services. Then we have to go to the Seminary to register people for the week and then have a worship service for the seminary tomorrow night at Comite. Classes begin on Monday and run through the rest of the week. It's going to be an adventure!