"Safety First" Photo of the week

This is a good one, check out this father / daughter biking home today down a crazy busy road about to cross a huge intersection.

Merry Christmas from Ecuador!!

Guess who played Santa!

  

  

  

We're heading to the beach tomorrow, we will be disconnecting for a week as we will have no internet access and possibly no phone! It's pretty cut off on the coast here. hope to have some great stories and lots of fun photos when we get back. 

So, Merry Christmas from Ecuador!!!!

If you're having a bad day in Ecuador

Spencer's boss, Devin, just installed this little gem in his office at school to help make the rough days a little brighter:

This one's for my Mommacita!

Check out what I found in the park today! Look familiar?

And yes, that is Maia sniffing around. She wanted no part of this.

I love that this park is soooo big that I am still discovering whole new sections four months later.

Happy 12/12/12!!!

Random Photos from this week

Its been a busy week here in Quito with Spencer's birthday, the Fiesta de Quito, we bought a grill, and we bought a car!! Here are some photos.

First, every year Quito celebrates it's founding with a multi-day city wide celebration. Everyone gets time off and there are fireworks, parties and fun little activities happening all over the city including this go kart track set up on the giant hill behind our house on Wednesday afternoon. After we saw someone wipe out HARD on the first race, we decided this was not something we wanted to try.

The festivities include nightly concerts. The concert grounds were extensive and reminded me of music festivals back in the states with food and artisan vendors, a main stage (above) second stages and  tons of people milling about.

Of course, we celebrated Spencer's birthday on Wednesday right in the middle of the chaos of the Fiesta de Quito. We had a great night going out to dinner with some friends and then found our way to an '80s themed nightclub, it was great fun and we danced all night. 

Above is Spencer with Kain, Andrew and Belen.

 

Having a great time! (I was bummed these photos didn't turn out better, but I still love them)

 

Maia and I went for a walk last weekend, of course. I continue to be awed by the beauty of this amazing park right behind our house and in the middle of the city. 

We had the MOST beautiful sunset this week. Amazing. This photo does not capture the intensity of these colors.

We bought a car! It was quite an ordeal to say the least. I hope to post a detailed account of it soon, but in the meantime, check out our sweet new ride - a 1998 Ford Explorer.

Finally, it's never a dull day in Quito, even at the grocery store. I spotted this little gem in the meat case yesterday while shopping for something to cook on our new grill. Yes, that is an entire baby pig shrink wrapped and ready for the spit. Not something you would find in Stop & Shop or Kroeger's.

It was a great week and it isn't over yet! We're taking our new car out of the city today to explore the countryside. 

Brotopaxi

One of Spencer's fellow teachers organized a boys trip last weekend called "Brotopaxi". 9 of the male teachers headed to the craziest party beach town in Ecuador called Montanita. Spencer said it was like Las Vegas on crack.  Wow, can't wait to see that at some point (briefly)!

They had a pretty wild time with much beer, long island iced teas, sketchy food, great people watching, and late nights.

As is typical on a boys weekend, not too many pictures were taken but thankfully he did get a few.

Here is the beach, Spencer said it went on for miles and was wide, flat and awesome. It was overcast all weekend, unfortunately.

Speaking of sketchy food, Spencer got some Ceviche from this guy, which he said was great and cheap, but I'm not so sure I would eat raw seafood off a cart like this!

The main drag of Montanita. It was just one tiny little bar after another right next to the beach. There are no open container laws so they just walked up and down the street grabbing drinks.

Good times.  Good Times.

Happy Birthday Spencer!!!

Wishing a very special Happy Birthday to my fabulous and amazing husband!!! It will be a long day of celebrating the day of his birth!! Hope to have some fun pics to share tomorrow, unless it gets too wild tonight! ;)

Our awesome friend, Kate, made him this delish triple layer super moist chocolate cake from scratch!!

Cash is King in Quito

I think one of my favorite things about our new 'lifestyle' is that we are using only CASH! Cash for groceries, for rent, for eating out, for random government fees, for doctors appointments etc.  I've been using credit cards for nearly 20 years and I don't miss it at all.  I especially don't miss the monthly guessing game I would play with myself before viewing my bill on-line. Somehow I was always wrong about how much I owed and it was never in my favor. Even the debit card became deadly, always wondering if I had enough to cover that dinner or outfit.

It's sort of liberating to live only on cash. I may try and maintain this when we return to the states.