First Week

Before we begin we want to reassure our loved ones that the title of this blog is meant to be tongue in cheek and that we have no intention of placing ourselves in dangerous situations nor have we experienced any unintentionally.

We're composing this first entry together but we expect that in future entries you will hear our individual voices.

We arrived in Quito last Tuesday night. We were lucky not to experience any delays as we later learned that they are common due to the thin air and the fact that Quito is surrounded by mountains. Pilots actually need to be especially trained to land there given the challenges.

We had to take a van into the city from the airport as we are travelling the opposite of light. We have a year's worth of schoolwork for Ailish and Liam, numerous heavy bird reference books, Mark's bike, among other detritus. Our ride to the our hotel was uneventful except for two men who ran past our van, one with a shirt covered in blood. We asked the cab driver if they were criminals and he said, "Oh no, solo borachos."

Our hotel was located in the new part of Quito but the building looked to be very old and was quite charming. It felt like a sanctuary. Liam and Ailish were thrilled to discover that there was a room with several computers and free internet access.

We took a short cabride into the old part of town the next morning. We were pleased to discover that Quito was architecturally charming, had an international cosmopolitan feel, and was navigable on foot. We visited one museum and learned about the recent political history of Ecuador (and its leftist leanings) and later came upon an exhibit of award winning photojournalism from around the world.

Thursday we flew to Cuenca and were met at the airport by the director of our Spanish school. She took us to our first apartment situated on an island between the busy and noisy Avenida 12 de Abril and the Rio Tomebamba. We cannot begin to describe how much our lives improved when we were able to move to the river side of the complex and away from the noise and polution belching buses and trucks on the street side. Our space is nonetheless small and we will continue to look around for other housing options in town.

Our Spanish school is everything we hoped it would be. It is in a beautiful building (a converted house from another era) in the old town. Mark and Sheilah are much enamored of their teacher who is enthusiastic, prepared, engaging and fun. She is also very helpful. Tomorrow we will go with her to the local immigration office to try to make sense of the changing laws affecting our visa status. (We hope to find a way to extend our stay past the initial 3 months without too much hassle or expense.) Liam and Ailish spent the morning on a field trip shopping for ingredients for a cooking project. We all shared their chocolate pudding at the end of our school day at 12:30. At least the older generation in our household think it is a real blast to all be classmates learning a subject of such enormous and immediate utility.

We are happy to report that things are great here and we are enjoying the challenges presented by living in a foreign country and the excitement of shaping, and being shaped by, all that we experience.