Laundry and Flying!

After being here almost two weeks and even longer then that travelling, we had a ton of laundry. Luckily, we have a laundromat just down the street from our house so we were able to take it there to get cleaned. I bet it looks funny watching two adults followed by their kids and two huge suitcases walking down the street. It's not a laundry mat like back home where you actually do the washing but more like a dry cleaners where you drop it off and pick it back up. For two large suitcases we only paid $12, crazy! And that included washing, drying, and folding. So cheap but it will be nice to have a place to do our own laundry, so that I can be the one making sure the stains get out.
After taking the laundry we took the kids to a new park to play, they had lots of fun though it was still quite muddy from the rain the previous days. We got to see some cows too on our walk to the park. They are often brought to the rivers to drink the water and eat the green grass by the edges. It's funny to be walking in a residential area and see a person leading their cow to the river. We have even seen goats, chickens and many dogs. You never know what you might see when talking a walk to the park.
Once we finally made it downtown to CEDI, we did a little internet and then Bolo picked us up to take us to get our police id's for our bank accounts. Once we got there we had to wait for about an hour and then were told that we can't finalize the id's until we are officially registered in the country. So we decided to book our flights to Quito. Remember we did try to do that when we landed in Ecuador and were told we needed to do some stuff first in order to do it but didn't have time before our flight to Cuenca. So we called up Anshy (Bolo's daughter that just got married) as she works for a travel agency here in the city and she was able to book us some flights to Quito. So we will head to Quito next Monday morning and come back on Wednesday night. We hope to get it all done on the Monday but thought we better spend a bit more time there for the just in case. Hopefully, once we are officially registered in the country we will be able to get our id's and bank accounts. We'll keep you updated on that process, however we did find that we can write out cheques here and get them cashed for u.s. dollars (which is the local currency here) for a minimum fee, which for us is great since we can't really get out cash with our regular bank cards. So until we can get those bank accounts, that is a great alternative.

Church, lunch and SOCCER!

Sunday brought another day to worship with the main congregation here in the city. Calen and I joined Ceara and Travis this time and found the people very friendly and excited that we were here to work in the city. Bolo presented to the church and they prayed for us and the people that we would have an influence on. Ceara and Calen got to go to Sunday school and did well, it was good that they were able to be in the same class although Ceara acts as if she's always gone there, haha. Of course they are still learning Spanish and trying to understand what is going on but I think they both know more then they let on, especially Ceara, she remembers Portuguese enough that I think it's helping her with the Spanish.

After church we got to spend some time with Bolo, Jenny and their family. Now that the wedding plans are over and the work with LST that kept them very busy, they were able to take some time with us talking, sharing and just hanging out. Jenny hasn't been feeling well for awhile now and this past week was really struggling with her health. Finally though they saw a doctor who realized what she was being treated for wasn't really what she needed and ran some tests. She has some sort of bacteria in her body that makes it hard for her to eat and keep anything down. She's now on antibiotics and a strict diet to help with this. Hopefully this is what is really wrong and she can start feeling better (she already says she does). But please continue to pray for her as she deals with her health. But despite being sick she wanted to make us lunch, so we ate really good that day. It's always the basic rice, beans and chicken but very delicious. Travis tells Jenny every time that she should open a restaurant.

And of course no day would be complete without a game of soccer! No we did not play, however, Brazil was playing and so we sat around watching the game, the kids went out to play with the neighborhood girls and Jenny and I mostly chatted. Brazil lost the game but we say that is because Ceara and Calen were not watching, since they are really the ones who cheer for Brazil having been born there. The other day though was a harder game to watch as Brazil played Ecuador. Who do you cheer for? The place where you lived and brought kids into the world or the place you currently live? Well the kids picked their native land, I was undecided and I don't think Travis could decide either though for him, either one was good. Oh the things you end up talking about when you live in the land of soccer!

No More Stitches!

Today was a big day for Calen! He got his stitches out! Yeah, I can’t believe that only a week ago he was in my arms bleeding and needing to get stitches to mend the gash in his head. He was very brave as the same doctor came to remove the stitches ( a little leery of course when he first saw him), only crying a little thinking that the doctor was going to hurt him more. But after it all, he even gave the doctor a high five. The doctor said that Calen was healing well and that the wound just needed time to dry out by itself, so we are so grateful that nothing else was wrong and that God was watching over him even though he fell. I am glad too as it’s hard as a mom to see your child hurt and not be able to do anything to help them. But he is good and will have a great story to tell his friends and family one day about his time in Cuenca. We celebrated with some time at the mall for the kids to play and even a little ice cream!

Of course no day would be complete for Travis if he didn’t get to spend some time at CEDI listening to the riders play football over the internet, though not the outcome he really wanted! But fun none the less! However, leaving CEDI he was unable to reset the alarm and the rest of the night we all spent time up there trying to get it going again. Even after getting Bolo and the guy from the alarm company, nothing was fixed so that wasn’t great. But we have been told, this happens from time to time so just to be patient and learn who to call and what to do. I think we experienced this a few times in Brazil (Hey guys? Randy, Russ, Matt?) too! Got to have a few of these times to experience here as well. (It’s fixed now though!)

Mail Taxes and Banking!

Today was another day at CEDI, checking internet, doing banking, trying to send a few emails and do blogs, post pictures and so on. Seems like that is the only time we can get on the internet is at the CEDI or the mall, though it is much easier and faster at CEDI. We also got a package in the mail, well technically it was a letter to say that we have something but looks like we are going to have to pay taxes on our mail. So please don’t send us anything until we know for sure as it looks like it will be a lot to pay for the taxes. Unfortunately we have sent some things for our house through the mail and if we have to pay taxes, we are now a little worried about how much we will be paying for our stuff to come through the mail. Hopefully, it won’t be as much as we imagine it to be. We will find out soon though. It’s a good thing that Bolo is around to help us sort all these types of things out, it definitely wasn’t that easy in Brazil since we really didn’t know anyone to help in that way.

Speaking of Bolo, he went with us to find out if we could get a bank account here in Cuenca. In Brazil we never actually were able to open an account during the whole five years that we lived there so it was a surprise when the process here is not that hard. One thing we need is like a registration card or a type of police id to say that we are living in Cuenca, the other is money to put into the account, an address and a reference which will be Bolo. Unfortunately we won’t be able to get the account yet as we have to go back to Quito to get registered in Ecuador and then get the police ID card then off to the bank and we will have an account in Ecuador. So in a lot of ways that will help us with many types of things that we may need to do here, but just having a bank account will be great.

Portuguese or Spanish/Spanish or Portuguese?

As was planned we headed to CEDI to help the girls study Portuguese. I actually had a hard time at first as I had been trying to speak more Spanish and forget Portuguese these past few days, and the months before we came here. It was fun though being able to laugh a little bit at Travis as he tried to say things in Portuguese and not doing well at it or trying to remember a word and not knowing if that word was the Spanish or Portuguese word. Overall, I think we were able to help out the girls with their pronunciation and give them better ways to say something for their oral test. (They said to us later that they did very well on their test)

Afterwards we started to look downtown at the furniture stores (there happen to be three just on the same street as CEDI), but as we had to remember that most stores are closed between 1 and 3. So we only were able to get an idea of what we would like to get once we have a permanent home to live in. Later that night we went to a pizza place for supper that had a bunch of play structures for the kids to play on and met a really nice waitress that was excited that we were here as missionaries. She started to tell us of some Austrians that she had worked with in the past that were missionaries here about 10 years ago. It is really interesting sometimes how open people are with you, especially when they think your kids are cute. So many of the taxi drivers here are really open too, we’ve heard many stories now of their lives, their kids or vacations they have just come from. Cuenca seems to be a very open city and God definitely is working on the hearts of people here. Keep on praying, I know there are many who will come to know Him as we work here.

Meetings and Play Time

We finally got to meet today with Bolo and Jaime who are our teammates to discuss the what, how, when and why’s of us being here. It was good to reconnect and plan for the future of our work here. Of course right now most of what we are doing is settling in but after that we will be working on the continuation of those that were part of the Let’s Start Talking program just before we got here. Another thing Travis will do, probably starting in January is teaching some classes at the institute which I will start referring to as CEDI which is the new name for the school since the paperwork has been finalized. So don’t forget I will start referring to the school as CEDI. It’s a long technical name in Spanish so I won’t bother going into it all for you, so just CEDI. Another thing will be starting on the bible studies that Bolo and Jaime already have going on in the city, worshipping with the existing church right now and for me learning to speak better Spanish. It may not seem like a lot to many of you but trust me that is a brief statement of what we will end up doing. I am sure once we get more settled in, you will hear of more work that we are doing.

After meeting with the guys for quite awhile and the kids having played with the secretary of CEDi’s kids we needed to let our kids do something fun for a bit, so we hopped into a taxi and took them to play at the mall. They have a place called PlayGo, it’s like a big Chucky Cheese and Dinobouncers in one(for those who know those two places in Regina). So lots of games and rides to play on as well as those blow-up castles and slides. Those are what our kids like the best, to jump and slide down, it sure lets them wear off their exorbitant amounts of energy that they have. And it’s a good place for us as well because we can check our email while they are playing. While there we were able to stop by Coral (another grocery/all-in-one store) and picked up some heaters. Yes I know, it’s crazy but the mountains is not all that warm at night. Especially when you live in concrete buildings and have tiled floors. So when it gets to be about 5 or 6 degrees out at night it gets a little chilly in the house. Let me just say how much my toes love me now!

While the kids were taking their naps, Travis headed back to CEDI to meet with some girls who have been studying Portuguese. They were having a test in a few days and wanted to make sure that they were speaking it well enough as it was an oral test. When he got back Travis told me how he was struggling to help them enough since he’d already started switching to Spanish in his mind. So he offered me to help the next day. Yeah a great way to confuse my mind too!

Two Hour Lunch!

After almost being here a week we decided to take a little walk through our neighbourhood. Travis had already been doing a bunch of exploring but he wanted us to see everything too. It was neat to see how close we live to a grocery store we went to when we came in November 2009 and how close we are to Bolo and Jenny’s home. It was neat to see how many little stores there are, how close it is to walk to the soccer stadium and to the two main malls. There are so many stores to buy bread and the main things for your house as well as many little restaurants or barbeque places (they specialize in cuy which is guinea pig).

After our walk we went downtown to explore some more, found a good little restaurant to eat at and looked at a bunch of stores that sell appliances. We found one that seems to be able to provide us everything we may need at a great price. There are lots of things to find downtown but we have to make sure that we don’t go between 1 and 3 when most of the stores still close for lunch. Can you imagine what that would be like if we did that in Canada? Two hours for lunch for everyone? It is nice because that means a lot of families have time to eat lunch together!

That evening we went to the other mall that, get this, has a KFC. Although that might be a good thing in the months to come having a familiar restaurant, we didn’t actually eat there but let the kids play on their play structure and looked to see what there was in this mall. Afterwards we took a little walk to a taco place, it actually makes pretty decent Mexican food which is nice to see we have more options then the rice, beans and meat that is usually served at every place. And this happens not to be far from our place right now either. Which is good seeing that we don’t have much stuff right now to make a lot of food from the house. Hopefully in the next while we can find a more permanent house to live in and start setting up the things we need in order to do just that.