No coins or water heaters

A little birdie told me that a blog reader was nonplussed by pictures of water heaters and coins, and wanted pictures of US. Hmmm. So here’s one from lunch during the New Teacher trip to the handicraft mecca of Otavalo, Ecuador in August. One look at the expressions you can tell who’s about to start a new job — and who is chillin’ hard.

Some People Never Change

In Latin American countries, people rarely have any change. Sometimes vendors are just pretending, out of habit or out of a scarcity mentality. Sometimes — perhaps more often — they really don’t have change. Ironically, the ATMs give out twenties, tens, even fives and ones. This surprising and welcome fact alone may be keeping the economy from grinding to a changeless standstill.

Wednesday night on the way home from school I decided to buy roses at a little kiosk, red ones for Joy. I’d already picked out a bunch when I realized all I had was a $20 bill. The lady assured me she could change it (a mild surprise); then came back a minute later after having gone to the flower booth next door, now imploring me to surrender my hidden stash of change. I reiterated: I had none, ni un centavo. So she disappeared next door again, reappeared, and then walked past me to stand by the sidewalk looking out over the busy street. After a while, I realized she was waiting for her colleague, whom she’d sent across the busy street and down the road to the big supermarket - looking for change. Impatiently, I considered my options. “Forget it, take your roses back — this is ridiculous!” was on the tip of my tongue.  Until I realized, that is, that she had my money, and I was stuck. About 10 minutes later she finally came back carrying a few bills and a fistful of coins, which were painstakingly counted from fetcher to seller, then again by seller, and finally to me. All that trouble for a $1.50 purchase.  The roses are pretty, though; Joy was happy, and all’s well that ends well.

Boy am I Jazzed

Today I gave a 45-minute MS Word Tips and Tricks class to my colleagues at school as part of an in-service day, and I had a packed house in the computer lab and got a lot of murmurs of approval as I shared shortcuts.  At one point a woman called out, “Where have you been all my life?”!   Now, given that my self-esteem is generated entirely from within, this appreciative outburst had little impact on me; I convey it here simply as an objective reporter.

After the training, Joy and I did yoga for the first time at the school with 4 other teachers, which was strenuous and relaxing.  Then after walking home together (it was a treat to walk home from school accompanied by Joy), we took a taxi down to the Mariscal, the big tourist area.  There we had tasty Vietnamese noodle bowls followed by passionfruit creme brulee.  Wow.  Back at home just now, I figured out how to wrap text around my pictures on this blog!  It was easy enough that I went back and revised the last 3 or 4 entries.

Quite a great day for a geeky, lucky guy.

Pululahua on Horseback

A week ago Saturday we joined a group from the South American Explorer’s Club on a fantastic day trip to the Pululahua Crater (near the Equator, about an hour and a half from Quito), where we did a 3-hour horseback ride punctuated by a delicious three-course lunch at a hostel in the middle of nowhere. Our guide, Astrid, has been doing these trips for a long time, at her place, Green Horse Ranch.

Left: The Beautiful Pululahua Crater. The small cone down low, center, is featured behind us in the next picture down. At least I think so. Our ride was basically a circumnavigation of the bigger cone, part on dirt roads, part on trails.
We got to know all the participants in the van on the way up — an Australian plumber madly, romantically in love with a single mom from Seattle; two 18 year-old girls just graduated from a Scottish prep school; an English woman who manages a travel-guide company here in Quito; a white-collar criminal defense attorney from LA; and two U.S. embassy wives (whose kids attend my school) and one of their daughters. One of these women, Nicole, turns out to have a giant collection of books in English she bought in the states and brought down with her (embassy folks apparently have an 8-ton limit on shipments to places abroad, compared to a 600 lb limit for teachers). She has already loaned Joy about 10 books!

Astrid used who knows what kind of equestromancy to figure out who got on what horses. Joy wound up on Momo, who likes to kick other horses. Freshly saddled and before we even began, Momo sneakily sidled up to another horse and kicked it in the chest - with Joy on her! Later, she let one fly toward the dog that came along with us, and another one to “the horse despised by all the horses” because she was the newest. This last bit of aggression was a gymnastic feat, a move that I would have sworn horses couldn’t do — a full hacky-sack side kick.

I saw these attacks because I was on Apache, described as “the boss horse” by Astrid, “‘first to drink, first to eat.” Of course I took this match of steed to rider to be a highly intuitive decision on Astrid’s part. My task on Apache, however, was to stay behind Momo (aka Joy) because Apache was the only horse Momo wouldn’t kick. This led to a triplong meditation/reappraisal of our guide’s real insights regarding our mounts and their riders.

The roads were very scenic because of the surroundings, but things really got interesting when we started up these steep trails, and later in the trip down an even steeper trail that had worn and eroded over millenia so it was its own little canyon barely wide enough for horse and rider.

Below left: Luke and Apache.

Below: Back at the ranch (literally), a 2-week old colt was feeling very frisky. Just after this picture it began to gallivant with enthusiastic abandon, a feeling that was contagious.

Tungurahua volcano last year

My friend Rex, who built his own telescope when we were kids, sent this link to me of Ecuador’s Tungurahua volcano erupting last year. Click the link to see the big picture and read the interesting caption: Astronomy Picture of the Day. No, Mom, this isn’t very close to Quito, where we live. As to why this is the Astronomy Picture of the Day, as opposed to the Volcano Picture of the Day, I guess it squeaks in because there are a few stars in the background. Is that scraping the bottom of the astronomical barrel? Or is it that, in fact, pictures of stars just aren’t that exciting, so they have to throw in a star or two next to some exploding molten rock, sort of like needing to put John Kerry in a sports car? Next thing you know they’ll be including pictures from the Academy Awards. Stars, get it?