July 6, 2012: The Day Before
July 7, 2012: Traveling
July 8, 2012: First Day
July 9, 2012: Teleferico, Iglesia de La Compañia de Jesus
July 10, 2012: The Basilica and the Stolen Backpack
July 11, 2012: Last Day in Quito
July 12, 2012: Travel to Loja
July 13, 2012: Catamayo
July 14, 2012: Loja and Alfredo
July 15, 2012: Church at Semilla de Mostaza
July 16, 2012: Back to Quito
July 17, 2012: Traveling
Note: Many of the pictures in this blog series are taken from the internet, because we had our camera stolen halfway through the trip.
Leo and Lulu have meetings all day today, so Joe and I head to the mall for breakfast, coffee, and to rent half an hour of internet so Joe can change the passwords for websites his phone automatically logged into. We don’t want our thieves ordering themselves stuff through our Amazon account. We do pretty well at the internet cafe as far as figuring stuff out, though we need help typing the “@” sign because the keyboard is weird with all Spanish stuff. The command is something like Ctrl+Shift+2.
I think my allergy medication is in the stolen backpack so we go to the pharmacy. There’s pharmacies everywhere. In this pharmacy, you go talk to the pharmacist, who gives you an order form with a price. Then you pay for the meds you’re buying at the register, and then you take your receipt to another pharmacist who delivers the meds. They get our orders wrong, giving me oral allergy spray instead of nasal, and the wrong brand of Allegra. But we don’t realize that till later, and it’s a moot point because I later I find my allergy meds.
Our last touristy event is Mitad del Mundo, the middle of the world, supposedly right on the equator. Apparently it’s not, and there’s a nearby place that claims to be the real Mitad del Mundo, but apparently it’s not either, according to the four minutes of research I did. Anyway, it’s pretty much on the equator, more or less. We buy a Kodak disposable camera. We also buy most of our gifts and stuff for ourselves there. Here's Joe and me:
Also, Bill Clinton was here:
They have a museum for colonial Quito with an amazing model of the city. They even have "day" and "night" times complete with fading light and roosters crowing, and at night little lights come up in the miniature houses!
We take a taxi back to town. Someone told us there’s a coffee roaster near the Presidential Palace, so we ask the taxi to take us there. It’s crowded at the Palace, with police holding crowds back from roped-off areas. We ask someone what’s happening; apparently, the President is going to make an appearance. As much as we’d like to see that, we’re a little claustrophobic from the crowds, and we really want to get our coffee. We set off in one direction, ask a police person, set off in another direction, ask someone else, and get sent in another direction. At one point we walk up and down the street it’s supposedly on, and we ask someone and they tell us to walk five blocks in yet another direction! It turns out some of the cops, in their efforts to communicate with us in English, get “right” and “left” mixed up. Luckily we stumble on the shop - or rather, smell it - and order fresh-roasted coffee beans. I found this blog post someone wrote on the shop so you can read about it and see pictures, and go, if you are ever in Quito.
At this point, we are absolutely done. With the backpack episode yesterday, we are emotionally done with Quito - plus, we’ve seen all the major sights, so we feel no guilt going back to the guest house.
When Leo and Lulu return from their meetings, we go out to a very nice restaurant. I’m feeling sick so I just order vegetables (the best roasted vegetables ever!) and then they take us to MegaMaxi. SuperMaxi is the Safeway chain of Ecuador (and someone also told me Peru and one other country), but Mega Maxi is MEGA. We buy a ton of candy and chocolate there.
We present Leo and Lulu with the gifts we brought - yummy treats from the States. Because let's face it, even if you've grown up in the States, you miss certain niceties when you go on the mission field. I bring them a Costco-sized thing of jelly bellies, because I have a memory of being in Cameroon, age 10, and someone sent us a tiny packet of jelly bellies, and we sat around the kitchen table for an hour while my mom cut each bean into four portions so we could try each flavor at the same time, and talk about what it tasted like.
They had also requested some fruit roll-ups for their 7-year old son Pablo, so I picked up some Fruit by the Foot from Costco. It turns out that that was exactly the brand he had wanted, but they couldn’t remember what it was called, so they just requested fruit roll-ups.
July 7, 2012: Traveling
July 8, 2012: First Day
July 9, 2012: Teleferico, Iglesia de La Compañia de Jesus
July 10, 2012: The Basilica and the Stolen Backpack
July 11, 2012: Last Day in Quito
July 12, 2012: Travel to Loja
July 13, 2012: Catamayo
July 14, 2012: Loja and Alfredo
July 15, 2012: Church at Semilla de Mostaza
July 16, 2012: Back to Quito
July 17, 2012: Traveling
Note: Many of the pictures in this blog series are taken from the internet, because we had our camera stolen halfway through the trip.
Leo and Lulu have meetings all day today, so Joe and I head to the mall for breakfast, coffee, and to rent half an hour of internet so Joe can change the passwords for websites his phone automatically logged into. We don’t want our thieves ordering themselves stuff through our Amazon account. We do pretty well at the internet cafe as far as figuring stuff out, though we need help typing the “@” sign because the keyboard is weird with all Spanish stuff. The command is something like Ctrl+Shift+2.
I think my allergy medication is in the stolen backpack so we go to the pharmacy. There’s pharmacies everywhere. In this pharmacy, you go talk to the pharmacist, who gives you an order form with a price. Then you pay for the meds you’re buying at the register, and then you take your receipt to another pharmacist who delivers the meds. They get our orders wrong, giving me oral allergy spray instead of nasal, and the wrong brand of Allegra. But we don’t realize that till later, and it’s a moot point because I later I find my allergy meds.
Our last touristy event is Mitad del Mundo, the middle of the world, supposedly right on the equator. Apparently it’s not, and there’s a nearby place that claims to be the real Mitad del Mundo, but apparently it’s not either, according to the four minutes of research I did. Anyway, it’s pretty much on the equator, more or less. We buy a Kodak disposable camera. We also buy most of our gifts and stuff for ourselves there. Here's Joe and me:
Also, Bill Clinton was here:
We take a taxi back to town. Someone told us there’s a coffee roaster near the Presidential Palace, so we ask the taxi to take us there. It’s crowded at the Palace, with police holding crowds back from roped-off areas. We ask someone what’s happening; apparently, the President is going to make an appearance. As much as we’d like to see that, we’re a little claustrophobic from the crowds, and we really want to get our coffee. We set off in one direction, ask a police person, set off in another direction, ask someone else, and get sent in another direction. At one point we walk up and down the street it’s supposedly on, and we ask someone and they tell us to walk five blocks in yet another direction! It turns out some of the cops, in their efforts to communicate with us in English, get “right” and “left” mixed up. Luckily we stumble on the shop - or rather, smell it - and order fresh-roasted coffee beans. I found this blog post someone wrote on the shop so you can read about it and see pictures, and go, if you are ever in Quito.
At this point, we are absolutely done. With the backpack episode yesterday, we are emotionally done with Quito - plus, we’ve seen all the major sights, so we feel no guilt going back to the guest house.
When Leo and Lulu return from their meetings, we go out to a very nice restaurant. I’m feeling sick so I just order vegetables (the best roasted vegetables ever!) and then they take us to MegaMaxi. SuperMaxi is the Safeway chain of Ecuador (and someone also told me Peru and one other country), but Mega Maxi is MEGA. We buy a ton of candy and chocolate there.
We present Leo and Lulu with the gifts we brought - yummy treats from the States. Because let's face it, even if you've grown up in the States, you miss certain niceties when you go on the mission field. I bring them a Costco-sized thing of jelly bellies, because I have a memory of being in Cameroon, age 10, and someone sent us a tiny packet of jelly bellies, and we sat around the kitchen table for an hour while my mom cut each bean into four portions so we could try each flavor at the same time, and talk about what it tasted like.
They had also requested some fruit roll-ups for their 7-year old son Pablo, so I picked up some Fruit by the Foot from Costco. It turns out that that was exactly the brand he had wanted, but they couldn’t remember what it was called, so they just requested fruit roll-ups.
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