This & That...with Pictures

Dear Family and Friends,

Ecuador is still in the playoffs for the World Cup. You can see the peoples' pride in their country's team. On game day most everyone is wearing the team colors or the team shirt. I saw this car in our parking garage all decked out.


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As we were riding the city bus the other day, this most adorable baby was in it's mother's arms in front of me. I couldn't resist taking pictures. The Ecuadorian children are so beautiful.


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I was downtown the other day and saw that I had missed something. I don't know what I missed but I saw the remnants of it.

Cuenca mounted police blocking traffic.


This father and his sons posed for me. They had been entertaining in the park.


I am sorry I missed whatever it was.

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In my last post I mentioned that we met friends in Paute for lunch at the Corvel restaurant last Sunday. I had such a great time that I didn't use my camera much and most of the pictures I did take were not very good. Fortunately, I had a chance to do it again. On Thursday, Chuck, I and three other couples went to Corvel restaurant for lunch.

We rode the bus to Paute....all eight of us. Since the bus was not crowded, we had plenty of room to spread out and enjoy the ride. Well, those of us that could enjoy the ride. We had a couple of people that get motion sickness, I think they endured the ride.

When we got off the bus, we walked a few blocks into town. Chuck and I have been down here long enough that I sometimes forget that we are a bit different than the Ecuadorians. I'm thinking that we just fit right in.

Well, when we got to the main square in Paute, I took this picture of some of our lunch group. What do you think? Do we fit in????


NOT!! We look like a bunch of gringo tourists for sure!!

Rich & Nancy and Brian & Shelly both did great posts on their blogs about this outing. You can see their version and pictures by clicking here and here.

Charlie took these first two pictures and was very generous to let me use them for this post.

Here we are in the main square of Paute (minus Charlie.)


Somehow, I missed getting the memo that stated the dress code for the day included white hats and colorful skirts.


Here are a few pictures I took...

Bruce and his dessert.


Shelly and Freddi


We did not have a roving singer on Thursday, but he was there last Sunday. I guess it is a trade off....go mid week and there are plenty of tables and no waiting OR go on Sunday, eat early so that you can get a table outdoors and have music.


Both trips were fun...the Sunday one and the Thursday one.

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Last week we got an email stating that ex-pat night would be held at Zoe's. Later, we got an email reminder to come to ex-pat night at the Eucalyptus cafe. Chuck, Ossie and I took the number 3 bus to Zoe's. We must have made the right choice because there were lots of people. I don't know if anyone went to the Eucalyptus cafe or not.

One nice thing about Zoe's is that when the group gathers upstairs, they have nice big doors that open on to small balconies overlooking the street. Here are Bruce and Ossie enjoying the view.


While on the balcony, I looked up the street toward Iglesia San Alfonso (I just call it the blue church). I thought to myself how much the view reminded me of European cities we have visited.


Five of us left ex-pat night a bit early to go to an opera. Well, not really an opera, but opera singers performing great music from operas. Ossie tells about this adventure so well that I will defer to him. You can read it clicking here.
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We are having some plumbing work done in our condo. This means a lot of pounding and banging, as the tile floor is being taken up. This has been going on several days because getting through concrete with a hammer and chisel is a slow process. I think our neighbors upstairs have had all they can bare, because we just received notice from the condo manager to limit our workmen to week days only. Since this is Saturday, we sent the workmen home.

I guess that about catches things up for this week.

Love,
Nancy