Thursday, Dec 21 – All work and no play…

We just worked for the rest of yesterday afternoon and evening, except for a brief outing to grab a bite to eat. We found a nice place that served typical Ecuadorian food. Typical Ecuadorian food is quite varied, but one of the favourite national dishes is called “cuy” – roasted guinea pig. Ugh. Potatoes and corn are also huge staples here, so a very common dish is big pieces of sweet white corn in scrambled eggs, maybe with some cornmeal in there as well. That came with Dave’s meal. Another common dish is like mashed potatoes with cheese formed into a patty and fried; that also came with Dave’s meal. No wonder everyone around here is so…sturdy, shall we say! Dave also tried some kind of disgusting blood sausage (he also thought it was gross, not just me)…lucky for him his sausage meal also came with a bonus piece of fried pork lying on top of it! I had the most amazing stewed cilantro chicken that was served with rice, corn/bean salad, and avocado. They put big pieces of avocado on the side of everything here, so we are in heaven.
Dave played a trick on me last night. Ever since Monday, he had been leading me to believe that he forgot Henry and EO at home. For anyone who doesn’t know, Henry and EO are a rabbit and a monkey who travel with us. They are kind of like our version of the travelling gnome – we bring them on all our trips and take crazy pictures of them. This is been a tradition with us for at least 3, maybe 4, years – Henry & EO have been to Egypt, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and dozens of cities in Canada and the U.S. So, when Dave told me he had forgotten them, I was really disappointed (ok, and a little bit pissed off). I kept making light of it, saying things like “Too bad Henry & EO weren’t here, that would make a funny picture with them in it!” or “My Dad is going to be so disappointed in you Dave, you know how he likes to see the Henry & EO pictures.”

When we got to our hotel room, I even asked if he was tricking me and going to pull them out and surprise me, but he said no – he even pretended to be irritated that I kept bringing it up! Anyway, last night after I got out of the shower, Dave told me that I should flip through the pictures on his camera because he had taken some great ones. So, I flipped through them and the last photo was one from window of our room – a nice night time shot of the church across the street, with Henry & EO in the foreground, sitting on the window sill. Of course I freaked out and Dave laughed his ass off. Ha ha.

Today we are just going to work all day, although we might take a break to go to the market.
Nope…we didn’t take a break to go to the market. It was pouring rain with thunder and lightening, so we stayed in and worked all day. The weather has been bad since we got here (rainy and quite cool), which we are thankful for since we have to work. We went out for supper (nothing worth mentioning) where we met an older Canadian couple. They had travelled to many of the same places as us, so we had a nice time reminiscing about Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Vietnam. We also went to an internet café for a bit, but the internet connections here are so slow that we just read some of our emails and then left. It costs a whopping 60 cents per hour to use the internet!


While looking for a place to eat, we did notice that things were getting more festive and lively around town than they were yesterday. More church steeples were lit up, there were Christmas lights in the streets, and more people were out and about. We peeked inside a big church and saw a whole bunch of kids getting ready to put on a Christmas pageant – they were all fully dressed up as shepherds, angels, etc. That was kind of fun to see. It was also kind of funny to me that there were flashing Christmas lights and gaudy decorations of the secular variety inside this Catholic church – right up over the altar!

We’re back in our room now, which means back to work. Dave is freaking out about having three manuscripts to prepare to submit to a conference immediately after we return; I am freaking out about not having my final grades submitted yet! So, we’re going to crack a bottle of wine and get back to work.