Well, December came and went very quickly! We had two very short weeks of school and then we headed out to the States on December 14th. After a lengthy flight with connections in Panama, L.A., and San Francisco, we finally landed in Portland, Oregon. This was our first time home since we started this adventure in Ecuador and it felt great to be home again! Our older son and his fiance' surprised us at the airport which was awesome and totally unexpected. It was so good to see him again and Sam was happy to see his big brother! We immediately hit the ground running - with so much to do in such a little amount of time home. We spent the next 15 hours visiting with family (quickly), getting our snow equipment out of storage, visiting with friends (quickly), and shopping for food for our ski trip to Canada. Within 24 hours of being home we were on the road to Silver Star Canada for a 5 night ski trip with our daughter and her boyfriend.
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| Silver Star Resort - Canada |
We spent time with our kids, family, and friends over the next 8 days or so. We had lost Dan's dad a couple months back to a long illness, so we were able to spend time with family placing his ashes to rest along side their mothers. It was a nice memory to have for all of us and so very thankful we got to be there for that. We miss him very much and know that he is with us always.
The time we spent seeing our family members during this trip was wonderful. Although it seemed short, it was nice to spend devoted periods of time with each group of people - my family, Dan's family and our older kids.
We returned back to our temporary home in Guayaquil Ecuador on the 30th of December. Originally we had thought about planning a trip to the Amazon for the remaining week of our break, but we were told by a tour company here that traveling over the New Year here is not a good idea because everything pretty much closes down from the 31st through the 2nd. They said to consider traveling on the 4th, but by that time it would not give us enough time since we had to return to work, so we just stayed home. We were invited over to a New Year's Eve party at our Director's house. It was a good time. Lot's of food and drink, music, fireworks and Ecuadorian celebrating. Here people sell and/or make paper mache' dolls - some can be 7 foot tall or bigger, yet some are small as well. They are of people,super heroes cartoon characters, etc. We saw them strapped to cars while coming home from the airport. They are also strapped to fences, houses, sticking out of windows, standing outside of storefronts, etc. From what I'm told, people have these paper dolls and then they burn them at midnight - just when the new year strikes. Our director had one and after we let off fireworks we stood outside their house (along with many many other people in the community) and they all burned their paper dolls. There was many little bon fires all around the park, sidewalks, and streets. People burned these dolls, let off huge fireworks, and partied until 4-5 a.m. We walked home to our villa about 3:30 a.m. and it seemed like it was 10:00 p.m. - there were many people out celebrating, including children. It was a great thing to witness, but seemed so different from the States. The next couple days (1st and 2nd of January) were very strange with hardly no one out and about. The streets were quiet, many of the stores were closed or opened very late in the day. It had an eerie feel to it when we went walking in the evening - not normal for here.
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| a paper doll to burn on New Years that someone had at the party. |
January went by just as quick as December. Once we finally returned from our winter break - school was busy with quarterly testing, sport tournaments, etc. Before we knew it... it would be Carnival break in February. We did make a trip to Quito in January for Sam's JV basketball tournament. We - as well as the JV school team and coaches flew to Quito very early one Saturday morning - then the boys played the one day tournament (took 4th place), and then the team flew home. However, we decided to stay the night in Quito to experience it a little bit. We stayed in a nice little Hostel and we explored Saturday night and all Sunday. We ate at some restaurants, walked the streets of old town, took a Gondola (they call it the TeleferiQo) up to the top of a mountain to overlook the city, and toured some cathedrals (one was the beautiful and huge basilica). Quito has some beautiful parts to it, (from what we saw in such a short period of time) but unfortunately I did not feel very safe there in some of the areas we were in. I felt much safer in Cuenca. But,overall we had a good time. We flew in and out of the current (old) airport in Quito which is in the middle of the city, but as of late February that airport will be closed down and moved to the new airport which will be a 1 hour taxi ride from town (if no traffic) - but we are told it could be 2 hour taxi ride if there is traffic! Wow, we don't want to experience that, so we won't be making any trips back to Quito anytime soon - unless it's a connection to another flight. Dan actually flew back to Quito 3 days later to accompany the Athletic Director and Varsity boys basketball team to their tournament. He stayed 2 nights and enjoyed his time.
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| Cotopaxi |
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| Michelle and Sam - Quito |
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| Quito |
Before we knew it it was Carnival week! Yippee! We were able to get a "last minute deal" for a trip to the Galapagos islands for the three of us. We would be on a 16 passenger boat for 7 nights and 8 days. That was an unforgettable trip! But, that is another posting. Stay tuned...
~ Michelle, Dan & Sam
