Life at Casa Quinde - Day 1

Front porch, Casa Quinde

Over Casa Quinde's back wall

Neighbors

Delicious Ecuadorian fruit!

We have a housekeeper, Venancia, who comes three hours a day. She makes $3 an hour and is putting her son Jonathan through the university at Ibarra, a city about an hour north of her via the Pan American highway. She lays the fires in the sala (living room) and bedroom; there's no central heating here, so we need the warmth at night when the temps drop from the mid 60s to the low 50s. She made up our bed; Art is allergic to feathers so Venancia replaced the down comforters with a polyester one in a cotton duvet and covered it over with a heavy wool bedspread. She cooks if we want that. Last night we had chicken from the grill, brussels sprouts picked from the garden at Hacienda Cusin (the hotel/lodge on whose property we are located) and sauteed with garlic in olive oil, and a salad from the same garden. Hacienda Cusin has the wi-fi I need, so I'll be taking the five-minute stroll to their library every couple of days to post what I've written.

I learned how to clean vegetables by soaking them in water with a capful of Vitalin, a disinfectant for fruits and vegetables. As I watched her, Venancia asked me how I clean vegetables at home; I told her the water is clean from the tap and she looked surprised. I already know how to brush my teeth using water from a bottle, but it's harder to remember here since everything we've seen so far has looked clean.

We went to bed at 7:30 the first night (Ecuador is in the same time zone as the East Coast of the US) and slept for 13 hours! And after breakfast I went back to bed for a two-hour nap. Catching up, I guess. Plus, at 8500-foot elevation, my body has some work to do in the next few days getting me ready to live here.

What I've learned:

1. How to run a fancy washing machine with all Spanish instructions.

2. That I remember how to use a clothesline. I hung the laundry on lines strung between enormous fuschia plants. There is a dryer at the hotel, and I can use it if the door is unlocked. Not sure about the hours of operation, since Elena, the woman I met there while exploring, used words not yet in my Spanish vocabulary. Apparently Venancia has a key and will take the clothes to the dryer if it's raining, but I'm not yet accustomed to being royalty, so I feel odd having someone else do that work for me.

3. That I need a more robust Spanish-English dictionary than the one I brought. It doesn't have the word "visitor" or "guest", which is how I want to introduce myself. I'll look for a dictionary when we're out and about, or I'll write down a list of words I want to know and look them up on an online translator when I'm using the wi-fi.