A few pics of life in La Josefina

A rare clear afternoon view from the terraza, where our clothes are drying. You can see the peach-colored La Josefina church to the right and a hint of the Andes Mountains with light clouds in the background. 
 Angel's Trumpet flowers (scientific name Brugmansia) grow abundantly in La Josefina and the surrounding area. Turns out they are one of the most toxic ornamental flowers. We still love looking at them, but don't touch or eat!
Piñas, piñas for sale! Dillon ran out and bought these five pineapples for $2 from the truck that passed by our front door. Deliciosass! We used two for juice, one for pizza, and gobbled up the other two.

A typical scene from a morning homeschool day. Note Brynna's creative reading position.


New Year's Day at the Quindigua River with the Cuchipe family (our adopted family here). Nora and her son, Daniel, are visiting from Spain. 
This female hooked-bill kite has been frequenting our yard for the last week or so. She seems to have another female friend as well as a male partner. We aren't sure what thay are up to, but it's fun to watch!

Eating popcorn and making bracelets on the porch with friends. 

Dillon and I were impressed with the number of babies this mama gallina was caring for, 15 (not all pictured)!

An afternoon walk -- many afternoons, I go walking with my friend Lucia, but if she's busy, Dillon has taken to accompanying me. If you look closely, you can see the two motos that just passed us.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJanuary 17, 2023 at 9:09 PM

    Thanks for the pics, visual is always better for me. Those look like some TALL mountains in the distance (and there are lots of tall ones in Ecuador) (FB)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

From rationing to releasing

For the last 12 months, we have been rationing our resources. You name it, we have conserved it, apportioned it, and allotted it: from Skippy peanut butter, to Earl Gray tea, to cheddar cheese, to dark chocolate. From Crayola markers to Ticonderoga pencils to embroidery thread to temporary tattoos. From shrinky-dinks to jigsaw puzzles to body wash.  From maple syrup to soy sauce to Scotch tape. I am the chief control freak on this project, and I am afraid I have passed some of my neuroticism onto my kiddos. The thing is every little thing feels more precious when it is not readily replaceable, when Amazon Prime is a pipe dream, when the nearest Target is 5000 miles away. The truth is, everything IS more precious. And yet, now we find ourselves, at the tail end of this journey, and it is time to let go.  It is an admittedly sharp turnabout to go from rationing to releasing.  It is time to bake another big batch of chocolate chip cookies and use up that chocolate. Time to s...
Read more

Hard cheese, soft toilet paper

Two decades ago, Jessica, my nearest Peace Corps neighbor, made a significant discovery in the city of Quevedo: semi-hard cheese. At the time, Quevedo was over two hours away via bus and the closest place to access dial-up internet. That day, I received a special delivery via the bus driver as he passed through La Josefina: a chunk of cheese wrapped in an ecstatic hand-written note, " Try this! It is amazing!!! -JLH " Ecuadorians love cheese, but almost all of the cheese produced and consumed here is queso fresco , a mild, soft fresh cheese, often salted, made from local cow's milk. It is eaten fresh and served in many typical dishes including empanadas and bolón .  Queso fresco is tasty, but it does not really melt and bears little resemblance to the cheddar, gouda, and Havarti of our homeland. Even today, mozzarella is the only other readily available cheese in Ecuador, except in specialty stores and supermarkets in large cities. I sampled the semi-hard cheese from ...
Read more

A bit about Ecuador

Image
Don't feel bad if you don't really know where Ecuador is in the world.  Or if you do not really know very much about Ecuador. It doesn't make the US news that often--which is probably a good thing.  When I received my invitation to Peace Corps Ecuador in 1999, I remember a sense of excitement, a dream of burgeoning adventure, and then a feeling of shame: other than the fact that I presumed it was on the equator, I had no clue where in the world Ecuador was, nor any idea of all the wonders it had to offer. In preparation for our family's year abroad, I thought it might be interesting to try to write a post on the nation of Ecuador. A little geography, a little history, a little anthropology, and some personal commentary. It's obviously far from inclusive. Ecuador is a small South American country sitting squarely on the equator, nestled between Colombia (to the north) and Peru (to the south). At 176,204 square miles, it is slightly smaller than Nevada. When I write t...
Read more