Our place in Quito

Hi, All –

Welcome to our Ecuador blog! ¡Bienvenidos! ¿Cómo están? Caleb is learning how to make upside-down question marks, among other things during his daily Spanish lessons.

Here I am in front of Helen and Gene’s 10-story condominium building. When looking for apartments within our budget, we found out they live in quite a ritzy neighborhood. As a result, we’re not as close to them as we had all wished, but still, it’s less than a 15-minute walk to our place – that is, if you make the walk before 6:30 p.m., when the back door to the Quicentro Mall closes. That’s right, you have to walk right through a ritzy mall if you want to shave 5 minutes off the walk.

I like our neighborhood a lot and am glad not to be in a high-rise, taking the elevator all the time.

Here’s a view of the 3-story house, where we rent the 2^nd floor (the 1^st floor is too low to see).

The front windows are the dining room (no curtain) and living room. The next window back is the office, the one behind that near the corner is Natalie’s room, and the one around the bend is the dressing room of the master bedroom. Where you see laundry on the roof we have 2 rooms, one with the washer and dryer and the other the “maid’s room” with a cot and a simple bathroom with a shower. That’s our overflow area for visitors.

We share the building with 4 dogs and 11 members of the Hernandez family, whom I hope we get to know. One 19-year-old college student (female) is looking forward to meeting Natalie.

Here’s a view of our street, which is a dead end. Our place is half-way down on the left-hand side. The neighborhood is relatively quiet and has a park right around the corner with tennis and basketball courts and more. It’s a gated community, if you can believe it. We have a huge handful of keys: one each for the front gate for people on feet, front gate for parking, front gate’s padlock for parking, door to stairwell, two for door to apartment, one more for metal door behind the wooden door to the apartment. Do you get a sense that people are worried about being robbed??

Here’s our living room and our kitchen. A long line of ants appeared the minute we put food in the kitchen.

Caleb and I are having a good time learning Spanish and the neighborhood, taking care of business such as making copies of keys, and hanging out with Helen and Gene.

Write us and let us know how you’re doing!

Love,

Spee