Getting There and Enjoying Our First Day

On 4/30 Becky wrote...
Well, it was hell getting here, but now we are beside the river and have been out walking the town today.  No one wants to cash our Amex travelers checks, so we'll try again Monday.,.hrmpph.   What I keep laughing about is the way our taxi driver pronounced our hotel, which is the Villa Nova Inn.   When he was asking other cabbies where the hotel was located, he would say to them, "Donde es de Bee-No-Bean!"  hahaha.  

The drive from that awful Guayaquil city was terrifyiing for 3 whole hours....the driver sped and passed everyone in front of him on a two lane road all the way, and even did it in the thick white fog!!!  I prayed a lot and somehow we got here without sliding off of a 300 foot drop off and past the mud slide blocking the road.  In addition to all that, the driver played latino rap and rock all the way, you know, that continuous shrill beat that never stops?  Oh and yes, the air conditioning in the van was set at I'm sure 40 degrees.  No way will we go that route back to the airport in Quaya-Kill!   Also, that city is devastatingly impoverished, lined along the roadsides in the city and outside the city were tiny rotten wood shacks where they sit all day and sell their farm produce every day of the week.  Some houses on stilts had no window glass and they were about large enough for two small rooms for the whole family.   A sad sad scene to pass on the road.  And the city is huge with this kind of setup.

Cuenca had some of that on the outside skirts, but it got better as we drove into the city.  It's pretty, quaint old buildings, lots of good food at little restaurants, nice friendly people.   The language was quite a problem in the Quayaquil airport, but we're getting used to communicating now, especially with Allan's IPod language translator.  It works great for immediate on the spot translation of Spanish to English and vice versa.  So when we had lunch today at Kookaburras (English speaking), we breathed a sigh of relief, whew.

Tomorrow we go to our little studio apartment just around the corner and we'll stay there for I'd say about a week.  I'm voting for flying to Quito for the remainder of our trip, as it is more U.S. like and north of it are a group of villages where artists, craftspeople, and artisans gather to market their wares.  Each village section makes a particular things, such as copper pots, another does baskets, while another section does weaving and so on.

It is cool here and very comfortable, sunny days, cool nights, breezy, and the river runs fast over big boulders, a nice sound to sleep by.

...and Allan wrote...

Our first full day in Cuenca was all about walking around town, doing a bit of shopping, checking out a few restaurants and snapping some photos. Our hosts at the Villa Nova Inn are super kind and helpful, and they make a point of having an English-speaking person here 24x7.  Seems they are catering to norteamericanos and others of the English language persuasion. 

It is a relief to come back to the hotel and not have to try to figure out the right thing to say in Spanish.  I'd heartily recommend this hotel and its friendly staff.  Our daily room rate includes an American breakfast at the restaurant next door and the 22% IVA tax (which is, I believe, a VAT tax).  They're even providing the wi-fi we're using to post  blogs, check email, etc.  Not bad for just $49 / night.

As we walked around town today I had many occasions to use Jibbigo (software app on my iPod) to translate for us.  It really is neat to speak to the iPod and have it magically tell me what to say in Spanish.  "Is it made by hand?" I ask Jibbigo.  "¿Está hecho a mano?" says Jibbigo. I ask the question in Spanish and then...hope to understand the high speed reply from the merchant.  Until now I haven't asked the Ecuadoriano to speak to the iPod. I'm just winging it in trying to understand them -- which is actually working reasonably well.  It's a lot of fun trying to communicate and learn a bit of the language. Even moreso because the folks here are quite accommodating and willing to help the gringos out.  Plus, a good many Ecuadorianos do speak English.

We find that crossing a street can be like Russian roulette: make the wrong move and die.  Drivers here not only don't pay much attention to double yellow lines, lane markers and traffic signs. They have right of way over pedestrians. If you step out in front of a car and get hit, it's pretty much your fault. We're double and triple-checking each intersection we want to cross, first to see if it's a one-way or two-way street, and therefore how many directions we have to look to be sure of not getting run down and flattened to the cobblestones.  And while we're looking, a small boy maybe 8 years old riding a bicycle zooms by us on the sidewalk, just inches from the curb and passing traffic, with his 4 year old brother sitting on the handlebars.  Ouch!  I can't imagine letting a small child have the run of the sidewalk amidst all that traffic.  I guess he's used to it and probably has a better sense about him, and about staying alive, than a kid at home who is probably watched over continuously and carefully by mom and dad.

I've read that Ecuadorian law is based on civil law, not common law. The difference is that common law uses judges and "rule of law" precedent to determine guilt or innocence. Civil law though is basically a written collection of laws that judges can't interpret much at all; they're pretty much required to follow them. Juries are not much used in civil law countries either. The upshot of this is that laws on the books determine guilt or innocence, not the circumstances of an event. So if the law here says it's incumbent on the pedestrian to watch his step, that's it.  No arguing who's guilty because it's already been spelled out.  

At least that's my take on the issue. And it turns out to my surprise that our revered "rule of law" and common law approach is used only in Anglo-type countries:  USA, Canada, UK and Australia. The rest of the planet seems to follow one form or another of civil law.


Enough for now. Time for dinner! More pics at http://goo.gl/ngZcF

Late at night on 4/29 Allan wrote...

Well, we got huge blessings in disguise: Thursday night's "volcano delay" delay from Miami.  If we had arrived in Guayaquil Thursday night as planned, we’d have had a terrifying 4+ hour drive to Cuenca that -- if we were lucky -- would have put us at our hotel somewhere around 3-4AM.  As it worked out, we flew 1900 miles in about 4 hours, then drove another 4 hours to cover the approximately 80 miles (as the crow flies) to Cuenca, and got in just around dinner time.  Quite a ride!

We were up at 5AM to fly at 7AM. Bye Miami.

At Guayaquil we made it through customs with no problems, and began hunting for the van service that claims to run every hour on the hour to Cuenca.  We found the shuttle service -- not in the terminal as expected, but instead a taxi ride away. The folks there quickly let us know that they had “no room” today...until 8PM. Waiting around for 8 hours was not on our agenda.  So we taxi’d back to the airport to catch a flight to Cuenca.  

Surprise - no flights!  None of the airlines are flying until Sunday due to the volcanic ash in the air. So finally, it’s back to yet another van service that won’t take Amex Traveler Checks or credit cards, although cash works just fine, thank you. So we paid up and hopped into a very nice, brand new air conditioned van with a pleasant, courteous driver who spoke no English.   He filled his tank at a local station for $1.037 per gallon (that’s per gallon, not liter.)  Ahhhh, if only...

Leaving the city of Guayaquil showed us a lot of really run down, impoverished areas of the city; not at all pretty. But soon the countryside started rolling by, complete with varieties of trees and plants we’ve never seen, as well as truly gigantic sugar cane and banana plantations.  After an hour, maybe 90 minutes, we began the long climb up from the coastal plains into the Andes, heading to their peak and ultimately down the other side into the “valley of flowers” -- as Cuenca was originally called by the ancient Cañari settlers.

About half way up the mountain range we entered a cloud bank that gave the driver no more than 50, maybe 75-feet of visibility. He drove higher and higher, actually leaning his body behind the wheel into sharp corners and curves in the road, passing on the double yellow line even with almost zero forward visibility. It was nerve wracking and I know Becky got pretty tense watching the driver somehow navigate -- not completely recklessly -- but much, much faster than she or I would have driven.  At one point we asked how much longer the fog would last. His reply, “about another hour.”  OMG.

Rock slides and mudslides caused us to stop and slow down a couple times, but finally we began seeing signs pointing to Cuenca and soon came into this town of some 400,000.  Finding the hotel was a problem though because I hadn’t written down the address or phone number, assuming any taxi driver would know where it is.  Wrong. Our driver from Guayaquil finally flagged down a local Cuenca taxi driver who led us in a caravan-fashion through the city where -- alas -- we found the Villa Nova Inn.  We settled into our modest room, took leave of it long enough to find a tasty spaghetti dinner, then walked back to the hotel and called it a night.  

Slight Delay to Ecuador: Tungurahua Volcano

We've never had a trip delayed due to volcanoes, but today's the day for that. The Tungurahua volcano, about 80 miles south of Quito, has been erupting since Tuesday and it's "grounded" incoming (and presumably outgoing) flights to Guayaquil.  Ash has risen 4 miles into the air and caused evacuation of some local towns and villages.  More at BBC News.  The flight desk attendant told us "this stay is at your cost due to a volcano."

So we're spending a night in Miami with a special "distressed passenger" rate at the Marriott arranged by American Airlines. Who knows where our luggage will be tomorrow..... So now tonight on TV we can see who is going to be voted off American Idol!

American Airlines said we are flying out at 7AM Friday, but we're not sure what will happen if the volcano is still spewing vacation-delaying ash into the air. Oh well, it's vacation so not to worry.

~ Becky & Allan

This is the first time we've had a trip delayed by a volcano.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13204095

Found! Universal Translator Device - Spanish to English and Back

So how much Spanish can one learn in a few months of self-study?  Enough to get by?  Maybe. Or maybe not.  I’d like to be able to get to know people who we’ll meet during our trip, and to avoid verbal mishaps due to my ignorance of the language.  So a few months ago I went on an Internet search to see what kind of tech is out there to help us along as we get immersed in a totally Spanish-language culture for a month.

Three or four devices surfaced after many clicks, copious reading and watching scads of videos. In a moment I’ll tell you which universal translator device we decided to buy, and during our time in Ecuador I’ll post updates on how it actually works “on the street.”  Hint:  it only cost $4.99.  

But first let me share the alternatives we did not choose.

1. The first and most unusual solution was found in the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It describes the Babel fish (which you insert into your ear) as  “small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the universe. It feeds on brain wave energy, absorbing all unconscious frequencies and then excreting telepathically a matrix formed from the conscious frequencies and nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain, the practical upshot of which is that if you stick one in your ear, you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language: the speech you hear decodes the brain wave matrix. It is a universal translator which simultaneously translates from one spoken language to another. It takes the brainwaves of the other body and what they are thinking then transmits the thoughts to the speech centres of the host's brain, the speech heard by the ear decodes the brainwave matrix. When inserted into the ear, its nutrition processes convert unconscious sound waves into conscious brain waves, neatly crossing the language divide between any species.”

Photo courtesy of GodWiki

Outcome: While this sounds like a nearly perfect solution, it’s clear (at least to me) that we would have to buy three Babel fish.  One for me, one for Becky and another one for whoever we are trying to communicate with. Just imagine sitting in a restaurant, studying the menu and trying to ask how the encebollado is made. It doesn’t help much that I can understand the waiter if he or she can’t understand me.  So we’d need that third Babel fish to lend to the waiter. Which brings up issues of personal hygiene.  After all, I’d want that third Babel fish back once we are done talking so I could lend it to yet another person I am trying to talk with later in the day.  And besides personal hygiene, I am just not sure if the fish is durable enough to be carried around in a pocket and loaned out to numerous people. After all, it is a living creature.  So bottom line, no Babel fish for us.


2. Next I found reference, at www.memory-alpha.org, to the Star Trek Universal Translator. “In 2267, Captain Kirk and Commander Spock of the USS Enterprise modified their universal translator to communicate with the alien ...in the Gamma Canaris region. Kirk explained that there are certain universal ideas and concepts common to all intelligent life, and that the translator compared the frequencies of brainwave patterns, selected those ideas it recognized, and provided the necessary grammar. Kirk further explained that the device spoke with a voice, or the approximation of one, that corresponded to the identity concepts it recognized. The Companion was revealed to be female because the universal translator detected this facet of its identity from its brainwave patterns, and assigned it a female voice.”

Outcome: While this sounds like a good solution, we just don’t have time to wait around until the 23rd century to get one.  Sorry.

3. There’s a product that’s available today, called SpeechTrans™. It’s a software app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch that translates bi-directionally between English and Spanish as well as several other languages. How would it work on the street?  In my opinion, not very well because it requires an Internet connection to do the translation work.  That would make it a bit tough at the open air market, on the street or while touring a museum or art gallery (unless those places all had Wi-Fi). Further, the software, which sells for $19.99, carries added fees the company calls “transcriptions.”  The FAQ at www.speechtrans.com explains:  

• Each time you hit the Record Button counts as 1 Transcription, which allows you to speak for up to 55 seconds and transcribe your voice to text.
• Click on the lower left Icon and select “Buy Transcriptions”, you can choose from packages ranging from 30 – 500 transcriptions.

Outcome:  It looks like an unbelievable piece of software and linguistic engineering. Check out the video. But it wouldn’t be able to help us in “real time” when we want to carry on a conversation with folks “in the wild.”

4. Finally, I kept coming across articles for the software app with a strange name: Jibbigo. It’s from Jibbigo LLC, a start-up company founded by Alex Waibel, professor of computer science and language technologies at Carnegie Mellon University. Their web site (www.jibbigo.com) explains: “Jibbigo is not a dictionary and not a phrase book, but a speech translator: You simply speak a sentence, and it speaks the sentence aloud in the other language, much like a personal human interpreter would.” It runs on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android. So after a lot of reading, downloading, studying the user manual and checking out reviews and comments from other users, I went to the app store on my iPod Touch and downloaded a copy for an incredibly low price of just $4.99!  Some older notes and comments from users applauded the app but said it was way too expensive at $24.99. Obviously, Jibbigo heard the complaints and dropped the price, at least for now. But for my money, even 25 bucks would have been a bargain -- if the software actually works.  

Outcome: And it does. I can speak to Jibbigo without using headphones or an external microphone and get an almost instant translation into Spanish, both spoken and in text. I don’t need an Internet connection to use it either.  And if I just want a word or two, it comes with a 40,000 word bi-directional English-Spanish dictionary. (You can even buy “salty language” add-ons at some additional cost. LOL)

All in all Jibbigo seems to work really well.  Time will tell if it can adapt to two different speakers, two different voices -- for example, me asking a question and the waiter answering in Spanish.

For example, I might say “Tell me about the encebollado, please.” Jibbigo would translate this as “Cuenteme sobre el encebollado, por favor.”

Now the waiter speaks: “Encebollado esta hecho con atún fresco, yuca o cassava raíz, tomate, cebollas, cilantro, y especias.”  Listen Now!

Jibbigo understands my voice, no question. And I hope Jibbigo would understand the waiter's voice and translate this to: “Encebollado is made with fresh tuna, yuca or cassava root, tomatoes, onions, cilantro, spices."


Time will tell, and I’ll be sure to post details. In the meantime, check out the video. 


~ Allan

News This Week

It's interesting to read about young people and kids from Ecuador who are doing something a bit out of the ordinary. Here's a story about a high school girl from Cuenca who is now enjoying her time in Pittsburgh as an exchange student. http://goo.gl/yqjf8

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I've read about the reckless drivers in Ecuador. Here's the story ( http://goo.gl/sAEFg) of a tragic crash between two buses, caused by one trying to pass another vehicle on a curve. An initial report said that the buses could have been going as fast as 75MPH.  Too  bad some of above-the-equator focus on highway safety hasn't made it to Ecuador. 

One post at tripadvisor spoke about the trip from Guayaquil to Cuenca: "Took the bus last year from Guayaquil to Cuenca as I hoped to have a good look at the landscape between these two cities. Turned out to be a terrible bus ride of more than 5,5 hours in a bus that was overcrowded, the television with a terrible movie with the volume at the maximum. The view was not at all what we hoped it would be. When we got to the hills/mountains it became foggy and it was quite scary in the bus with the very narrow roads with cliffs just besides you. I definitely would not take the bus again, but would fly."

Another poster said: "It´s almost a six hour ride when you´re going up the mountains. DO NOT TAKE EJECUTIVO SAN LUIS. The driver almost went over the side twice and he was passing people in an even crazier manner than usual for an Ecuadorian driver. Everyone on the bus was screaming at him to slow down (Dale suave) but he just laughed and drove faster on a road inundated with landslides and subsequent gravel sections. He was texting the entire time, and re-arranging the pictures in his wallet. Even other drivers in passing buses were motioning at him to slow down."

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Journalists from around the world have filed complaints with the President of Ecuador over one of the ten initiatives that will be put to a public vote on May 7th. Journalists feel the President, who reportedly has an antagonistic relation with the press and media, wants to seriously curtail freedom of expression.  This article http://goo.gl/qNcq0 spells out the concerns. Let's see what happens.  I'm curious to find out what May 7th will bring.

Parque Calderon, in the downtown (el centro) area of Cuenca, is a meeting and gathering place. This video is from Bryan and Dena, a Canadian couple living in Cuenca with a blog at www.GringosAbroad.com.  Nice!


Their YouTube comments:  Web-cam styled video of the main plaza in Cuenca Ecuador: Parque Calderon. Shot from a second floor cafe, the video shows a snapshot in time of what its like to be here, in Calderon Park. People strolling, traffic and the occasional tourist show a typical afternoon here in Cuenca. 
Produced by Bryan & Dena Haines, GringosAbroad.com




Dixie Davey and her husband moved from Australia to Cuenca in 2008. Dixie built www.retire-in-ecuador.com and now gets hundreds of visitors every day. She was so kind in helping us find an apartment for our stay in Cuenca.  Here's Dixie's YouTube video about the city.

Our New Temporary Home in Cuenca

OK, the days are counting down.  We'll be living in a studio apartment for a month, right in the center of town.  Here are a couple pics of Cuenca from the rooftop patio.

Here's the write-up from the landlord: The apartment on Calle Larga is really convenient for a couple or a single person, as it is fully furnished and has all the utilities and items needed for comfortable living, so guests only need to buy their own food. It is very well located in the center of town, two blocks from the main square, but also very near to the new town where supermarkets, cinema, etc are at. The building also has an open terrace with a wonderful view of the river below, the new town on the other side, and mountains in the surroundings. 

From here you can easily walk to all restaurants, bars and cafes, galleries, shopping areas as well as enjoy the lovely walks along the Tomebamba river’s green path just down below from the apartments. The rental price includes: water, electricity, gas, broad band internet, cable TV, cleaning service, all appliances and cooking utensils (fridge, stove, microwave, coffee machine, small oven, cutlery, dishes...), bed linen, towels and cleaning items (toilet paper, hand soap, liquid soap for dishes and others handy cleaning items). Once a week we provide full cleaning service where we change sheets, blankets and towels and we also do laundry for one load of your clothes (no ironing). Internet signal and speed are very good, cabled to the apartments and wireless in some parts of the building like at the terrace, allowing you to skype and use all internet facilities. Also cable TV has channels in Spanish and English.

The monthly price is $390 for a couple or $360 for a single person. Renting for less than a month, is possible but will depend if premises are available. If you are interested, we will like to know the exact dates of your permanence and depending on availability, normally we will give you a formal confirmation up to 2 week prior to arrival with a deposit. For a long permanence (over 3 months) we could formally confirm up to a month in advance. Payment could be done via Pay Pal and must be done prior to arrival for formal confirmation.

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Well, it certainly looks comfortable and convenient to el centro.  As I've said many times before, we're excited.

Habla Espanol? Here Are Some Resources

For me a major part of getting ready to visit Ecuador is learning enough Spanish so I can communicate basic needs and “get along” with the people there.  I’ve seen many comments on the Yahoo Ecuador Expats group saying that if you just try to speak Spanish, most people will appreciate your efforts and be quite willing to help you.

Years ago when I was stationed in Germany I learned enough German to get along. My German was never really good by anyone’s measure, but it did help me communicate in fundamental ways with my landlord and landlady, with the people who delivered Ulmer Gold Oschen bier to my apartment every week, and to other important German nationals -- like Rudi who ran the local gasthaus in Neu Ulm, Bayern, Deutschland and his wife Krystal who cooked up the best possible weiner schnitzel und spaetzle one could imagine.

So, contemplating the need to learn Spanish, I turned to the Internet.  No hay problema! Estoy estudiando español ahora (No problem! I am studying Spanish now).

I am constantly amazed at all the great content available today on the Internet.  Ivy League schools even offer free classes on the web! In times yet to come, this content will increase many-fold, I’m sure.  Back in my high school and college days (studying French) we went to the “language lab” where we spoke into a microphone, parroting back the recorded tapes that played into our headphones.  Now though, with the Internet, one can have a complete language lab in a laptop or a netbook.  

A few of the sites that I found really fun and helpful include...

http://translate.google.com - just an amazingly powerful service that’s free, as most of Google’s services are. I’ve used it to check pronunciation; to translate simple sentences; to make reservations with Ecuadorians via email, and more.  A truly superb service.  And BTW, if you have any need to translate web sites, be sure to download the Google Chrome browser. It offers to translate web pages for you automatically. Very cool :)

http://www.wordmagicsoft.com/dictionary/tools/index.php - Word Magic offers an on-line dictionary that's especially helpful with phrases. For example, "No hay pero que valga" translates to  "no buts about it," or "no way José."

www.busuu.com - a site that teaches several languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Russian, French) and lets you actually connect via text or video chat with people who speak Spanish (or another language) and want to learn English.  It promotes an “ I-help-you and you-help-me” arrangement between members from all over the globe.  You can use much of the site for free or sign up for premium membership to get more content.

www.123spanish.com - a site that connects you with native speakers throughout South
America who teach you in live sessions via Skype.  All of the teachers I checked out had several years experience teaching Latin American Spanish to neophytes.  I’d highly recommend this site to those who want to learn from native speakers with real teaching credentials. If you do use their services, you’ll also be contributing to the welfare of people in countries (Columbia, Honduras, etc.) where jobs are hard to find.  

http://spanish.about.com - perhaps the most robust free site I found.  About.com is a property of the New York Times. Their writers and educators are carefully screened and professional.  I found the content here exemplary. They explained many aspects of the Spanish language that I could not find elsewhere.  A great site!

www.spanishspanish.com - is a lot of fun.  They offer a bunch of (Adobe) Flash exercises on-line that make it easy to memorize the days of the week, parts of the body, colors, months of the year, numbers like mil novocientos cinco y quatro (1956) -- and much more.  Some of the content requires payment of $9.99 for the entire year -- a ridiculously small amount.  Check out the site, as it’s got a LOT of free content that can really help you learn useful Spanish vocabulary, even if you decide not to spend the $9.99.

www.learnspanishtoday.com - I learned more from this site early on than any other.  The authors have a great way of introducing one to Spanish in easy, bite-sized lessons that really add up quickly. The site gives you several lessons for free, then if you want to continue, you need to buy the entire course.  I found just the free part, the teaser, to be extremely helpful. Quiero ir al banco pero no necessito ir a al oficina hoy.  Check it out and I think you’ll get a lot of confidence from their teaching method. I did.

Madrigal’s Magic Key to Spanish - this is a paperback book I got from Amazon.  After reading many customer reviews on various Spanish books, this one quickly rose to the top of the list.  One reviewer said:

“Magic Key to Spanish is one of those rare books that you come back to again and again, it inspires progress and there's so much to learn from it- it's certainly not going to be a dust gatherer if learning Spanish is what you truly want. If I've convinced you already buy it- if not read on.

“The book starts with a very positive introduction and goes on to explain that an English speaker already knows hundreds if not thousands of words in Spanish and it gives you the rules that unlock this 'magic key' to Spanish. It then moves on to teach you grammar in a very novel way, none of the boring conjungations that had to be learnt by rote when doing languages at school. She starts with the past tense as this is how we speak to friends and then moves through much of the essential grammar required to Speak, Read and write Spanish.”

Bottom line: get this book if you want to learn Spanish.

www.conjugation.org - OK, I know.  Conjugation of verbs is downright boring and dull. Madrigal and others say we shouldn’t spend our time worrying about conjugation. Well, I found that I needed to understand how certain verbs were conjugated in the preset, past (preterite) and future tenses.  This site does all that dirty work for you. Bookmark it, for sure!

There are many other sites that can help you learn Spanish. Google search is your best friend, so be sure to explore. In the meantime, I hope some of this helps.

Hasta luego!

~ Allan

Poverty in Ecuador

Isn’t it wonderful, here in the 21st century, to have the Internet and all the technology that enables, supports and allows us to use it in so many ways. In preparation for our trip to Ecuador I spent months searching all kinds of websites for information that would be helpful, useful. On one of those late night journeys of a thousand clicks, I came across an article by University of Maryland student, Morgan Rich, that highlighted her volunteer work at a remote and impoverished school high in the wilderness of the Andes mountains.

It touched my heart to read her words and a description of the work she and her team delivered to local families and their children. I understand why tears flowed from her eyes on her last day with the locals, before coming back to the States. There truly aren’t many things more fulfilling than selflessly helping one’s fellow man, and receiving gracious thanks that’s so genuine and heart-felt.

About one-third of people in Ecuador live with poverty in 2011. The government has established a few hundred dollars per month as the minimum a family of four can live on. Esther, 38 years old and a grandmother living in Quito gives a voice to poverty, as evidenced by this short interview posted by the United Nations Development Program...

The best thing in my life: Being with my family is the best part of my life. I have a granddaughter so I try to spend time with her and help my daughter and son with their kids.  
My biggest hardships: The prices of food and feeding my family. 
My best day: Every Saturday and Sunday, when I don't have to work, is good for me.  
My worst day: I can’t think of my worst day.  
My hopes and dreams for myself: That my children succeed professionally and have opportunities to do something with their lives.

Here in the USA the vast majority of us take a certain degree of wealth and plentitude for granted. Most of us don't have to worry about being able to feed our families. Yet ironically, many of us would not hesitate in explaining what constitutes a "worst day" -- whether it's fighting traffic, suffering an illness, having to postpone some kind of gratification or some other comparatively petty annoyance.


Thinking about the stark difference in lifestyles, opportunities and life-challenges between the 4.6 million Ecuadorians in poverty and what we in the USA are accustomed to, makes me think about getting settled there and finding some volunteer work to do. Yet there's some sage advice at the "Captivating Cuenca" website about visitors and expats moving to Ecuador:


"And then there are the "do-gooders," the transplants who want to "help" the less fortunate. Those warm and fuzzy gringos unwittingly disrupt the cultural and economic flow by overpaying, overtipping, and over-helping. Such actions result in altered expectations by locals, and the hidden feeling that gringos are both filthy rich and pretty stupid people."


I certainly don't want to fall into that trap, and I'm not filthy rich -- so it's clear that this trip will be full of new learning opportunities. I've often been amazed at how easily two opposing political talking heads from the USA can passionately put forth drastically different points of view on the same "fact," as happens moment to moment on Fox News, for example. If two of my own countrymen can have such disparate views, I'm sure an entirely different culture will give me reason to pause many times each day. Truly, I'm looking forward to the experience. I never have been an ugly American and don't plan to start now!


~ Allan

Best Place in the World

Yahoo and Google are different in interesting ways.  Google has that trim, slim, economical home page that loads up quickly, yet gives you many options such as News, Images, Videos, Maps and so on.  Yahoo, on the other hand, takes a while to load up all the ads, but finally displays all kinds of interesting factoids, stories and breaking news.  It's a more "social" place that gives one the latest entertainment business gossip, cute and entertaining videos on diverse subjects, as well as sections on news, dating, health, shopping, weather and more. It's even been reported that men generally prefer and use Google, while women tend more toward Yahoo.

Around June or July, 2010, Yahoo had an article on the Best Places in the World to Retire. We looked over the articles and found that Cuenca, Ecuador in South America had been voted #1 at least a couple years running. Subsequent searches found numerous mentions of Cuenca. International Living seemed to have the most info available -- downloadable PDF's, an "Owners Manual" for Ecuador (PDF) that cost somewhere upward of $60 and much more at their site.

Being just weeks away from retirement we began to study Ecuador and Cuenca in particular.  In retrospect it seems that International Living painted an idealistic vision of the city and the country. In fact some expatriates living in Ecuador have been critical of International Living's understating the cost of living; avoiding discussions of crime and the socialist left-wing government; of the 33% poverty rate among Ecuadorians -- all strategies to help International Living sell more trips and seminars -- or so it's said.

All that aside, we studied the country and eventually decided to visit for several weeks so we can make our own decision about Cuenca, Ecuador and its people.

So we're preparing for our trip. It will definitely give us yet one more adventure in the dream. We're excited about new places to explore, new people to meet and enjoy, a new culture to learn and become part of, the possibility of living there for a year (or a few years, or longer), perhaps having a place that family will enjoy visiting, maybe doing some volunteer work, being able to grow flowers, fruits and veggies all year around...and much more. A nice way to enjoy retirement.

Or not. We'll see.

So in the meantime this little blog can be our "diary" of preparation...the adventure itself...and our reflections on it.

Adventures in the Dream ??

The fellow said, "I had a really strange dream last night. It was exciting. And fun. Everything that happened made sense in the dream, but of course once I woke up, it didn't make any sense at all.  Now, by noontime, I can't even remember most of the dream. Or even why I thought it was so amazing."

The woman replied, "Well, that's how dreams usually work. There's no accounting for it. But did you ever think that once you wake up you're really waking into yet another dream? No, I don't mean some parallel universe like you see in sci-fi movies. I'm talking about our so-called "reality" actually being another dream."

Well, that's what we've come to believe about our apparent lives in what almost everyone agrees is "reality" -- living here on this planet Earth for three-score and ten. Sure, it's a strange idea.  We thought so at first too.

But after some years of studying A Course in Miracles we've come to see these lives we're living as something far less than reality. This blog isn't the place for deep explanations, except to say that we have had some adventures in this dream and are expecting at least a few more before the end of our dreaming days.

Hence, the name for this blog.