Monthly Archives: July 2013

Jul26

Eso! Eso! Adelante!

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Eso! Eso! Adelante!

Randi playing soccerA dirt field, concrete bleachers, and five teams of adolescent athletes gathered on a milky afternoon in Chaco to celebrate Ecuador’s passion, “futbol.”  The province of Napo had organized the games as part of an inter-canton tournament.  (“Cantons” are member states roughly equivalent to counties in the U.S.  Trivia: Switzerland divides itself into cantons, too.)  Other competitions included basketball, wrestling, soccer, chess, and even Tae Kwon Do!

Kevin’s oldest son, Ezra, plays for the Archidona team.  They had succumbed in their first game to Napo’s capital, Tena, but rallied to win the next two.  Now Archidona hoped to claim second-place in the tournament by triumphing in this fourth and final game. Read the rest of this entry →

Jul25

Site-seeing

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Site-seeing

Ecuador HighwayEcuadorean highways combine the etiquette of the U.S. east coast with the switchbacks of West Virginian mountains.  The road winds through the peaks as if a bored student had scribbled it there.  Speed limits and caution signs litter the roadsides, and a single fluorescent line separates two lanes.  Kevin referred to the signage as “sugerencias” — i.e., suggestions.  Traffic swerves freely across both lanes, around trucks, buses, and the occasional car.  When nobody approached from the opposite direction, we straddled the center line.  On tight curves, Kevin slid over into the other lane.  I watched every twist and turn to stave off carsickness — hardly a sacrifice, considering the view. Read the rest of this entry →

Jul25

The Color Yellow

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The Color Yellow

Kittie's Breakfast in QuitoNote: Rachel and I have just returned to Archidona (where there is internet) from a church camp in Latas (where there was not).  I originally planned this post for Sunday night; my apologies for the delay.

I had almost persuaded myself to name this post, “Bed and Breakfast.”  That phrase sums up the post’s contents accurately, but I couldn’t deny that the term also implies a type of business that has yet to entertain us here in Ecuador.  So I abandoned that idea in favor of identifying some thread that linked every highlight of our first full day overseas. Read the rest of this entry →

Jul20

Daedalus

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Daedalus

cloudy skyIts body barely houses a single pilot, but its wings stretch across an airport terminal. The man-powered craft, “Daedalus,” on display above the escalators, weds fragility, with its transparent plastic skin, to the strength implicit in its wingspan. It’s a feat of engineering – and its name suits it. The famous Icharus could fly, but his father, Daedalus, built him his wings. Plus, Daedalus understood the properties of the building materials better, and so refrained from pushing them past the point of failure. No wonder the modern-day engineers chose his name for their work. Read the rest of this entry →

Jul17

Travel Bug

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Travel Bug

Kittie with sand castleI suspect the travel bug infected me shortly after my birth, when my family moved to Belgium. Two years later, we left for Germany. By the age of 10, I had lived on three different  continents and visited four. I can thank my father, now retired from the U.S. Army, for my international childhood.

Years have passed since I last ventured beyond the United States, however (except for one week in Puerto Rico – technically, a debatable exception). I have now lived in one state for almost half of my life, if you can believe it, and I’m starting to feel itchy. Read the rest of this entry →