And that my friends, is how you move back from Ecuador.

Probably half of you (two people) already know that we are planning on coming back to the US, but the other half of you (the other two who read this blog) might not have been informed on the subject.  At any rate, although we got our visas extended until the end of September and could probably have gotten them extended again, we will instead be coming back in the middle of June.

That probably brings us to your next burning question, where?  We will be flying into Seattle and spending a few weeks in the lovely Evergreen state, hoping for nice weather.  Near the end of June we will be loading up the remaining belongings we own and taking them with us to the Beehive state.  Aaron has just accepted a job offer there, and we will enjoy spending time with friends we haven’t seen in a while and enjoying that strange yellow ball of gas in the sky that we didn’t often see in the Seattle area.  And eating Cafe Rio.  I will be doing a lot of that.

Oh, why are we not staying in Ecuador to have a baby?  Lots of reasons really, but mostly my own personal desire to have a baby at home with a midwife (I’m a weirdo, you already knew that though).  Also there are lots of things here that are doable with two children (I have two hands, so when we walk to town to do any errand we must do, it works) that seem to me to be ridiculously difficult with three, especially if one is a newborn and two will be 4 and 3.  Aaron is sad because he likes it here, and although I do like it here, I am admittedly very excited to use a washing machine, the drive-thru, have hot water at my kitchen sink, an oven, and flushing toilet paper.

So there you have it.  We have a month left in Ecuador.  Also, if anyone wants to take over our lease, unfurnished 4 bed/4 bath super great house at $330/month, let us know.  We may even throw in an almost new fridge.

After arriving Saturday evening, we rushed the entire crew to their hotel then to our house, where we had an eight piece band and open back party bus (trolley?) coming to drive us around for an hour.  Of course the bus called to say it would be half hour late, but they would still give us the full time, but what was I going to do with the band that I had booked for the same hour?  Well, we opened up the garage and had the band play for 30 minutes while we (the family and the volunteers) danced around on the sidewalk.  I took no photos so had to steal some from the volunteers on facebook.

After a half hour the bus indeed did show up, so we let the band on, then we all climbed aboard.  We spent 30 minutes driving around the downtown of Cuenca, and enjoyed the ultra-loud band and the many many people laughing at/with us.  Probably the worst part was our ridiculous selves driving by where pre-Easter mass was just being let out…  We had to drop off the band, but went back out for another 15 minutes listening to my dad’s CD he made specially for the occasion.  It had two songs, Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People (because my children love it and always danced to it at my dad’s) and Panic Switch by Silversun Pickups because my dad loves it and something about the irony of old Cuenca and blah blah blah.  I told my dad it must be nice going senile, because only crazy people want a party bus with a band.  He says it is nice indeed.  Eventually we got home and went to sleep as church started at 8am the morning.  We went to church and then got into a van and went to some waterfalls we intended to hike up.  There ended up being an excessive amount of water flow which cut our hike very short, but we had a good time getting soaked on a scary bridge below the waterfalls anyway.  I took no photos.  My dad has a couple perhaps.

After eating lunch we enjoyed the drive back to our house. Aaron put the kids down for a nap and I took the family to one of the orphanages to donate the awesome giant towel bibs they made for a service project before they came. We had a good time and then came home to eat Easter dinner. This included many fine Ecuadorian dishes, including Cuy (roasted guinea pig). If you haven’t eaten Cuy for Easter dinner, then you are not really missing out.  Eden was pretty grossed out, especially after I told her all about where different meats come from (hamburgers come from COWS?) but eventually came around from her newly declared vegetarian ways and tried a bite.

She didn’t like it.  But we gave her many points for trying it.  After dinner we had cake and the family went back to their hotel to sleep for their flight out the next day.  We loved having them here even if was for such a short time!

Aaron, Sammy, and I were in the kitchen at the back of the house while Harmon was napping in his room at the front.  Suddenly we heard a terrible crash and a squealing of tires out front.  I ran out to the balcony and was horrified to see a motorcycle on the ground in the road and a lady on the ground behind it, and a few others gathered around.  Aaron was now out on the balcony and I ran to find phone, blanket, and towel.  When I got downstairs Aaron threw me a bottle of water too.

When I got out to the road the water and towel were quickly put to use.  The good news was that there was almost no blood.  The lady on the ground had been rolled over and the only cut was on the palm of her hand and didn’t look too serious.  However her legs were bent into not so nice positions, so I would imagine she will be leaving the hospital in a cast.  Additionally, I only saw one helmet, so I am assuming the man driving was wearing it and not her.  He was sitting on the sidewalk trying not to freak out and holding his leg.  Another lady put the towel under the head of the lady on the ground and tried to get her to be as calm and still as possible.  Meanwhile a traffic motorcycle cop had arrived and an ambulance was on the way.

After a few minutes it was determined that this motorcycle had been hit by a white car that quickly sped away, hence the squealing tires after the crash noise.  More police showed up, the ambulance, and lots of bystanders.  The poor lady gets put onto a stretcher and put into the ambulance, and after getting his leg checked out, the motorcycle driver decides to go in the car with his friend.  At this point I am just standing by my gate, in case they need somewhere to park the motorcycle for the night/week/whatever.  Sure enough the crowd of my neighbors surrounding the driver and police men turn around one by one to look at me and I know that is what they are thinking too.  I open our gate and garage and guess what?  Now we have a free motorcycle!

Poor people.  I hate car accidents, and especially ones where people end up on the street.  But come on, what is it with accidents in front of our houses with white cars?  Watch out all future neighbors, we are bringing white car crashes to a neighborhood near you…

[Update: The motorcycle driver came with a group of friends to our house last night to reclaim his bike.  He said he was ok, just a few strained ligaments in his foot, and that his lady was going to be just fine, no breaks!  We were surprised that she didn’t have any broken bones, but very very glad.]

Our first trip was the worst. After a 20 minute wait (not so bad) we got to see the man in charge of accepting visa papers. I don’t know if he was having a case of the Mondays, hated really cute (but loud) children, his suit was too tight, or maybe the lady right before us spit in his eye, but he did not seem to like us. He quite rudely informed us we didn’t have all the necessary papers, and acted like we were insane for even trying to apply. To be fair I did have all the papers listed in detail on the agency’s website, but apparently there were 17 or so new ones I was missing. Maybe I am exaggerating and it was only 4 (each, so that really is 16). At any rate, he told us that not only did we each need all these new papers, but that we couldn’t apply to be a family unit unless we had translated the birth and marriage certificates and had them notarized, and that we would instead be paying $230/person instead of $50 as dependents. GREAT! Needless to say I cried a lot at home because I thought my head would explode.

I spent the rest of Monday getting the required papers, then spent Tuesday translating the documents from the US, and then back to the notary to get them approved. First thing Wednesday morning we took back our one million documents back and hope for some sort of miracle. I joked that there would be a really nice lady who loved adorable children working, and after waiting for a long while we found that indeed this lady existed and was working! She was very nice and Harmon did a good job of flirting with her, but she then decided we were missing yet another paper that also needed notarized. On top of that the translations were not actually what they were looking for (oh, how awful for all the time/money I spent translating them and getting them certified…), to be a family unit we needed apostilles. Oh what, you have never heard of an apostille? Yeah, me neither. In case you care to read more about it you can do so here. The short answer is it a certification that means that whatever document you have is valid and recognized in any of the countries that accept apostilles according to the Hague Convention of 1961. (This blog is so informative!) A huge problem would be that we currently live in Ecuador and to get the apostilles we need to take or send our certificates to Olympia. And then wait for them to get returned. The time this would take would be approximately two or more weeks to get from Ecuador to Olympia, 5-7 business days to get processed, then another 2 or more weeks to get back to Ecuador, if it arrived. The lady overcome by my distress and the sweet faces of my children decided that she could go ahead and accept our papers as individual units, and if the apostille by some miracle showed up before our current visas expired then we could be a family unit, she could just change it in the computer and save us a significant amount of money. Bless her. I should also add that at the end of our interview with her the guy from Monday came over and was like “what are you doing??” She explained to him what was happening and he miraculously said “oh, good idea!” Phew.

We left still in possession of all our million papers and still stressed (me). At best they would accept our paperwork the next time we tried and maybe by some small chance the apostille would come in time. We came home and I immediately called my mom and left her a message begging her to do my 40 errands for me. I spent Wednesday afternoon back at the notary getting what I hoped would be the last of our missing papers notarized.

Thursday we went back to the visa office again. This time we were there before the office even opened, eager anyone? We went to the usual waiting area, and after 5 or 10 minutes we were escorted into yet another office with another man. This kind man told us the lady from Wednesday had explained our situation and he would be receiving our papers. He explained to us to either come back with our apostilles before the very end of March, or just to come back and he would accept our visas individually. He took all our paperwork, but the pointed out that if we were applying for an 180 day extension (you can ask for between 91 and 180 days more) that we should have tickets for the very end of September, not June. We had originally bought return tickets in June because we thought it would be easy to get a 90 day extension like in 2007 and that would have fallen under the limit. He asked us to get a reservation for the end of September and bring it back before the weekend. I asked him what I should do, because to change the tickets costs $200 each ticket, and what if they didn’t approve our visas? He assured me they would approve it, and told me I could just get a reservation online, and that I didn’t need to have them paid for. I was skeptical, but glad that he was taking our papers and just waiting on that one. And that I could come back alone to deliver it to him. Not that I don’t love my kids, but anyone who has tried sitting in chairs waiting with small children trying to keep them quiet will understand how difficult this is. We were overjoyed that our process seemed to be done (for a month) and that he was so kind and helpful.

I came home and found that you can in fact make a reservation (on American Airlines at least) and it will be held for 36 hours online. I quickly did this for the new date and printed it out. I jumped in the first taxi I could flag down and 15 minutes later I was again welcomed into the visa office. The man took my papers and said they were good. Whew! Finally I could breathe again. Upon returning home I received even more good news, my mom had taken care of all my papers and they were on their way to be processed. Thank goodness for her!!!

So now we wait. Wait for the apostilles to arrive (both in Bellevue and then Ecuador), wait until the end of the month, and hope that everything goes smoothly…

Amid all of my complaining about the ridiculousness of the process Aaron reminded me that it is just like that in the US for anyone trying to come. I thought about my sweet Ecuadorian friends who a year ago had tried to apply for a visa to visit all the volunteers they have served with in the past 10+ years and how after hefty application fees, travel to the embassy, and other ridiculous measures they were denied. Nevermind that at the other embassy in the country other friends were granted visas because they had friends who worked there. It makes me angry, but at the same time inspires me to be a little more fair, a little more understanding, and a little bit more patient. The world is not fair, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t do anything about it.

This was the longest boringest post ever. Sorry. If you are still reading.

If you like water fights, you would like Carnival in Cuenca. If you don’t, then you better stay indoors. Starting on Saturday, water and foam spray fights began breaking out across town. The volunteers in the orphanages were attacked by the workers with buckets of water, and most of the orphan kids were armed with squirt guns and if they wanted got “thrown” into the kiddie pool. There were even reports of nuns getting in on the action. If you walked through town anytime between Saturday through Tuesday you were a moving target for groups of people in the back of pickups armed with water balloons, buckets of water, and spray foam. Or course you could just as easily be attacked by kids holding their cans of spray foam walking down the street. And finally you need to be careful of crazy people standing on their balconies hitting innocent people trying to get from one place to another. Like these ones:

We had lots of fun with squirt guns for about 10 minutes the day we bought them until they broke. On Saturday we broke out the two cans of spray foam which I originally thought was silly string, and the kids had fun spraying the patio. On Monday we decided it was water balloon time, and made 100. Mostly the kids dropped them over the balcony onto the front patio, but occasionally some English speakers would walk by on the far side of the road and I would loudly tell the kids to hit them. This made them laugh, as obviously a 2 and 3-year old would not be launching balloons that would land anywhere near them, and most would pretend to be scared as Sammy and Harmon threw as far as they could and reached the sidewalk on our side of the street. After a while Aaron took a break from working and came out below us. We made sure he got plenty wet, and he got us a few times with balloons he caught. Late Monday afternoon we were sad we were out of balloons with an entire day left, so we walked a block and a half to a little store that was still open (most everything has been closed) and bought 200 more balloons for Tuesday. Tuesday was pretty much the same as Monday, we sat on the balcony and had fun dropping balloons over the edge. I was apparently more careless with the filling of balloons, and made them all a lot less full, so when the kids dropped them, several did not pop. (Give me a break, filling up 200 balloons is a lot!) This meant lots of ammo for Aaron when he came out, and also several rolled onto the sidewalk, much to the joy of kids who passed who now had protection walking down the street. Oh, and one adult male who spoke English (slight accent, couldn’t place it) who was soaked with water and foam. He was happy to pick up 3 that had rolled to the street so he could protect himself and his wife. Aaron definitely won Tuesdays event, leaving the other three of us quite wet. And the playroom, and the windows.

It is a fun holiday in Cuenca, everyone does lots of BBQing, lots of family water fighting, music, and of course a few fireworks. It is more or less the same as when many other people in the world are celebrating, right up until what is called Fat Tuesday in the US, the last day before Lent begins. Today is Ash Wednesday, and here in Ecuador you will see many people who have been to church to begin their Lent observance with ash on their foreheads. In our house however, we are just sad we are out of water balloons again.

There are a lot of holidays in Ecuador. It seems hardly a month goes by without a parade or two. Many of the streets are named for dates, “10 de agosto” for example, and you can bet that if there is a street name then there was something important that happened on that day, and we will be celebrating it! I love holidays and reasons to celebrate so this always pleases me greatly.

Two holidays seem to be extra important here in Ecuador, more so than in other parts of the world. Of course when I say other parts of the world I mean the US, the only other country in which I have lived. Anyway, those two holidays are Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. The reason I know these two days are super important it the party that starts the night before each of these days. When I lived her in 2004, all the neighbors had parties the day before, starting around 7pm and going until forever. And when I say forever I mean 4 or 5am. That is some hard-core partying, especially for the day before the actual holiday. This year I was excited/nervous to see what Valentine’s Eve would bring.

When I put the kids to bed around 8:30pm on the 13th I heard a lot of male voices outside. I looked out the window and saw approximately 10 guys, probably in their 20s hanging around two cars parked across the street. They were talking loudly and I assumed they were on their way to party. As it turned out I was both right and wrong. They were already at their party. On the street. Starting around 10pm they started singing along to romantic songs they either brought or were being played on the radio. The group size varied throughout the night, having as few as 4 singers, and as many as 20 at some points. At one point a few gentlemen came to our gate and saw Aaron working in the front room and tried to convince him to come out. As he had been working 18 hour days for the past many days, he decided to stay and finish his work instead.

Meanwhile I covered my head with a pillow and wished for it to be morning already. The singing finally stopped around 4am, at which point I can only assume they were hoarse from their 6 hour concert. I have yet to ask my Ecuadorian friends why these dudes were all out singing, but my assumption is that were either mourning their single-hood or trying to attract mates by their karaoke skills. Either way, it was loud.

In future holiday news, only two days until Carnival, which here means a big water fight. With strangers. Who will pelt you with water balloons from moving cars. Or balconies. Or alleyways. Fun?!

-Rented a house
-Bought some furniture (we would have bought more, but we don’t have any more money)
-Did 30 loads of laundry by hand
-Potty-trained Sammy
-Aaron got a job
-Started Preschool
-Learned how to make aji (favorite spicy dip made from tree tomatoes)
-Learned how to make rice at over 8,000ft
-Found some good ways to help OSSO
-Visited my favorite nun
-Helped my dad book his trip to visit
-Uploaded 12 photos
-Visited lots of great orphans

I’m not going to lie, this is kind of a silly list, but it could have turned out that we had a hard time finding somewhere to rent, and at this point we would be without a house, a job, money, and could quite possibly be discouraged and thinking about changing out return tickets to next week. So I call Month 1 a success. Can’t wait to see what Month 2 brings.

Step 1: Go here http://www.orphanagesupport.org/sponsorships.html

Step 2: Read the information about all the great benefits you will get.

Step 3: Click the link to sign-up.

So easy right? Now for $30/month (or more if you are feeling extra generous!) you can be helping the sweet orphans in Ecuador! Maybe you are thinking “but Kelsey, I have so much more money just sitting around I need to get rid of!” I have that problem solved for you too. You can sponsor an entire orphanage! That starts at $1,000 a year, so perhaps your entire extended family/business/group of friends could get together and do it. What could be better than that?

(Did I sell you yet? Seriously, it’s super important and EASY! $30/month, just cut out one trip to Target and you will have plenty!)