Meet the neighbours

I was lying in bed the other morning and heard a distinct 'moooo'. Looking out the window, I was able to meet our new neighbours, a family of cows! I am feeling somewhat 'country' right now.

Our neighbours seem to be somewhat transient, as after about a week on this vacant lot they moved on. They were milked every day though, and extra feed was dropped off in a taxi, so they have all the mod-cons that cows might need.

A few days ago I managed a small walk/jog around our new neighbourhood. Not sure really where to go as it is pretty hilly (ie hard work) and also a big mix of houses and workshops (mechanics, carpentry and so forth) which isn't always too nice to jog past. I think I passed our cow friends along the way too! I picked up a couple of pebbles ready to throw at any alarming dogs just in case but had no need of that, they seemed pretty docile at that time of day.

We've bumped into Rodrigo and Mariana a few times (I used to go riding with Mariana in 2007) which has been nice and is making me think maybe I just need to get back on the bike. So, the trick will be to co-ordinate kids with John to be able to get out here and there.

The Virgin goes past

I was out the back of the house a few days ago when I heard the music of a brass band going past.

Out we went to have a look, and there, going up our street was a little procession carrying the Virgin del Cisne. Not exactly sure of her final destination on this outing, but she was wearing a sun hat for good measure!

Please continue to pray that the many here would discover Jesus as the one who is truly worthy of their devotion.

Things aren't always as they seem

I have been trying this past week to buy a hose fitting for the hose we have. It is a 3/4" hose and I have found that they are not very common. In fact I went to several hardware stores and they all looked at me strangely saying that hoses are 1/2" and not 3/4" (obviously we inherited an imported product).

I bit the bullet and bought a 1/2" fitting in the hope that I could make it work. I slid some half inch hose on the fitting and then slid the 3/4" hose over the top and it was all good. I was literally excited after such a long process of trying to get our hose working.

But... the end of my glee came when I took for granted that the fitting would be strong, made of copper or some other, any other strong material. Boy was I wrong. It was prooving difficult to do up the fitting and so I grabbed the multigrips and went to hold it tight and something wasn't quite right and as I looked closer I reaslied that I had just crushed the fitting and what you see is left below. The only thing still intact was the bit I didn't touch.

Bus stop, Ecuadorian style

I had a little chuckle with a fellow team mate who is due to go on home assignment soon. She was planning out her travels and where to get on and off the bus back home when out of town and had a sudden realisation that she wouldn't be able to just yell out to the driver to stop at her desired destination but would need to go to an actual designated bus stop. How inconvenient western travel can be!

Tennis

We made it to the tennis court with our friend Diego! A nice Sunday afternoon activity. We all managed to have a hit, and Evie wanted to stay for a million hours so she could keep playing! Mattias was most sad to get in the car cause he had to say goodbye to the cow that was off to the side of the court...