What is that?

Another day of driving in Ecuador finding a good place to sleep and food that our kids will enjoy. We are fortunate that Mattias loves rice as every meal can come with rice, be it spaghetti, soup or just a hunk of meat .

However today as we were driving along we were confronted with a problem of numerous cultures converging on us. I looked at this lady deep frying something (and I always have a taste for things deep fried), I thought to myself, "Beer battered fish" and "Croquets", oh yum, and any Australian born to Dutch parents will agree that although a strange combination to find together, they would be well worth eating, if that's what they really were.

And that is exactly what went wrong, as you look at the photo you can imagine my surprise to find the croquet really being fish covered in mashed banana, and the beer battered fish as a beer battered banana. Ha ha ha, oh to be from a Dutch background, growing up in Australia and trying to live in Ecuador where everything is made to look like things you love, but just end up being banana.

Turtles - friendly, vicious or dead?

It's not every day that you see a turtle, especially a Galapagos Turtle. But being in Ecuador, there are opportunities all over the place.

A few weekends back we decided to go to the zoo in Loja (worthwhile mentioning that this is a very affordable family activity, at a cost of $1 for all of us! Mind you, less animals than Taronga but then again, less walking around required too...) and we got to see some friendly turtles that just amble around their little habitat.

John discovered that they also have a dark side. After attempting a few photos, the turtle decided enough was enough and starting hissing with a mouth wide open ready to attack. Thankfully, unlike lions and other animals, these guys actually move as fast as a turtle so didn't cause any damage to the photographer, but made for a good photo.

Lastly, the dead one. We went to Los Frailes beach this morning and saw the remnants of a turtle on the beach being eaten by birds. Nothing we could do to save it, but we did manage a memorial of the turtle with a sand sculptured one of our own.

French toast or just plain double dutch

When doing discipleship with new or newish believers you always come across difficulties due to words that crop up in the course of studying the bible that perhaps have never been encountered before.

Doing this in Spanish has been challenging but now, after four years things are certainly easier and I do not have the fear that I used to have when I had to open my mouth in public. Although between you and me, I feel as though the more Spanish I learn the more I realise how much I do not understand, but life goes on. I will always be a foreigner here!

So about 4 months ago when I started meeting with a guy called Sylvain I realised that him being French and me being Australian would sometimes prove difficult. So in my wisdom (or foolishness) I found a discipleship book that was in French and English and was downloadable and gave a great explanation of the Bible.

With almost 10 chapters of the book under our sleeves we are getting close to the New Testament. We have covered the whole of the Old Testament: sacrifices, crossing the Red Sea and the construction of the tabernacle, what a whirlwind.

So far we have been talking something like the following, remembering that we are reading in our native language and speaking in Spanish.

"So Sylvain, what did you like this week?"

"Oh, I like the part where the men cross the water"

"Oh the crossing of the sea after the important man from Egypt decided to chase them?"

"Yes that's it, it's in this paragraph here."

"Oh... Yes I see, yes that part, mmm I like that too, it's like, mmm, great.

And so for 1.5 hours every other week we get together and discuss the bible in our limited way. But even though it is limited in the ways we are able to communicate, it is not limited at all as we are reading in our own native tongue the history of our ancestors, the Israelites, and how Jesus is the one who is proclaimed about in the pages of the Bible.

Want to use this same material yourself? Go to www.goodseed.com and check it out, they also have the whole bible story as a flash video to watch at your leisure.

Bolon de maduro con chicharron

Made it out today for a coffee with some of the girls on team. We went with our spanish teachers to a place they have found which is full of authentic ecuadorian food.

So I had a bolon de maduro con chicharron. It was pretty good but dense, so only made my way through it partially. Also had a jugo de tomate del arbol. Also good.

What is it? Ripe banana with fried pork pieces, and tree tomato was the flavour of my juice.

Forgot to whip out the camera earlier than I did, but if I had, you would have noticed that although everyone had a different order, all the food was the same colour...yellow! Landing on the same section of the colour wheel did not mean the same flavours across our spectrum of banana, potato, yuca and maiz dishes. When I mentioned this to John at home, he said that is why there is a zillion names for the colour yellow here!

Oh, and this place is also very noteworthy as they serve the coffee black, which is normal, but WITHOUT SUGAR! Amazing.