How do you know when mum's away?

This week Karine went on a little trip up to Quito to be with a friend. This left me to play dad and mum for the whole week.
You would think that everything would remain the same and the kids would behave like they do for mum, however there are a number of things that change while mum's away...

 Mattias becomes a budding puzzle expert, this being the 20th puzzle in four days, and yes that is a look of tiredness.

Evie decides that being a photographer would be really cool, and so starts with self-portraits... 

She then decides that Annalise would make a good model...

For both smiles and serious shots...

 Puzzles were her next genre...

and to top it off a new hairstyle...

Mattias finally finished his puzzle...

And dad prepared a quick tv dinner (I forgot that kids need to eat earlier than their bed time if anything is to go down the hatch, tv always helps)...

And thankfully  I managed a shop today as we were completely out of 'food'.

Come back Karine, we all miss you loads...

Preaching Conference 2011

Thinking about the conference this year, I come to realise that having a conference for people in ministry is always encouraging. I am sure that for some people this year’s conference was not quite what they expected, however for others it was just what they needed and still others were somewhere in between, thankful for what they were learning, and at the same time not sure if it was for them.

For a preaching conference you really do want preachers attending. This year was a year that I thought I should change the goal a little in order to make the conference more accessible to those who are not in full-time ministry however are very involved. Do we need to change the focus of the conference? I am talking about people who teach regularly, bible study leaders, youth group leaders and others who have a basic understanding of the bible with no formal training of any sort. So did we have more of these people than those who preach?

No, in fact I counted and at least half of the people in the conference have a regular preaching opportunity, which was more than I thought (I thought perhaps only 5 to 10 would have the opportunity). This is a real encouragement to me and makes me want to think about perhaps having a different conference that would cover these others, perhaps even using those who attend the preaching conference to run it. Many thoughts and many ideas, however perhaps I just need to keep my feet on the ground, ask for some help and perhaps someone else will take up this responsibility.

I guess this is one thing that motivates me to keep going here in Loja, that is, a need for bible teaching. A need for getting into the text and explaining what it says and not what our itching ears want to hear.

Take for instance two young guys who came from a province town where there is no real evangelical presence. Both in their early twenties and both very shy and turn red at the drop of a hat. However a few weeks after the conference they both attended a youth camp where a young girl from their town was greatly impacted as a result of the change she saw in these two guys, especially one of them. This comes from creating this space where he can flourish and at the conference this young guy received what was necessary for him to be encouraged to take this message further afield than perhaps he has done before.

Praise God for the conference and for the encouragement that these stories bring to us. Praise God for the way he is using these events for his glory.

Evie turns 6

Time to party, Evie turned 6 years old! We had a fun day, lots of kids, lots of mayhem, lots of food and lots of laughs. We played the straw relay game where you have to carry an m&m to a bowl using a straw and I suddenly had to think of a bunch of ways to explain in spanish how to suck on the straw in order to pick up the m&m rather than blow air out (by which time the majority of the m&m's were coated in saliva...). We played the donut on a string game - probably the funniest to watch as the kids lunged and dived for their wayward donut. We played pass the parcel and the chocolate game, which was also a bit of a riot. 

We had a big love heart cake, a success for the icing alone and then watched a movie. 

Thanking God for our girl as she grows, praying for wisdom as we seek to guide her in Jesus' footsteps. 

New Software for the Bookshop

As things get busier there is a need to maintain some sort of control in the bookshop. As a result we have purchased some new software to print receipts and keep tabs on the books we have in stock. However, the process was not as easy as it was to write the last two sentences. 

It all started in July when the final decision was made that we need to have some sort of control over the stock and move from hand writing receipts to printing receipts. After working through the decision for purchasing a ready made program or getting a local person to develop one we met with a friend to get the program written. Ah, and so the fun began.

The first meeting was with the owner of a computer shop and I explained everything that I wanted the program to do and I left all my notes with him to get on with the job. 

The following meeting was with a guy who was writing the program, so I thought, and he asked me the same questions, which was quite difficult not having the notes from the first meeting and the manager of the shop wasn’t in to give the notes to this new guy.

The next meeting was with the actual person who was going to write the program and so this time I decided it was time to make my own set of notes during the meeting to make sure that if this happened again that I would have the necessary information. 

The next meeting was the first view of the program. It was at this meeting that I was glad to have written the notes of the previous meeting telling them that there were many things that were missing, and it was at this point that I was wondering in the wisdom of getting some young guys to do this. They were asking me questions like, “But do you like the colour?” “Do you like how when you click here that this happens?” And all along I am thinking, am I ever going to get a program that functions or is it going to look good and do nothing?

By this time it was the end of August and I had seen the program once and sent them away with the idea of actually writing the program to do what we had asked. 

Our next meeting was seriously promising, there were a few little issues and bugs to be worked through, however it was doing most of what we wanted and we had a date for installation which was the end August. Exciting, however I am writing this in October and so there is more to the story.

The date came and went and they started the asking for another week to fix this and another week to fix that and then an install date was given to me as next friday. This was then delayed as they were having trouble packaging it for installation (meaning that they wanted a nice file to double click on that self installed, a bit of a waste of time and meant that I was still without a program).

It was at this point that everything came to a crashing end. The guy who was writing the program dropped his computer and pretty much lost everything. A good reminder to those of you who do not do backups, that you should start, as losing your stuff is only one drop away!

As you can imagine I was not very compassionate, being a programmer, one would assume that you keep backups regularly, however we showed some grace and decided to give them some extra time to re-write and get things ready. 

The manager of the computer shop at this stage decided that if the program wasn’t installed in our office by the 7th October we would ask someone else to give us a program. 

Unfortunately the program was not ready and the manager of the shop decided that he would just ask a favor from a friend who had a program that normally costs more than double what we had originally thought, and so on the 6th October we finally had the new software installed and it’s working fine!

Talk about a saga, however the best part of all this was the fact that the friendship between the manager of the computer shop and myself has grown. He is a Christian, and has been for the past 11 years, however he has had numerous questions about the gospel and other things and so with all the extra time we have had some good conversations about the trinity and salvation amongst other things. 

I guess one of the things we continue to realise and one that doesn't change whether here in Ecuador or in Australia is that relationship leads to conversation and encouragement and even at times a willingness to listen to who Jesus is and what he came to do. 

Play time

Thought it might be nice to have a play date for Evie, so we sent a note home with her classmates for a Friday afternoon gig, 4-6pm. Friday afternoon rolled around and a good amount of kids too! Some came early (before 3.30pm - is that possible here in Latin America??!), some came late, we had laughs and games and popcorn. Got to speak to some mum's, plus one of the ladies that looks after one of Evie's classmates in the afternoons (who it turns out has a little plot of land higher up the mountain, so I gave her my butternut pumpkin seedling as I figure I don't really have enough room, here's to hoping some pumpkins will result and that we can have some tasty pumpkin soup). Two of Evie's teachers came too, so all round, good to build some more connections at school. I wouldn't mind investigating whether it's possible to volunteer at school maybe once every few weeks, reading english books or the like, but my mind can't currently get around the extra organisation required between Mattias and Annalise, so will leave that as a mere thought at present.

Loja at the beginning of the school year

It's like a city-wide treasure hunt....the race is on to get all your children's school utilities according to the whim and fancy of each individual school. The list is exhaustive - folders, wax paper (colour blue, red, green and yellow), metal pencil sharpener, pencil case, exercise books with lines, exercise books with grids, A4 paper, cardboard, thick wool, thin wool, erasers, glitter (any colour), toilet paper, whiteboard markers (colour red, blue and black), age appropriate board game, textas, pencils, lead pencils (the triangular shaped ones), rubbish bags, chalk, plasticine, plastic storage box (colour blue), masking tape (or if you will 'masky'), tooth brush, tooth paste and cup, balloons et cetera ad infinitum. The lines snake out of all the stationary shops, the fight to get in front of the line, or maybe to establish that there is a line and hence one's place in the line. People dashing into shops, 'do you have a size 5 sharpener?' or 'do you have a spiral notebook with 50 pages?', overheard conversations about the cost of everything, different school lists compared, dazed parents walking around lugging bags, wielding their rolled up cardboard like modern day swords, finally able to bring everything home to then put the child's name on every item bought (yes, including the 'masky'). There is a certain sense of satisfaction in being able to whittle down the list of still required items (I have only 5 to go!) and the joy in being able to hand it all over, the treasure hunt over, the city scoured, discovered new stationary shops with shorter lines receiving heartfelt gratitude, and the hope that the teacher uses all her school supplies well.

What you miss out on in Australia where all you do is hand over your school fees, it sort of sounds mundane somehow?

Fun in the sun

We grabbed the moment of sunshine on the weekend and went down to the park. I think we all had fun...

Spiritual Life Conference 2011

In August we got to go away for a week with our SIM team. For us in Loja, we didn't wander too far, only to Vilcabamba, 40 minutes further south. Bit of a hike for those in Quito, Guayaquil and those from the US that came to help with kids and to speak!

It was a good week, despite the freezing temperature of the pool. It was good to hear from God's word and be challenged again to be a servant of the gospel in many varied ways. It was good to see the kids playing together. It was good to go for a walk along the river and a bike ride. It was good to chat with fellow team mates and have a laugh.

The make up of missionary teams change rapidly, and our SIM team here in Ecuador is no exception. There is great diversity in our team - stage of life, past careers, nationality, thought patterns, energy levels, interests - you name it! Thought we’d give you a picture of what our team currently looks like.

Our director is from Virginia, and is married to a Paraguayan. We have a Californian/Brazilian family who formerly served in Africa with SIM. We have a Mexican/Californian family who arrived earlier this year, A family from Colorado, people from Virginia, from western Sydney, from Canberra, Switzerland, QLD, Illinois, Quito, Guayaquil and Bolivia.

And what do we do as SIM Ecuador?

We seek to help people encounter the living Lord Jesus Christ and submit to Him and to make progress in their walk with Him. That being said, there are lots of ways that actually happens in the day to day activities of our team mates.

People on our team are involved in marriage counseling, running a christian radio station, teaching english at the local public university, training children’s workers in churches, evangelism in small towns through kids’ clubs, diet clubs and craft clubs, running english conversation classes, running outreach events in english, bible studies for couples, bible studies for women, bible studies for youth, bible studies for city folk and for country folk, church planting, medical ministry, discipleship, running a youth cafe, home schooling, organising preaching conferences, running a bookshop and library, mobilising Ecuadorians into missions, seeking to influence and encourage pastor’s wives, teaching english to Ecuadorians who are training to be missionaries, teaching carpentry in a local high school, mountain biking, talking to people whom you bump into, inviting people to read the bible with us, befriend exchange students and Peace Corp workers, opening our homes to families, helping single mums make a living, crisis counseling, being parents of toddlers, learning language and culture, navigating local bureaucracy, cooking and sharing food and recipes with neighbours.

It’s a pretty diverse crew, involved in many different areas in Loja, the province and nationally, but under God, we pray that his kingdom will grow and his name will be glorified in and through us. And that is what makes up SIM Ecuador, for now anyways!

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.

Finally a footpath!

You know you are in construction central when the sight of 'Scoop' outside our window no longer causes excitement for Mattias, and only merits a passing comment about rocks being moved.

And hence my joy the day the footpath was finished, never mind that it was raining. It is certainly hard work here. Hopefully we get to enjoy this footpath for awhile as is!

Mattias finishes pre-school for the year

The last day of pre-school for Mattias included an open classroom time, so we went along and saw him doing his stuff - some of the matching games and drawing etc that has kept him occupied this past half year. His face was full of concentration, very fun to see.

His teacher said a lovely speech about the kids in her class and how she'd miss them and managed to talk through her tears. Those kids are a cute lot. I'll miss them too, they always come up and talk to Annalise and 'Mattias' mum' at pick up time.

Holiday time now, nice that Evie doesn't have to be ready for the bus to pick her up at 7.15am! Hope it doesn't rain the entire time so that we can make it to the park without gumboots over these coming weeks.

Morning walk

Life in Loja is often dusty and windy and very little green in the immediate vicinity. It's because lots of gardens are tucked behind the house and so walking around you generally just see walls and concrete. And some construction is always happening somewhere so mud and dirt gets carried around everywhere (for example right outside our house).

And so, it is delight to be able to go for a walk along the river on the northern end of town. To be amidst the trees, the grass, the sound of the river rushing past is refreshing to the soul. Thrown into that, Annalise gets to see cows, horses, dogs, llamas, monkeys and eagles as we make our way along. And when I lift my eyes, the hills are there, green, often misty, and when the sun breaks through the clouds, the light as it hits those slopes is lovely.

It is worth the bug bites that always seem to appear once I get home!

Ephesians 6 across cultures

Came to Ephesians 6 in the bible study I (John) lead before church this morning. And it raised a whole host of questions that hadn't even entered my Australian head. As we talked about relationships between slaves and masters, and what it means to be a godly employee or employer the whole area of 'favours' came up. What do you do if you are an employee and a friend asks you for a favour to get something moving along faster or to have an issue resolved sooner than it otherwise would be? What about if it was you, is it OK to ask a friend for a favour to get those slow or stationary wheels turning to have your situation attended to? Do you decide on the basis of legality, you surely wouldn't agree to something illegal, but if it was legal, would you go ahead and do it?

Hard questions to answer, so it meant a lot of listening for me! God's word has a lot to say to every culture but for as someone still learning this culture, it meant hearing how followers of Jesus here viewed some of these tricky areas.

What I learnt today

I was happily (sort of) ironing this morning as the lady who helps with cleaning once a week paused outside the room I was in. 'You iron during the day, Señora Karine?' 'Oh, I replied, 'if I have time, more often at night, when the kids are in bed'. She looked a little perturbed. 'When do you iron' I ask her. 'At night'. Oh. The thing is, she went on to explain, its dangerous to iron during the day. Why? I asked. Well, you will soon be cooking lunch, right? And you'll be washing up and using water. And the water will be cold, and even if it's warm water, all this water will make your body cold. And this is after the ironing has made your body all hot. And the end result of this will be that you will damage your hands. You will end up with twisted hands and wrists.

Oh. I could see her cause for concern. Do you know anyone that this has happened to? Yes, she replied. Oh. Do you think it could be arthritis? No way, this is different.

Who told you about not ironing during the day? My mum, my mother-in-law. All the women in our family iron on Friday nights, after we have definitely finished everything in the kitchen.

OK. There are so many beliefs and superstitions in this society that I have yet to learn. Each of them govern people's lives in such subtle ways, dictating even when ironing should happen. I pray that many will hear the gospel and enter into the freedom that comes from knowing Christ, and that it may be God's powerful word that governs lives.

The process of putting in new phone lines

Mattias had a fun afternoon the other day as he watched a digger right outside our window dig up the footpath up and down our street. Noisy, dirty and so close! No one came to let us know the footpath was going to be dug up, and unfortunately for our neighbours, the footpath mostly ended up in front of their garage (people generally are very averse to leaving their cars outside overnight).

A week has since past, and the trail of destruction (or construction?) continues on down the hill. Not sure if the footpath will get repaired or if it will be left as is. At least I am getting a bit of off-roading experience as I drive into our garage!

Recent random happenings

Life does go on, but living here often brings events that don't happen at home very often. Here are some of those moments...

Got a call at 9pm the other night. A guy that people on our team had been looking after had just died after a short battle with cancer. The great news was that in the past few weeks he had given his life to Christ and so he went to his new eternal home. But he needed some clothes to put his earthly body in. No place selling clothes here is open at that time of night but John did have a pair of jeans he wasn't really using, so that seemed like a good use to put them to!

My third attempt to pay the electricity bill was a dismal failure. Somewhat embarrassingly, my first attempt was marked by my success to bring enough money but failure to bring the actual bill. My second attempt was valiant as I stayed in line a good number of minutes waiting for the system to start working again. My third attempt got off to a good start, no wait, bill in hand but now I had to pay for two months and for that I did not have enough money. No option to pay for only one month. I make my exit and declare that John will pay this bill.

Got to Romans 3.21-26 today with my friend Patricia, wonderful to be able to talk again about the incredibly great news that God has provided everything we need to save us, and that in Christ we are justified, we are set free from sin, and that he accomplished what we were not able to do of our own accord.

The sandbags outside our house have not budged, now been there for over a month. The amount of sand in the bags are slowly diminishing. The kids like the bumpy ride as we launch over them into our driveway.

Returned to the car with an ominous puddle next to the rear tire. Someone once again has mistaken that tire for a public urinal.

Discover, to my delight, that there is a play swing set in the local toy store, so send John out to buy it immediately. We had been thinking of trying to get one made out of timber but wasn't sure how successful it would be. The kids are ecstatic.

Chatting with a friend (who is married with 2 kids) this afternoon, she tells me of the recent debacle she had with her new doctor. The doctor recognised her from when they were teenagers. And then starts asking her personal questions, then asks for her phone number....she escapes and decides to find a new doctor and her husband promises to accompany her to all future doctor visits. Faithfulness in marriage is something to be fought for.

Friday night I wondered why outside our house is such a great location for mobile discos. Evie woke up a few times from the super loud music closer to midnight. 12.30am seemed like a good time to ring the police to see if they would come and move these party animals along. It worked. Half an hour later, either the same group or a new group turn up. 2am I call the police again, and again at 2.30am. I think by about 3am I had dropped off and I guess the music had too. At least the music isn't too distasteful...

Train driving

Evie was a little distressed when she realised that there was no driver in the train. Her nervousness turned to excitement the moment she understood that she was the one who had to drive it. Take a look...

Houston, we have landed

Well travelling with a 5 year old has its moments as many of you will know. Here is a little moment while we were in Houston airport which certainly got us both very excited.

High on the hill

Here's a pic of Evie riding her bike at the park a little up the hill from where we live. Mattias calls it the 'up the hill' park, as opposed to the 'home' park which is across the road. It's weird at times living in a long, narrow valley which even has it's own weather patterns from one side to the other.

This park is in two sections, the top one where Evie is riding on the volley ball court, and then its down a big hill to a football field. I've banned the very fun but exhausting 'throw the ball down the hill' game for now.

We can't complain for lack of a view...

Oh dear, sandbags...

After a particularly impressive downpour on Monday afternoon, Monday night saw sandbag action right outside our house. I guess to divert water from flooding houses down the hill on a future occasion. So the wall of sandbags are just there with no signs to take care of the sudden closure of half the road.

Last night in the middle of bible study we hear the sound of an almost accident with no follow through crash. Taking a look out the window, lo and behold, there was a taxi stranded on top of the sandbags. With barely functioning window wipers and only one headlight the poor guy hadn't seen the diversion. Out go Diego and John to lift the car up a bit so it can get off the sandbags. Good on you fellas! My question is, how long will they keep these diversions in place for?

We can watch tele...

This year the local soccer team has made it back into the national league, piquing John's interest in watching games. Tickets are a little hard to come by, so he has settled for watching it on the tele...small issue being that we get absolutely no reception in this house, seeing as we are in some sort of hollow. We don't want cable and we have the TV in the lounge room (as opposed to in each bedroom which is quite common here). And so began the joy of trying to get reception.

Bring out the 6m pole, find an electrician (or someone who knows about wires) and bring him up to the house. Buy a better antenna and off we go. Initial price - $5. One false installation (pole and antenna stuck up high in the sky but zero receptivity), next try is onto the roof with pole leaning onto the neighbours wall. The cable is poked through a gap in the roof and run all the way through the dining and lounge areas to finally reach the TV. Six hours later we choose which channels we definitely want and forego the others. There's even a cable channel in the mix by virtue of being able to tune into it?!

The guy gets ready to go and um's and uh's - it's been a lot of work for just $5 and we agree. So $10 it is and some lunch money thrown in - what a good job he has done to get us some tele. Happy John, not-so-excited kids who think football watching is somewhat boring, Karine placated thinking that at least it means Dad is around to help with the kids a little during the games!

Slug bug blue!

While we stayed with some friends near Seattle on our journey to Ecuador, they taught us how to play “Slug bug”. The idea is that if you spot the bug first and say it’s colour, i.e. slug bug blue, you get to slug the other the person, of course if you forget to say “No slugs back”, you´ll get one right back at you.

Well this game has caught on in our home and thankfully, without the slugs! Here is Mattias, yet again overjoyed at seeing yet another bug, especially a blue one!!

Your bricks are here

Have you ever wondered what the benefits are of getting bricks delivered in pallets? Here a good reason. Think about the guys who have to pick all these up and stack them prior to moving them around the worksite.

I wonder how many people would write to their local member if this happened down the street from where you live.

La fiesta italiana

Here we are enjoying a 'family' feast with our team mates. Before we left Australia, John got a hold of the 'My family feast' series and thought it would be fun to watch an episode together and then eat the food they show (pending availability of ingredients of course). So, last Saturday we had our first such feast - italian. It was pretty good I think - we made tomato sauce (passata) out of 20kg of tomatoes, stuffed eggplant, meatballs and focaccia. Our dessert lacked authenticity - no gelato in our neck of the woods and not enough energy to have a go at making it. Oh, to be around the corner once again from Pure Gelato, now that would be bliss.

Cosecha

Evie came home on Friday with a little bag of potatoes in hand - harvested from the school garden that they work in. Well done, green thumb! Evie says we should make some potato chips out of them, sounds perfect.

Apples

We were half way through our apple dumpling recipe and discovered we had to core the apples. Alas! Apple corers don't exist in this past of the world. So we set John onto the task and his solution worked a treat. The dumplings were scrumptious.

Celebrating Mattias' birthday

After raining most of the week, Loja was beautifully sunny last Saturday morning which meant perfect party weather for Mattias. John did a lovely job decorating the cake and we managed a little potato and spoon race before we decided the sun was too sunny and we should retreat to the shade. Happy birthday Tijs!

A walk with mum

We ran out of bananas after 4 days (that means almost 20 bananas....good thing they are only 5c each), so I decided I had better go and get some more. Annalise, who had no choice in the matter, accompanied me. Evie and Mattias voiced their opinions and decided to stay home and continue to play. It's a long hill down to the market, but with 20 bananas in hand, an even longer one back up. Annalise had a lovely time pulling my hair and looking all around at the big, wide world.

This feels like a nice kid stage right now - Evie and Mattias can play together for ages when both are in the right moods and not too tired. Saturday was one long mum's and dad's game for them. Annalise is getting herself moving and curious about everything, so Mattias is extra busy packing and hiding his 'special' toys from her reaching hands. Evie is learning a dance at school and I can see that famous latin hip wiggle coming along nicely as she practices at home.

Speaking of dancing, I was reminded again yesterday that language bloopers will never be too far away....a friend jokingly said yesterday that we should start dancing some salsa, I responded by saying, 'Great, I have some Chi Chi' and she bursts out laughing. So, I was referring to a salsa album I have by Chi Chi Peralta, but here, chi chi means boobs. I won't forget that now!

A blue flower

As Mattias, Annalise and I were walking back to the car, we passed by the little plaza where they sell flowers, so I stopped and picked up some lovely gerbras. The florist then gave a flower to Mattias who promptly said that he didn't want that red one but a blue one for 'his boy' (his imaginary friend, I think he is trying to keep up with Evie). I explained Mattias' dilemma to the lady so she wouldn't feel bad about his lack of excitement, but then she promptly disappeared behind the stall and in a minute came out with a blue spray painted rose! Mattias' face lit up and he exclaimed, 'Look Mum, they DO have blue flowers!' What a sweet lady!