En Fuego! - Home Is Where The Plane Lands

Its been a couple weeks since I posted, sorry. I wanted to build up some drama in my blog. Whatever that means. Anyway, life in Ecuador is rolling right along. In less than 3 weeks, I’ll return to my home state of NC to, most importantly, collect my family, but also to attend the CCHS Class of 1993 20 Year Reunion. It will be great to see all the old people. And yes, by old , I mean people I’ve known since Kindergarten AND yes, literally old people. I told myself I’d lose a little weight before the reunion, and I have, but only because I’m in a foreign country and it was easy to drop 10 lbs. That weekend is going to be a little hectic. I fly out of Ecuador at midnight on Oct 11th and get into Charlotte the next morning, pick up the rental car, drive to get my phone fixed (speaker is busted), drive to Hickory to meet up with Alanna and the kids, have family time, shop for items we need to bring back from Ecuador, hopefully get in a date with my wife, sleep, reunion on Saturday night, sleep, fly back to Ecuador with the family and a billion pieces of luggage Sunday morning. Yes, that was run-on sentence.

My 38th (see… OLD) birthday was September 13th. I hated not being able to spend it with Alanna and the kids at Outback (I’m simple like that) but I was able to spend it at an American style restaurant with a good group of teacher friends. The place is called Smoke, and its run by an American dude from Arkansas. They have tasty BBQ and sweet tea! So about 25 people showed up and we chowed down on some good old southern North American food. At this point in my life, good food and conversation is really all that I want for my birthday. Other than skydiving, which I’m working on here too. Some of my students even brought my snacks and candies to class that day. They already know how to get bonus points.

En Fuego! So I think I’ve mentioned that they have forest fires here, right? Well last weekend, someone or some group of arsonists started a fire close to Quito and its been burning steadily since. You can easily see the smoke from anywhere in the area and my kids have brought in pictures on their phones of the actual fires. Yes… they’ve spread and are multiple blazes now. I’m sure they have firefighters working to put them out, but the only thing I see and HEAR are the helicopters. There is large reservoir right beside the school, so this is the spot that every single helicopter comes to scoop up water to dump on the fire. I’m sure these buckets that are attached to the helicopters are larger than they look, but it seems like they wouldn’t do much good against a fire. The copters are so loud though! And they disrupt my class! Stupid arsonists! Ecuador is offering a $100,000 reward for information on the crime. For $100,000, I would easily turn in one of my students if I could come up with some fabricated proof that would stick.

In other news –

The apartment is great, but sometimes loses power (as does the rest of Ecuador it seems).
School is still good. Classes are working out.
I’ll be teaching and extra after school class for 4-6 graders once a week.
I have Direct TV now, and about 30% of the channels are in english.
I wish the Redskins would win a game, but my fantasy team is 2-1.

Ok, adios!

Pics…