Cuenca Updates: Friday June 8, 2012

Friday June 8/12 update

These crazy sleepless nights are going to be the death of me. It is a good thing we are retired and have no morning appointments. The only good thing about working on photos in the middle of the night is that the uploads are very fast.

I tried out my new $8 tripod with my big camera and broke the plastic attachment bolt right off the bat. I guess we get what we pay for. I’ll find another use for it eventually.

Bella made a trip to the Coopera Mercado and brought me back some celery for lunch. They don’t have Cheez Whiz here, just some squeezy runny liquid cheese that is not quite satisfactory.

It was just too nice to sit inside and snooze the day away so I talked Bella into taking a walk through the neighborhood. Unfortunately Bella’s idea of walking and mine are like the tortoise and the hare. It just kills me to have to walk so slow.

We sauntered over to a place to make some copies of a knitted bear pattern that Bella is converting to a crochet pattern. This is some kind of arrangement with her weaving class lady…. Then the people at this tienda kept asking us to translate simple things like the time, the days of the week, etc. And then the next thing we know Bella has volunteered to teach the son English for nothing on the weekends……

Then we stopped to see Raoul and to see the progress of their new building owned by 6 family members. He hopes to have this completed by July so his sister can move her Internet Café over from next door so they can rip down and rebuild that home as well. Then the family will have 3 communicating buildings rounding that corner. Raoul won’t live in it because he has his parent’s house in the country (the folks are in Minneapolis).

One of the features of this new house that I found exceedingly strange is the third floor ceiling is a patchwork so I asked him to explain. The ceiling is essentially made of concrete blocks held by rebar! It makes no sense to me but it is apparently cheaper than just doing cement.

Raoul also wants to visit our home and practice English etc. He is very much into fitness, but likes his cervezas (beer) too. He is thinking of putting in a small gym, but with good machines, into the building to the right. Since there isn’t a gym in the area I would certainly welcome that.

We went a little further in the neighborhood and finally found the pizza place open, but nobody came out to introduce themselves so we continued on. Like most businesses it is attached to a private home so they were probably on the can or something.

Bella had never seen the little park that is only 1/2 block south of us and she was impressed. We are so fortunate to have a park within 1.5 blocks in all 4 directions.

Our house is a little more visible from across the street now with the falling of the leaves as we go through our fall season but it is an impressive structure and we are proud of it. We count our blessings that we bought when we did. We are also very happy to see many neighbours renovating their homes so that will bode well for our property values in the long run, as long as everybody tries to keep up with their neighbours.

This morning Tom was not being cooperative so I had to change the nectar again. I did get two short videos of Tom this evening but I am not happy with the lighting so I’ll have to try again in the morning.

Enjoy the pics. That was today’s excitement. Hugs to all.