It’s been several days since my last confession. Since then we both got haircuts. Rather strange haircuts at that —nothing that a little time won’t fix, meanwhile I look slightly Ecuadorian :) Our network connection has been a bit flakey, but have had some good skyping with family. Just got back from an evening stroll to town square where all sorts of craziness is underway. Carnival is starting and it’s a big thing here. We went prepared. Rainjackets and nothing that couldn’t get wet… suffered only a little collateral foam damage. Entire swaths of people though were covered in foam, water, silly string, etc. Saw a neighbor across the street, on the second floor earlier in the day testing her bucket of water out on a hapless ground walker. (Saw a vendor actually walking down the street with stacks of buckets for sell for this.) Craziness comes from all sides for the next 4 days, above, drive by, knee high pranksters with supersoakers bigger than they are. They call them diablillos, or “little devils.” Here’s a finer article on its tradition than I’m going to write here.
Monday, our moving day, is smack in the middle, so it’s going to be like carrying stretchers (aka suitcases) through a war zone to cross the 2 blocks south and 2 blocks east to the new foxhole. I don’t care if I get soaked though and the adrenaline should make wheeling the bags faster.
Picked up another movie (dvd) on the way tonight. I haven’t really missed not having reliable streaming for movies since I can get the latest releases for $1.50 and the quality is excellent. Might have a problem trying to bring my collection back to the US however.
So Saturday we are probably having a Valentine’s dinner with another couple, complete with champagne. Really appreciate the awesome card Charlie made and sorry about the crazy video we sent to select people. Truly there’s no need to worry about our sanity. Any more than usual anyway. Wishing you all a happy valentines from the “other” americas.