in the dark

Buenas tardes!

Yesterday was an eventful day. I had been planning on cooking lunch for my family (with the help of Marybel of course) , but when I woke up, we didn’t have power (more on that later). First we decided not to cook, and then we decided to cook by candlelight! We made chicken tomato pasta, asian coleslaw that my mom at home always makes, and apple crisp. It was a lot of fun, and everything turned out well too! Which I was kind of surprised about- I expected at least one thing to taste absolutely terrible. :) I’m not the best cook in the world.

My friend Leslie came over to enjoy a meal without rice (these don’t happen often), and after lunch we took a taxi to the post office, where we spent the rest of our afternoon. We waited for SO LONG, but we also managed to figure out the postal system in Ecuador, or at least the part that concerns us. Previous to yesterday, we had been able to pick up packages at the front desk of the post office, but yesterday, we had to go into a back room and send faxes, sign papers, make copies, pay at the bank, make more copies, pay at the post office, and then FINALLY we could get our packages. I waited in line at the bank for more than an hour to pay a total of 16 cents. It was ridiculous. We figured out that if the package is less than 2 kilograms, it is available to be picked up at the front desk of the post office. If it’s more than 2 kilograms, you must go to the post office in the morning on Monday or Tuesday to get a ‘number’, and then come back in the afternoon. AND, if it’s more than 4 kilograms, you have to pay a lot more.

Moral of the story: send me something, and I will love you, as long as it’s less than 2 kilograms. And if it’s more than 2 kg, at least send it at a convenient time, so I can skip a day of school. :) But PLEASE don’t send anything that’s more than 4 kilograms. It’s not worth it. :)

The past couple of days, the power has been going out all over Portoviejo. Apparently, the government is trying to ration power, because there is a shortage of water. So, from now until whenever it starts raining, we will not have power for at least 3 hours every day. Which is interesting. The past two days, my family had no power in the morning, from 9 to 12, which wasn’t bad because it was light out and not too hot yet. Today we did have power then, so it could go out any minute now. :) I have a couple of friends who haven't had power from 6 to 9 at night, which is significantly worse, since it's dark outside then and there's not a whole lot to do. We are hoping that the government will make a schedule so that we can know when we will be without power and plan around it. Also, tomorrow we will have neither power NOR running water! I think my family and I will be going to the beach, where neither running water nor power are very necessary. 

This Monday I return to school, after almost 4 weeks of vacations. I’ll write again then!

LOVE, Kirsty