Teskes Gone South: Ecuador

By Dana

After a lovely, long weekend in Puyo and Banos, we headed back to Ambato to stay with my sister Laura in her apartment.

The beautiful yard in front of Laura's apartment. There are only 4 keys you need in order to get from the street to her living room!

Laura has a Fulbright Scholarship to teach English at a university in Ambato for the year. We got to go to a few of her classes, where she had her students ask us questions about our lives. It was a blast!

La Universidad Tecnica de Ambato, where Laura teaches

It was so nice to get to stay with Laura for the week in order to relax & regroup before some more work and traveling.

Brent relaxing in our cozy room

________________________________________________________________________________________

The top 10 highlights of the week include.....

10) Many trips to the local market and Megamaxi.

A typical fruit and veggie stand.

Clearly a successful day at the market! All this food maybe cost us $10 total. Awesome. :)

Me cutting and enjoying yet another new fruit called a Babaco. It makes great smoothies!

A Megamaxi is very similar to a Super Wal-Mart. We went here to get everything we couldn't find at the market. I loved the nativitiy scene next to the palm trees out front.

9) Buying a dozen beautiful roses for only $2.50 at the market.

8) Baking chocolate chip cookies in Laura's brand new toaster oven! Yum!

7) Enjoying glass after glass of liquidy but yummy Ecuadorian yogurt. I think Brent went through about 3 gallons on his own this week.

6) Searching town for the BEST of all the garbage cans. Which one's your favorite?

I'll spare you the other 15 or so I found. :) It was quite an enjoyable scavenger hunt for the week!

5) Doing laundry by hand on the roof. I know this might not sound very exciting, but the sunshine and the view up here were amazing!

4) Having an amazing husband who makes you homeade chicken noodle soup and goes on an adventure to the local shops to buy Sprite when you're extremely sick. He survived an entire shopping trip on his own, using just Spanish! I think I ate this for 3 straight days...breakfast, lunch and dinner. Not tired of it yet! :)

3) Making a classic Ecuadorian dish called Llapingachos with Darwin (one of Laura's friends).

It was more like 'watching and eating' Llapingachos as Brent and I did very little in the way of cooking this night.

The finished dish with sausage, eggs and mashed potato patties. Delicious and great presentation!

2) Enjoying the cool parks near Laura's apartment.

This one had a swimming pool and awesome animals carved out of the bushes.

RAWR!

1) However, above all, the number one, top highlight of the week in Ambato, was getting to enjoy a fabulous Thanksgiving feast with amazing family. I wish everyone could have been here, but being with Laura and Brent was perfect.