Guest Bloggers: The Brothers Get Settled

So we wake up and start moving around (well, actually, Ian and Ruby start to move, Avery catches as many Z's as he can before the day really begins) when someone knocks on the door.

"¿Quien es?" It's one of Ian's co-workers coming to pick us up for classes. Naturally, now is a perfect time for Ian's landlord to invite us over for some breakfast. At the mention of a breakfast invitation, Ian hops out of the shower, throws on some clothes and beats everyone to the table.

This is Ruby and Avery's first experience with "tomate de arbol" and it is delicious. Apparently, people only consume it in juice form because it is a bitter fruit, but that juice was fantastic...anyone know anything about the bottling and packaging business?

So after trying to explain to his landlord that he needs to go teach a class and is late, Ian and his coworker excuse themselves, leaving Ruby and Avery with this Ecuadorian family that speaks very little (if any) English. While we were able to understand most everything that was being said, it was still difficult for us to string together complex sentences, and after 10 minutes of trying, decided it would be best stick with the basics and go to class.

We helped Ian with his icebreakers and sorted out the seeds that the class brought in for planting in the new school garden. After class, we sat down for some fruit salads with the teacher at the school kiosk. Let's just say that American schools have a lot to learn in the art of school snacks.

From school, we proceeded to check out the nursery. Very cool seeing the garden for real; fortunately the iguana was nowhere to be found. We watered the plants and sprayed the garlic-hot pepper hand-burning mixture around the plants to protect them for the next few days, popped some mangoes off one of nursery's trees, and then bought some coconut trees from a neighboring nursery.

On the way back to Ian's pad, we stopped off for some Brazilian sandwiches (grilled cheese with banana slices and a little cinnamon), which Ian has introduced to some of the local juice vendors in town. After shmoozing with the locals, we packed up our stuff and headed off to Batanes for the weekly meeting of the community bank.

When we got on the bus (there is only one bus to Batanes, and it doesn't even go to Batanes itself), we noticed that the driver's face was all cut up. Apparently, he had been in an accident earlier that day, but was good to go. On the drive, we saw a gas station with a sign "Si, hay diesel." [Cultural Education Necessary: We were not sure if this meant: "yes, we have diesel" or "if there is diesel..." so instead we just laughed, took a picture, and carried on.] Also, while at the gas station, a woman on the bus passed a jerry can out the window with a few dollars to fill it up. Awesome!

So we arrived in Batanes and hung out with about 10 locals before the meeting began (which represents about 1/3 of the households), had our meeting, and then went off to someone's house to spend the night. Later in the evening, the two-year-old decided that his rain boots were bigger and better than Avery's hiking boots and wanted to show off. Then, because he was so clean from his shower, decided it was time to go to work. So while wearing his rain boots and pajamas, he grabbed his machete (yes, he has his own machete), and started walking up the road as if to go to work.

Shortly thereafter, we went to sleep. It was 8:30 PM and we (and the household) were exhausted.

The next morning, we woke up at 4:30, like regular Robinson men, to catch the 5:00 pick-up truck to the 6:00 bus. We made it back to town by 7:00 and went straight to school at 7:10.

Yoni helped another class start a garden. It was the day before vacation, and everybody was excited for the freedom they would experience come afternoon, so they marked the occasion by having Field Day. Each class competes in basketball and soccer against the other classes in the school, round-robin style. They were very excited, and we would have stayed to watch more, but we had an appointment to go for a hike at the eco reserve.

The bus dropped us off at the reserve entrance, which is three kilometers from the reserve´s ecological base. So before going on our three-kilometer hike in the reserve, we had to do a three-kilometer hike to get there (and also to get back to the highway). The reserve is a dry, tropical forest. Only one percent of the world´s dry tropical forests still remains, and this is part of that one percent.

It almost looked as if winter had descended on southern Ecuador because very few trees had any type of foliage. The trees in this ecosystem shed their leaves to survive the dry season. It was almost like walking through a forest in Michigan in the winter, except there were cacti, and we were wearing t-shirts and sweating in the humidity (Coach Blitzer was right). (We will try to post some pictures later)

Afterwards, we took the bus back to town and got ready for our trip up to the mountains.