Blog back from vacation

In Ecuador, they don`t celebrate new years. They celebrate the old year.

In fact, they don`t even call it año nuevo. Instead, they go with año viejo (literally ``old year``).

They burn relics from the old year as soon as the clock strikes midnight. I wasn`t here for it, but everybody says that it is pretty ridiculous.

That`s an aside.

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Hearyoni has retured reenergized and readjusted from its vacation.

I apologize that all visitors to my blog have had to look at dengue-suffering Ian for the last three weeks. That is one of the worst Ians.

A combination of a vacation, limited internet access, time with my family, trying to readjust to being in Ecuador, and mango in my computer have prevented me from updating.

Until now.

So where have I been?

Well, after eight months at my site, I finally took my first vacation days and met my family in Costa Rica. It was awesome. We had a great time, and I should probably provide a more thorough recap of the trip but the mango in my computer has put that machine temporarily out of service. (Lesson learned: don`t eat mango by your computer)

Since I have to pay for all my computer time now, I don`t want to use all that time for an all-out vacation recap. Suffice it to say, it was a great time in Costa Rica.

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So there is an island off the Ecuadorian coast called Isla Costa Rica. It is a very small island with a lot of fishing industry.

When I told some of the kids here that I spent two weeks in Costa Rica, they wondered why someone would go to Costa Rica for two weeks. I then explained that I was in a different Costa Rica, and that there are several reasons to go to the country Costa Rica.

I got back on Sunday night and hit the ground running this week. It has been a very productive week. The kids have been working hard on the next newspaper edition, and I have spent most of the week coordinating their activities.

I promise to be back on the blog soon.