The Humor in Realities...

Cass has done a good job of updating the blog! However, I feel compeled to write my own to give some perspective that is often either missed or overemphasised. Hopefully with some humor you will enjoy the following...

First of all, everything on the computer is different! The keyboard puts characters on the screen that don't exist. Letters on the keyboard are rubbed clean, or should I say rubbed off- I don't think they are very clean! Everything on the screen is in spanish (go figure) and usually you can at least change the keyboard setting from spanish, german, japonese, etc. so that you can type how you are used to typing on a keyboard at home. All to say it takes a bit of effort and a little more time to type. So forgive akward characters or misspelled words - I CAN'T FIND IT ON THE KEYBOARD! .) (see, i cant even find the colon - AH, I just forund it hitting the wrong key!!! Ah yeah!)

Next, have you ever wondered what it is like to sleep on a runway on an airport, in a dog pound, with dreams that sound like car and home alarms or with a cloths pin on your nose..._+)(*)_+)(**&^%$#@!%^(__{}[]=-09\'";:/? I found the question mark sign! ??? Have you ever wondered what it is like to sleep in all the same conditions at one time? Yeah, me neither... but I have a good idea! The airport is about a mile away, dogs bark all night long(Cass likes whne the dogs suddenly bark at the gate when we walk by - it startles her a tad). The best is when you wake up in the middle of the night gasping for air... for some reason, when I can't breath through my nose (I am alergic to everything) and the air at +9,000 feet seem to leave me short of breath at times.

Now, we eat well. Plenty of food. Actually to much food but we want to be polite, so we eat, and eat,. and ... So let me tell you about our coffee. We are in the perfect growing region for coffee. Ecuador, they say grows great coffee. Listen to the following about the wonderful coffee we drink. I am still searching for that perfect, ah, that good cup of Joe. Actually, you can not find brewed coffee here. There are only Americanos (espresso with water) and they leave one still searching as well. (sorry, I have no video for you, I can't find the computer tower to plug in my carmera!)

Oh how I could go on! Running out of time. We got to go to class and they charge us a buck a hour at the internt cafe (papayanet.com).

Stay tuned for future "The Humor in Realities." Next time, we will look at pedestrian "land minds," city transportation, the common "security system," and much more!

Nothing But Love,
Jesse

ps- Brooke, Auntie Cass says her favorite food so far is a fruit called guanabana. Sorry, I don't know what it looks like. But it sure tastes good!

Nuestros primer dia de clase

_Our first day of class_

Today is Monday and we just finished our first day of learning. Wow, are we exhasted. It takes sooooooo much effort and energy to speak, and especially think, in another language. Jesse's teacher is a man named Manuel, and Cass' teacher is a lady named Sylvia. They are both very nice. Although we thought that we were pretty good at Spanish, we tested beginner, especially me -Cass-. It is a little discouraging to be taught things that I have learned multiple times, but I need to get rid of my pride and believe that the teacher knows what she is doing. It is good practice just to be speaking in Spanish I guess. Que mas, que mas. . . we found a mall, acctually 3 of them, all sort of in walking distance from our home or school, -We walk a lot, at least an hour per day, this city is very big. Bigger than we expected. We also found 2 movie theaters, we might go see Handkock one day...

Our family is still wonderful. We played soccer with thier grandchildren this morning. They are young, but are very good. I was completely ou

t of breath at 9,300 ft. My excuse was the altitude and less oxygen!!

Okay, we'll attempt more pictures... Love you all, and miss you --I'm a little homesick already, hopefully it passes--

The pictures with us in them are in "Old Town" Quito-the historical part. We had to take a trolle to get there. The whole experience was fun!! The one in the middle is a picture of Quito from the plane.

The two photos on the outside were taken in El Parque Metropolitonina, a HUGE park were there were tons of people walking, riding bikes, running, families having picnics. . .we really like it, the man in the picture is Marco, our Ecuadorian papa. The photo in the middle is of me with four of the many grandchildren. This picture was taken this morning during a futbol -soccer- break!!

Okay that's all for now, we don't have a phone that works yet, so we haven't called, Mom's and Dad's we hope to call soonish.

Nothin but love