Bakeries and Ferias and Cuy - Oh My!

In Which, I Post Later Than Promised

...but really, what else is new?

Anyway. So the week/weekend before last was quite the whirlwind. We had agreed a few weeks ago to help out our friends Beth, Jill and Wayne with some extra baking and bread making. Their bakery was a vendor at a Feria/Expo in a nearby town called Cevallos, . It was a great opportunity for the bakery to get some more exposure and therefore, more clients, but they needed to make a bunch of stuff, so we enlisted in the kitchen.

COOKIES!!!

Ohmygoodness...I've never seen so many wonderful things pass through one oven in my life! We had crisps and cakes and bagels and cakes and granola and did I mention cakes?! They were amazing. And we had a ton of fun "helping" and QC-ing. We really didn't do all that much, but it was fun to hang with Beth and Jill in the afternoon and learn some of the do's and dont's of baking specifically and cooking in general.

Crisp filling - SO GOOD.

I'm not the best or most creative cook around, so John really appreciated all the tips they threw our way.

Proof that I did at least step foot in the kitchen

We went to their house Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for essentially the entire afternoon. It was pretty exhausting (I don't know how they do it every day!) but it really was a lot of fun.

In addition, I had a lot of my own work that week as well. I'm not sure how many of you know, but I am currently self-employed as a legal proofreader. I proofread transcripts for court reporters all over the States. I read a number of things, from actual court trials and sentencing to just discovery depositions for auto accidents or construction cases. Sometimes it's really dull, depending on the person and topic (which always reminds me to make friends with INTERESTING people) but I really enjoy it most days. 

Anyway, I had a lot of proofreading last week, so I was very busy. Most of my morning would be spent proofing, then I would eat really quickly and John and I would grab the bus to Beth's house. When we came back (usually around 6 or so) I would make some dinner, relax for maybe an hour or so, then hit the iPad again, usually for another 3-4 hours. It finally let up around Thursday and I have never been so happy to go to bed at 10pm.

After a relaxing day on Friday, John spent most of the day studying on Saturday. The previous post is evidence of that ;)

I decided to take myself down to Cevallos to see the Feria/Expo and also check on Beth, Jill and Wayne and see how their booth was doing.

Getting to Cevallos couldn't have been easier. There's a bus at the redondel in Huachi Chico, and you just hop on, pay your $0.40 and enjoy the 40-minute ride. Cevallos itself seems like a sleepy little town. It's well-known for making and selling shoes, they even have a whole expo center dedicated solely to shoes! There are tons of shoe shops on every street so it's literally impossible to get away from them.

The front of the expo, with the trail of trash

Anyway, I hopped off the bus at a promising looking spot and went in search of mis amigos. I found the center park, which had some people dancing, eating and generally making merry. Alas, no friends to be found, so I followed the trash on the street (people here aren't always the most conscientious about putting trash in its correct spot) up to the expo center.

It reminded me a lot of the expo center back home, just smaller.

From the far side. No one in these stalls, but the next aisle over is packed!

The entire setting also reminded me a lot of a fair, because there were tents set up outside that covered some tools and vendors and a lot of animals. People were there to have their cows, chickens, ducks, llamas and even their guinea pigs (cuy) judged and awarded.

Chickens, guinea pigs and wabbits!

Prize winning cow. Very well-taken care of!

Who's ever seen a spotted llama?! Or alpaca,
since I absolutely can't tell the two apart...

Those are all guinea pigs. And they are all HUGE.

Inside, there were various and sundry vendors. A few indigenous were there selling wool and alpaca products, there were several universities displaying their course options, some jewelry makers, and of course - lots of sweets!

Panaderia Canadiense had the best booth (they even won an award for it!) even though there were several other bakers there. There were also several sweet makers and I stayed veeeeeeery far away from them. The last thing I needed was a giant jar of sweetened coconut butter to take home...

The booth. Oh, and the BEST.PICTURE.EVER. of Beth :)

I really didn't stay too long. After walking around the expo several times, getting some food and checking out the native dancing outside, I was back in Ambato around 5pm and we finished out the weekend with some more relaxing.

Lunch - fresh blackberry and coconut juice with pork, a type of corn and a savory salad.

I've told John that I want to make day-trips out to the surrounding towns more often. They're so close and it's a great way to get to know the area! Hopefully we'll have more adventures in the coming weeks.

The Not Interesting or Flashy Post

Solely Things on My Mind

This post has nothing to do with moving or Ecuador. I just wanted to type out what I am going through mentally with my faith. If you don't care about spiritual things or philosophy, you probably will not enjoy reading this. If you do, you still probably won't enjoy reading this hahaha.

      The world's concept of Christianity has lost most of its face because we, as a people, have tried to take matters into our own hands. Bear with me as I explain. Christians have apathetically handed the responsibility of being God's hands and feet solely over to the church. They do not view themselves as hands and feet outside of church. "The church is where people get saved so I'll just bring my family, friends, and strangers." This mentality has placed a certain passive aggressive pressure on the church. So that over the last 20 years or more, they (the church) feel the need to spice things up a bit.

     As if the God of the Universe, the Alpha and Omega, and maker of all things isn't interesting enough to captivate the minds of His people. On top of that, preaching and teaching is geared now to dumb down to a child's wording so that ALL might understand. When I say "all," I do not mean for every age, I mean for people that believe and people that don't. Again, bear with me. Christians think that it's the church's job to save. Pastors now gear sermons only to save, and in the attempt to save the lost, they water down complex scripture to a single point and relay that as a topic for the lost to leave and ponder. That has to be a run-on sentence. In this ridiculous attempt of culturization of the church (commonly called seeker-friendly), we have created a diminished view of church membership, created church hoppers, and a child care organization throughout the year that has little impact on the family as a whole in a spiritual nature.

   "The preaching is okay, and the music is cool, but I want a closer church," or ,"I want a church that has more events and things, to impact the community." Like God ONLY uses church functions to draw His people to Himself. Is that written in 2 opinions? And for a lot of church goers," If I don't like this church we'll just go to another." The church is viewed as what a person can receive from it. Instead of the important difference... How can I serve the church? A message and ideology that is inescapable if the Gospel of Christ is being preached.

   People are not ignorant to the fact that worship services are being designed to captivate your attention with loud music, and lights, and a comedy routine. SO many things have been added in, that people leave the church service talking more about personal opinions than God's inerrant Word! May it never be! People also have the mindset that if I feel too much pressure or if I have a confrontation with someone, I can just go somewhere else. Other churches wont ask me any questions about what church I came from. They will only try to be as inviting as they can be because I'm a guest. On a side note, if the pastor says a big word like doctrine or theology don't get scared or tune out. Your job, Mr./Mrs. Christian, is to grow in the knowledge of the Lord. You NEED foundational biblical doctrine and theology to help fight the schemes and darts of the devil!

   My contention is not to deter you from going to church, but to encourage you to seek what scripture says about what a church is, and how it is supposed to function. Check out the Timothys and Titus for starters. Recognize the difference between Church and church. Look up what it means when scripture says it has been built upon the the foundation of the prophets and apostles with Christ being the cornerstone. Important things to know if you are wanting to be a part of a church. Saying "I go to church" means nothing. Being able to articulate why you are a part of a church is a necessity for a Christian. Vic hates it when I say this cause it's super cheesy but: You can spell religion without Christ but you can't spell Christian without Him. It's cheesy, I know.

Secondly, are you worried that when you go to church you'll be viewed as a sinner? I pray that you ARE viewed that way! If you weren't a sinner then you wouldn't have a need for a Savior would you...? Don't let that stop you from going to church! Which brings me to my next point:

God's Word is confrontational. The Law shows you you have sin. There is nothing you can do to pay for the wages of your sin, which is death. And then comes the question," Well then what is my purpose in life, to die?" To a person who is asking this question, what would you say? Go to church? Jesus? If you're a good person God will love you? Come with me this Sunday and I'll introduce you to my pastor? Yeesh!! 

Always be ready to give an account for the hope that you have. That is YOUR command and YOUR responsibility. If you cannot articulate what you believe, then why do you believe it? Postmodern thought is running rampant as is has been for a long time now. "To each his own" might as well be written on our currency, because the only thing that talks is money now anyway, right? It's definitely not Christians talking and shedding light into darkness. It's very easy to be apathetic to Postmodernism. Because most can't articulate their faith and God is only love and doesn't like confrontation. May it never be! Let's draw a mental picture:

God, the maker of everything, is perfectly just and perfectly merciful. He owns you! And every person everywhere in the whole world has sinned against Him. You are now on His Wrath list. What does His wrath look like? Burning in a lake of fire with the weeping and gnashing of teeth in a state of perpetual dying without the release of death. And that's not even explaining it with full gravity. You cannot be with God because you have sin, therefore you will be WITHOUT God. You are dead in your trespasses and sins. There is not a thing you can do to break the chain of sin that holds you. You can give to the homeless, feed the starving, create a cure for cancer, save a country from being nuked, find Waldo, and raise 15 children while working 5 jobs, and you will not come close to even lightening the color of the stain of sin on you. You are under sin, you are chained by it, it has you by the soul! 

That is your condition apart from Christ.

For it is by Christ Jesus alone, received by faith alone, given by grace alone that you can be saved from God's wrath. Read that carefully. Christ paid the debt that I owed. He purchased life for me with His own blood. He has already died the death that belonged to me. And to take that a step further, He gave me the righteousness that was His! So now, when I stand before God, He will see Jesus' righteousness. And what a glorious day it will be indeed. 

I only felt the need to type this because of current events in my life. I did not take the time to post scripture references, please forgive me, this was meant to be informal. If you want to turn this post into a key word search and find the references... by all means hahaha. Thank you to all that has invested time in both my wife and I. We love you.

   

The Market and The Park

In Which, We Go Shopping and Take a Walk

This is just going to be a short post today, but I wanted to show you guys a couple of the places we go shopping pretty regularly. Generally, we'll go about once a week to downtown Ambato (El Centro) to hit up our chicken and meat vendors. 

Puro Pollo is where we get our chicken, and when I say it's the best chicken I've ever tasted, as a full-fledged Southern gal whose diet consists of chicken, chicken and more chicken, you can take that to the bank. Seriously. They fry it a little differently here (not so much breading) but even still, it's amazingly flavorful and moist and tasty. 

Carnessa is where we like to get our ground beef and, occasionally, some chuleta de cerdo (literally, cutlet of pork). John likes the chuleta we've gotten at some of the little restaurants for breakfast, so we keep experimenting with spices and sauces and such to see if we can get the same result. 

This is one of the entrances to the Mercado Central. Downstairs is all veggies, fruits, breads and almost every type of meat you can imagine. It's huge inside, taking up practically a whole block. Upstairs is their 'Patio de Comidas' or Food Court, where you can get llapingachos, an AMAZING Ambato specialty. The best I can describe it is a fried potato ball with bits of chorizo, topped with a fried egg. Doesn't sound like much but they are incredible and if you come visit us, you will definitely be eating some. 

I didn't get any pictures today, but they hang a lot of their meat out in the open air. There's very little refrigeration going on while they're selling it. It's kind of gross but cool too. You see every cut of meat and every piece of the animal. Seriously, we walked past what looked like giant pig legs, with the hoof still attached. Not sure what they use it for and I'm pretty sure I don't want to know (in case I eat it in the future) but it's still pretty cool to see the entire animal being used. 

These next few pictures are of the outside of our apartment and the park we take Jethro to every day. It's just around the block from us, so it's an easy walk, and there's plenty of space for him to basically run free for however long we end up staying.

This is the front of our building. We're on the third floor, which you can't see too well from this angle, but we've got a balcony area with an amazing view of the city. The little gated area on the second level is the terrace (or, terraza) and that's where we hang our clothes (air drying, yo) and that's where Jethro stays when it's sunny out. He likes to watch (and whine about) a cat that's across the street. 

There are 2 other families in this building. The people on the first floor have the garage on the left, which also backs up into the second half of their apartment. The first half, with the main living areas and kitchen, is directly under our apartment on the first level. We saw the entire building when we first looked at the building and it is NICE. Like, North American-standards nice. 

Juan and Andrea live on the second floor, and they've got a lovely little apartment that's roughly the same size as ours. They have a bit more living space, but we have a balcony, so it's a fair trade.

A bit of graffiti, but still a nice park

Parque La Cantera is where we go every day. Like I said, it's quite large, with a lot of fun things for kids as well as plenty of space for Jethro. There's actually a skatepark there as well, and we'll see skateboarders as well as a few kids on bikes practicing different tricks. 

The bowls for the skaters. Grey and cloudy today, and quite cold, but we still have to go to the park!

Continuing on, the park ends at this little valley, which goes down to concrete soccer courts. We see people out here every day. There's a school on the far side that uses it for recess and PE, and there are several high schools in the area that will come a few times a week for the same thing. We also see local soccer games on the weekends, REALLY late at night. I think we saw one this last weekend that was happening at 12:30 am?! And there were people watching and everything. They were enjoying themselves though, so who am I to judge? ;)

Also, this picture doesn't do justice to how steep these hills are. Jethro will be coming at a dead run from the bottom, and by the time he gets to the top, it's almost like he's barely moving. These guys are STEEP...so I want him to run up and down as much as possible. Nothing like a tired hound dog.

Space for soccer games and PE!

Speaking of the hound dog, here he is! I honestly believe he's going to severely dislike us when we bring him home. He's still spoiled here, but he gets waaaaaaaay more time with us and he gets a lot of freedom to explore. 

Overlooking his new domain

Anyway, that's today! Tomorrow I get to go help out Beth and Jill with baking sweets for this upcoming expo they're doing for the bakery. I'm REALLY looking forward to taste-testing ;)

Catching Up and What Next?

In Which, I Write a Long Overdue Post

Hi guys! Victoria here. Sorry we haven't posted very frequently. Neither of us is really good at sitting down for an hour and just banging away at the keyboard, but I promise, we are working on getting better!

So it's been a little more than a month, and we're starting to really settle in. Our apartment is still looking a bit bare, but we're going to be filling it over the next few months. 

This is our living room and our dining room. We're still not entirely sure which is going to be which, but I imagine we'll figure it out as we go. Right now though, it's quite bare and echo-y, which is the most annoying bit. Hopefully, with a bit of furniture and maybe a rug or two, we can eradicate that issue.

SO. Lots has happened, but none of it really big stuff. We're finding a daily rhythm, thankyouJesus. I love the 'no schedule' feeling of vacation, but after a few weeks of it, I really start to feel lost and adrift. I just work better with a schedule, I suppose.

Anyway. We're getting into a rhythm that includes, as John mentioned in the last post, Crossfit! Our torture of choice involves a 20-ish minute walk down and then up some pretty steep hills (baby mountains, really), followed by a cardio-intensive WOD, then a nice hot shower, then, depending on the day, we'll do another 20-ish minute walk BACK to the apartment or we'll take the bus into El Centro for groceries and lunch. Needless to say, the bus days are my favorite. 

Welcom back, Crossfit still hates you!!

One of my LEAST favorite thing about this Crossfit is that they love cardio. Oh man, do they ever love their cardio. And burpees. They REALLY love burpees. I've made an agreement with Santiago, one of the trainers, that I'll do 3 doubleunders for every burpee I don't have to do. I really, really hate burpees. 

I struggle through a lot of the WODs due to their aforementioned love of cardio (which I have always severely lacked) in addition to the altitude. Have you tried to do wallballs, wallclimbs and a 200m run at 8000+ feet? No? Then shut your mouth. It's ridiculous y'all. I feel like I'm on the moon, but without the whole weightlessness effect. THAT would be appreciated  but nooooo...I just have to feel like my lung are about to be ripped out of my body. 

In other news, we're getting more and more comfortable with the local markets. We've been going to the Mayorista roughly every other week, and we still go down to El Centro every Monday for our meat. We have the best chicken vendor - a place called Puro Pollo, and it is, indeed, THE.BEST. chicken I have ever tasted in my life. Seriously. I'd ship you some if I could, but I can't, so come visit us and I'll feed you. In the meantime though, I'll try to remember to take pictures this Monday so you can see what I'm talking about. 

Heaven in a bag!

One of the strangest and yet most common-sensical thing you'll see here is people eating out of little bags. You get them from street vendors selling their wares, anything from snack food to straight up lunch or dinner. This is one of our favorite street foods (so far) - papas fritas (fried potatoes or, if you prefer, french fries). The lady at the tienda around the corner from us sets up this huge grill/fryer most nights and fries potatoes and sells them in these bags for a buck. She tops it with a few fried hotdog pieces, ceviche (onion, vinegar, tomato and herb sauce), mayonnaise and the Ecuadorian version of ketchup. SHUT THE FRONT DOOR. They are so good. And awesome for a snack to hold you over while you make dinner. 

One of the best things that's happened in the past month is that we've become really great friends with the people who live on the second floor (our 'vecinos'). Juan and Andrea are just a few years younger than us, with a 7-month-old baby boy, Juan Martin. They have been absolutely wonderful! We've had breakfast, lunch and dinner with them in their apartment multiple times, and they've helped us immeasurably when we're looking for things for the apartment, like curtains for the windows or mirrors for the bathroom. They've taken us to Baños and we've somehow fallen into a habit of going out to dinner with them on Saturdays. 

They've introduced us to their friends and family and basically just welcomed us with open arms and open hearts. Juan speaks pretty good English and Andrea understands, so between all of us, we have some really amazing times and awesome fellowship.

And that's basically where we're at now. We haven't found a home church yet, so please keep praying for that. We really want to get plugged in with a spiritual family here. But the Lord has blessed us with so many other people already, who have been nothing but open and welcoming to us, and we are so grateful for them. 

OH! And we still see Marco and Elena, athough not as often as we'd like. No fault of theirs or ours, we're just all busy with our lives. Their daughter Tania and her husband John-Mark have been visiting for the past 2 weeks or so as well, so they've been busy catching up with them. However, we're planning on seeing them tomorrow at church, and John and I are really looking forward to that!

Speaking of my favorite husband, he recently trimmed his mountain-man beard, so I'll leave you with the pictures of THAT particular event at the end of the post. 

In the coming weeks, we've got a couple of things happening. Our Canadian friends, Beth, Wayne and Roxana (Jill, really, but apparently the 'J' is really hard for Ecuadorians, so Roxana it is), run a bakery out of their house, Panaderia Canadiense (Canadian Bakery). They make a lot of really great things, and we've been able to sample most of them. Perks of being friends ;)

Anyway, there's a sort of expo-market going on this coming week in one of the surrounding towns that they'll be attending to spread awareness of their bakery. We've offered to help them in the past with either baking or deliveries, and they've taken us up on that offer. I'll be helping Jill bake the sweet treats (crisps, brownies, energy bars) and John will come along as the muscle. That's going to be at least 2-4 days, so I'll be sure to take lots of pictures of that and post them up.

Also, we're planning on going to Quito very soon to get John signed up for his distance Spanish courses and get the Student Visa squared away. We also might sneak in some sushi there, but who knows, it's tough to tell. Anyway, that'll probably be the week after next and we'll probably make a daytrip out of it, since Quito's only 2.5-3 hours away. Should be good fun, and again, I'll do my best to remember to take pictures of whatever we do. 

Let us know what you want to hear about - food? Friends? Where we go? What we do? There's a lot going on every day, and if we were to write it all, then you DEFINITELY wouldn't read any of this. So leave us a comment with what you want to know more about, and we'll do our best to accommodate you :)

In the process...

The aftermath...

Finished product!