Round and Round and Round We Go

In Which, I Describe How I (Wish I Had) Packed

So this is the first post that's not directly related to stuff we've done lately or what we're up to now. This one has actually been rolling around in my head and even been sitting here in my drafts for a while since it's something I run into just about every time I leave the apartment.  

I've discovered that packing to go live in another country is vastly different than packing to travel. I had a slight inkling of this before we moved, but now I'm really wishing I had paid more attention to the differences between the two.

The biggest difference, in my opinion, is the fact that you're going to live somewhere (DUH), not just travel through it for a few days/weeks. Unless you're someone who normally lives in Lululemon or NorthFace-everything (I'm neither), then you will want regular clothes. And by regular, I mean whatever you normally wear on a day-to-day basis, while keeping the local weather of the place you're moving to in mind.

For me, this means jeans, tshirts, sweaters and flats. I brought 2 pairs of jeans, a plethora of tshirts, and one pair of flats. I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking. Maybe 'balance' or 'equity amongst clothes' or something like that. I don't know.

Now that we've been here for a few months, I find myself wishing I had packed according to the following -

1. More jeans. Seriously. I could've brought at least 4 more pairs, preferably in multiple colors and washes. They love colorful jeans here, and I'm sad I left my yellow ones at home.
2. Fewer tshirts/more business-casual shirts. I'm not sure how I forgot, but the Hispanic culture loves to dress up. And I don't mean fancy-schmancy, but they typically don't go out running errands looking like slobs. I've grown up around Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Colombians my entire life, I've seen it every day, and yet I still managed to forget it. Tshirts are great for a casual trip to the park, but when I want to hit up a cafe for breakfast or go out in the evening with friends, a tshirt just isn't making the cut.
3. Fewer skirts. I'm in the mountains, y'all. The ANDES MOUNTAINS. I'm 8500+ feet above sea-level. It's frequently sunny and 70+ degrees, but it's also JUST as frequently rainy, cloudy and 50 degrees. If anything, I would've been better off bringing capris or long shorts. Skirts will be good for when we go to the beach, but until then, they're basically just taking up room in my closet. 
4. More flats. Now, this one I am slightly conflicted on. I love to be comfy, and walking for 3 hours on uneven concrete sidewalks or cobblestone roads or in the dirt is NOT comfy. My Sperrys are pretty darn amazing at delivering comfy, but they're also pretty darn beat up. Plus, going to the discoteca in Sperrys is just a huge faux-paus.
5. Sweats. OMG. I DIDN'T BRING ANY. I really wish I had brought at least one of my sweatshirts and a pair of comfy lounge pants. I sleep hot, so I was only thinking about pajama-wear, but I totally didn't think about lounge-about-the-house wear! In case you haven't heard, we're 9,000 ft above sea-level. I also spend a good portion of most days inside, either in the morning (when it's chilly) or in the evening (when it's chilly). Since we don't have (or really need) any central heat and since I didn't bring any sweats with me, I end up bundling up with the blankets in bed in order to stay warm.

This is me in the morning

So, to sum up, I would've brought more jeans, more business-casual shirts, fewer skirts, more flats/business casual shoes and DEFINITELY some sweats.  

That being said, honestly I didn't do too bad. Most of the wardrobe that I have is solidly middle of the road, leaning slightly towards casual. It's only really noticeable when I've got something a bit nicer to go to, like, a baby shower (more on that later).

This is definitely a case of "you live and learn." Thankfully, my learning experience doesn't have to last for too long. When we visit in October, I'll be sure to rectify my clothing imbalances to the best of my ability. 

Because Visa, Part 2

In Which, We Actually Receive Our Visas

So technically, I probably could've put this all in one post, but the last one was getting kind of long and I know visas are pretty boring for those not super interested in travelling for long periods of time. 

Either way, here's the ending.

So a week after we put in our applications, John received an email basically saying our visas had been approved. All we had to do now was get to Quito within 72 hours of receiving that email, pay the second portion of the visa fees and then actually receive our visas.

Quito...again

Of course, the worst part about all of this was thinking about how to get to Quito. It was either bus or private car again, or so we thought. We happened to be eating dinner that night (Tuesday) with our downstairs neighbors and friends, Juan and Andrea, when John actually got the email. Of course, we were pretty excited and told them what it was all about. 

Given the timing of the email and the fact that we needed time to put some plans together, we decided to go on Thursday. 

At this point, Juan piped up and said he had some training for work that he had to go to Quito for...ON THURSDAY. He said that he would be riding with his friend, but it wouldn't be any problem if we wanted to come along. 

HOLY COW. We were so excited. It's the same length of trip, but there's just something nice about going with friends. And a car ride is waaaaay better than a bus ride, that goes without saying. So we eagerly said yes, and our trip to Quito was taken care of. We'd have to take a bus back, but that was no problem.

This is what 4:30am looks like, folks

 So we have yet another early morning wake-up call on Thursday and hop in the car to Quito. We weren't in quite a rush this time around, so breakfast absolutely happened at a reasonable hour, and we arrived at our location at a reasonable time and reasonably full. 

We knew what to do this time. We walked up to the check-in desk and told them we needed to pay for and receive our visa. They gave us a number and we settled in to wait. About 30 minutes later, our number was called, and we went up with our numbers and passports. They checked our applications in the system, asked a few questions, then gave us receipts to use to pay for the visas, two windows down. 

We scooched down 10 feet, paid $150 for a student visa and a dependent (amparo) visa, then scooched back to hand them the payment receipt to be attached to our application paperwork. 

At that point, we were basically done. We left our passports with them to have the visa pasted in, and that was definitely the scariest part, at least for me. When a passport is one of the only things truly identifying you, it's a little panic-inducing to leave it anywhere out of your possession. But I managed to walk away. 

We were told to return between 3:30 and 4:30 that afternoon to receive our passports with the visas. Since we had arrived around 9:30 and the whole process took roughly an hour, it left us with a significant chunk of time to kill. 

So we headed to Parque Carolina again. It's REALLY huge, but apparently there's an even bigger one just a few blocks away that we totally missed. Anyway, Carolina is a pretty sweet park. Basketball courts, soccer fields, a huge track, some pond areas with paddle-boats on them, and just plenty of space. It was really nice to just walk through. Also, people watching is off the chain there. I saw more diversity there in 30 minutes than I have in the past 2.5 months!

a (very small) portion of Pargue Carolina

So then we hit up the mall to find some food, and we ate at a place called Vaco y Vaca. Burgers and sandwiches as well as really big plates of food. All in all, a really great lunch. There's rumors that a Vaco y Vaca will be opening in the new mall expansion here in Ambato and I'm REALLY hoping that's the case.

Anyway, we finally killed enough time and made it back to the ministry around 3:15. We went up to the same room we had initially waited in to put I. Our application, and there were a LOT of people there. We weren't sure what the breakdown was though, because it seemed like there were several different things going on.

After almost an hour of being slightly nervous and wondering if we were in the right place or if they had forgotten about us entirely, they finally started calling for our visa type, the 12-5. Everything moved really quickly at that point. We walked up to the same guy who had taken our application, he had us sign some paperwork that cancelled the balance of our T3 visitors visa, he handed us our passports (THANKYOUJESUS) with the visas pasted in them, and said, "Congratulations!" 

Well, hello there!

And that was pretty much it. We thanked him and walked out with our passports and visas and the ability to come and go in, out and around this country as we please for the next 6 months. At which point we'll have to do it all again, but in the words of the famous philosopher, Scarlett O'Hara, "I'll think about that tomorrow."

The final piece to our day was making it back home. Before they dropped us off, Juan and Eduardo told us that they would pick us up at the end of the day and take us home as well. HAPPY DAY. I was getting antsy in the visa office because it was getting a bit late and we didn't want to hold the guys up. Thankfully though, we got out of there just before 4:30 and they called us about five minutes later to say they were on the way. 

And that is how we got our visas. Relatively straightforward, really, especially in hindsight. Next time though, we'll be sure to make plans to stay in Quito overnight so we don't have to make the trip twice in one week.

Also...FYI. We're so high up that we're essentially above the clouds. Occasionally during the drive we'll drive past valleys that are shrouded in clouds, and it's really cool. It really is the land of the clouds.

Because Visa, Part 1

In Which, We Gain the Ability to Stay Here Legally

Which is always a good thing, no?

So these past two weeks have truly been a blur. It's been travel, LOTS of work, more travel, planning our trip back home for Will and Amanda's wedding, more work and finally - attaining our visas.

I wish I had taken more pictures along the way, but I guess you'll have to live with what I've got.

So everybody who enters Ecuador gets a free, 90-day tourist visa called the T-3. It stops when you leave and starts again whenever you re-enter the country, and you're allowed one per year.

T-3 Visa (it's just a stamp, really)

Since we want to stay here in Ecaudor for at least a year, figuring out which visa to get was a pretty big deal. I've written about it in a couple other posts (here and here) so I won't bore you with the backstory.

We decided to get the student visa, which is called the 12-5, and it is in the non-immigrant class of visas. We decided on the student visa for a few reasons. 1) It's one of the cheapest ones out there; 2) It's renewable, which means that in six months, we can apply to renew it for another six months, and we can do this for up to two years; 3) John was wanting to take Spanish classes anyway, so this was the perfect two-birds-one-stone strategy.

John's motto these days

Our T-3 visa was set to expire on June 8, so we decided to get the student visa process rolling in the middle of May or so. I had found a school in Quito that does distance lessons via Skype that would be able to sponsor us for the visa.

Now, many people have asked why we didn't find a program here in Ambato. The answer - we tried. There are several universities here and I inquired at all of them, but none of them had a Spanish program. We heard that the government has recently been making changes in the requirements for university programs, so a lot of language programs actually lost their ability to sponsor students, hence our reason for going to Quito.

John is learning through Simon Bolivar Spanish School. They're really wonderful to deal with and, so far, he has really enjoyed his lessons. We both would have preferred him to be in a classroom setting so he could learn alongside other people, but I think this is a great alternative.

So on Monday, May 25, we hopped on the bus to Quito. It's about a 3 hour trip from Terminal Terrestre in Ambato to Terminal Quitumbe in Quito. It should only be about 2-2.5 hours with the new direct-link highway, but the buses still go through Latacunga and Salcedo, towns just off the highway, to pick up and drop people off. So 3 hours it is.

At least the views are typically amazing...

We had an appointment with an advisor at Simon Bolivar, German, at 3pm. We decided to get to Quito in the morning to hand in all of our paperwork so that everything would be ready to go at 3.

Breakfast while we were waiting
for the 3pm meeting

What paperwork, you ask? Well. Yet another benefit of the student visa is the relative ease of getting the paperwork required. We had to have a certified copy of our marriage certificate, and it had to be apostilled, and it had to be within 6 months of applying for the visa. Just in case you were wondering, an apostille is like a notarization for your notarized papers. You have to get it from the secretary of state, which means we had to make the drive to Columbia. Thankfully, that process was much easier than, say, getting Jethro's papers certified by the USDA.

The other thing we had to have was a translated and notarized copy of our bank statements for the past three months, and it had to show that we had at least $1500 in the bank. Thanks to our good friend Beth, who is a certified translator, we had that taken care of quite easily.

We also had to have our passports, passport-size photos, and we also had to fill out the visa application which had to be PERFECT. No mistakes. John and I both messed up and had to re-do them.

The visa application!

Once we got through all of that, the school put together the folder with the documents that were required from them. The next step was to actually apply.

This is where things got a little sticky. Our appointment with German was at 3, and when we spoke with him he told us that the ministry only takes applications in the morning. Which meant we either needed to stay overnight or plan on coming back another day. Since we hadn't made any plans for Jethro beyond that day, we decided to come back on Wednesday, two days later. German told us that we needed to be at the ministry building as early as possible, definitely no later than 8am. This meant an early wake-up call for us, since it's a 2-hour drive via car to get to Quito from Ambato.

Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores
y Movilidad Humana - they LOVE long titles

After our meeting at Simon Bolivar, we spent the next few hours exploring Quito. We had made an appointment to drive back with a private car service and meeting up with them at the correct time is a story in and of itself, but that's for another day. Suffice it to say, we made it back to Ambato around 10pm and immediately passed out.

In between all of this, I had a pretty steady level of work to try and get out at the appropriate time. I don't need internet to do my work, but I do need a connection in order to DELIVER my work. So when I have a due time of 5pm and I'm not sure if I'm going to be on a bus then or somewhere else without Wi-Fi, I've got to make sure to send it out beforehand, which meant a lot of doubling-up at night and trying to read while on the bus. The latter was highly unsuccessful, as my sisters would have no doubt told me beforehand. I've never had any luck with being able to read in vehicles, I don't know why I thought a bus would be different.

Anyway. Wednesday's return was uneventful, other than the 4:30am wake-up call we had to catch our 5:30am ride. We used the private car service again, and made it to our destination by 7:30, which is quite a feat. For those who don't know, Quito has over 2.5 million people living in it. It's roughly 18 miles long (30km) but only around 2 miles (3-4km) wide. Needless to say, getting in and around this place smack dab in the middle of rush hour is a feat in and of itself, and getting to where you need to be (in the center of the city, no less) in good time in nigh on a miracle.

Upon arrival, we realized German was already there and waiting for us, saving us a spot in line. The office actually opens at 8:30, but people line up quite a bit before then.

After some waiting, we were directed to the second floor, where we waited for about an hour and half before being seen by the visa advisor. He was very nice, checked all our papers, asked a few questions, then accepted our applications and instructed us on what to do next.

We had to go downstairs, pay for the visa applications with the slips of paper he was giving us, and then, when we received the receipts, we were to bring them back up to him. No fuss, no muss.

So we went and did that, and then he told us that we would receive an email in roughly a week to tell us when the visas would be ready.

At that point, we were basically done. We said thank you and goodbye to German, then we took off in search of some breakfast.

We found this on the way..

No filter...seriously

Not sure of its name, but it was beautiful, and the sun was hitting it at just the right angle for some great pictures.

So we found breakfast and finally ate. We had a minor payment snafu which required us to briefly go back to the ministry, but we cleared that up very quickly, and from there, we headed to the local transport of choice (Ecovia) to take us to the bus terminal to catch a bus back to Ambato. We made it home right at 3pm and, again, utterly crashed. Public transportation can be exhausting and draining, especially when you're working on very few hours of sleep, which I was, due to work.

One of the Ecovia stops

Either way, we spent the rest of the day just relaxing and getting back into the regular groove of things. John's birthday was the next day, and he wanted to just chill all day, so that's what we did. We got a late breakfast, took the dog on a walk, spent the day watching movies, ordered pizza for dinner, and spent the rest of the evening just chilling. All in all, we were both happy to spend the day doing next to nothing, and it was a great way to recharge our batteries.

John enjoying his birthday cigar!

So stay tuned for our third (and FINAL) trip to Quito to receive our visas. Another 4:30am wake-up call and more waiting, hurrah! All's well that ends well though. Now you know the ending of the next post, but I still expect you to read it ;)

Ups and Downs (Literally)

In Which, Jethro Cannot Enter the Park

Before I get into details of last week's Sunday adventure, I just want to take a minute and talk about the ridiculousness that is my dog's hair. 

I feel like it's about to grow legs and walk

O.M.G. Seriously you guys, this is after TWO DAYS. I never realized that Jethro sheds so dang much! Maybe it's because we have light grey carpet in our house and here we have dark red/brown tile, but it is so obnoxious. I've gotten to the point where I'm sweeping every day, usually multiple times a day. For anyone who wants to know what they can send us, send me a Roomba!! I've never wanted one more in my life. Ugh.

THIS.IS.NONSENSE.

In other news, last Sunday (not today) we decided to make the trek up to Parque de la Familia. It's this huge, really well-tended, well-manicured park up on the ridge of the valley, about a 10-minute taxi drive. It was a beautiful day out, and we decided that Jethro needed some exercise. We'd heard from friends that Parque de la Familia is THE place to be on the weekends, so we packed up and headed out.

On the way, we drove through a teeny-tiny little hamlet (because, really, it's not big enough to be a town) called Pinllo. The most stand-out item was their church, which I managed to snap a picture of as we were waiting for some cows to cross the road.

Anyway. So we finally get up to the park, and we're really excited. This map kinda shows the rough layout. The scale is hard to gauge, but the park actually encompasses a LOT of space, so much so that they've got all these different areas named via their usage, as well as vendor stands and food stalls scattered throughout. It's a pretty cool place.

SADLY, as we were walking in, we were approached by a friendly looking (but really not very understanding) park greeter, who told us that dogs are not allowed in the park.

Say WHAT?! I mean, this is a beautiful, wide open, well-tended park! It's perfect for dogs! It's perfect for us with our dog! We even brought baggies to scoop the poop!

Regardless of our explanation, it was a no-go.

The greeter told us that we could walk Jethro all the way back to the park entrance where there was a rope where he could be tied up while we enjoyed the park.

We were torn at this point. Jethro is quite the whiny-butt when he doesn't get to come with us, but we had just gone to all the trouble to get up there. In the end, we decided to leave him for a bit and see how he would do. So we tied him to a nearby tree (rather than the line, which had several little dogs already) and headed into the park.

Jethro, being a whiny brat. 

Once we got in it was pretty uneventful. It was really beautiful though. We had a great view of the valley and could almost even see our apartment. There were a good number of people there, but the park is so big, it didn't really seem like it. We hardly ran into anyone other than at the entrances.

They had really well kept paths and different little pond areas. There were also different courts for different sports and players. There was one court specifically for handicap players, which I thought was pretty cool.

In the end, we didn't stay very long. When we were about to cross the road to the other side of the park, we heard Jethro...from all the way across the parking lot. That was our cue to leave, because no one wants to hear a bluetick coonhound in full bawl for any amount of time.

John's selfie

From the top of the ridge

Overall, it was a slightly disappointing trip, but the park is actually really nice, so John and I will definitely go back (without Jethro) and explore a bit more. 

Take 1...

Take 2 - Perfect!

One really fun thing that happened was that we took a bus back down the mountain. That was pretty cool because we haven't tried that with Jethro yet, and we didn't know if the driver would let us on with him, but it proved to be a non-issue with that particular driver.

Loving the walk...not the heat

Lest you worry, Jethro did get a lot of exercise in that day anyway. We had walked from our apartment down to the easiest bus/taxi stop to get to the park, and that's a good 45-minute walk, one way. Going there is not too bad because it's all essentially downhill. Coming back...is another story.

Check out these stairs.

They just keep going on...

And on...

Seriously, by the time we get to the top, I feel like I'm going to die. I've told John that the day that I can run up these stairs without needing emergency services will be the day that I know I've acclimated to the altitude and I've gained the Ecuadorian level of cardio that everyone seems to possess.

The rest of the week was actually pretty busy and quite eventful. We went to Quito on two different days to get our visa process started. As you might remember, we're applying for the Student Visa. John will be taking Spanish classes starting on Monday, so this allows us to kill two birds with one stone.

Anyway, I'll update more on that as we will most likely be making the final trip back to Quito sometime later this week. Stay tuned for more on that saga.

I leave you with this photo that we took in Parque Cevallos a few weeks ago. It's part of the new advertising campaign across Ecuador and in Ambato in particular. I love these colors, and for some reason, they don't remind me of Christmas!