ecuador

Learning Spanish the Slacker Way

If you are reading this post in December, you’ll notice a countdown clock in the right column, showing that we have just 17 days remaining before our month-long trip to Ecuador.  We are busily preparing for the trip as well as getting our Christmas gifts, cards, and traditional activities completed.

The trip organizers have been very helpful, sending weekly email messages to prepare us for the adventure.  Topics covered include what to expect, what will we need (i.e., Cuenca has the same electric power and plugs as we do so no need for converters or adapters), and lists of Spanish words and phrases to study.

Their goal is for us to learn about 2,000 words before we board that first airplane.  So far, Joe has mastered two—“cerveza” and “baῆos”, figuring that would cover both incoming and outgoing.  He was shocked to learn that “baῆos” was really a place to bathe and that he needed to ask for a “servicio”. Continue reading

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The trip in a box

Yesterday among the cartload of ubiquitous smiling brown boxes from brazillian-river.com[1] that the UPS driver lugged to Joe’s door was this mysterious priority package:

The mysterious UPS Priority package

The mysterious UPS Priority package

Upon closer examination (which really didn’t have to be that close), Joe found that the three-pound package came from AHI, the organizers of the upcoming trip.  Continue reading

Categories: blog, Cuenca, ecuador, Journals, travel | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

Where?

Ever had the desire to live in a foreign county?  Maybe not forever, but at least during the cold winter months?  Twowhotrek have had that idea for some time.  Now we get a chance to live that dream.

In March 2007, Twowhotrek visited South Africa.  We really enjoyed the city of Capetown, the beauty of the surrounding area, and the vineyards not too far to the east.  After a cold Michigan winter, the warmth of South Africa’s late summer felt great.  One day the thought came as we were bouncing on a tourist bus – why not spend a month in Capetown some US winter?  After all, of the eleven national languages in South Africa, English is the one most commonly used.  They even drive halfway normally, just on the other side of the road.  Sadly, mundane things like having to work for a living have prevented that dream from coming true so far (but we haven’t given up yet!).

Fast forward to 2012.  Continue reading

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