My Brain Is Leaking

There is so much happening on a daily basis that I feel like I am forgetting.  Things come out in a jumble because they happen in such random order.  For instance, the things I don't want to forget have no barring on each other.  We were walking down the street today and there was an indigenous man with 2 goats.  He was bent over milking one of them because a woman was buying a cup of the milk.  He handed it to her, she drank it and paid him and walked off.  This evening we were walking home with our Ecuadorian fast food and we passed a man peeing on a bush.  Makes me laugh because it's so common here that you really don't think anything of it.  What I don't understand is how they keep this place so clean.  The young people come out at night and street food is eaten everywhere and there is trash and dogs and men peeing and in the morning when we come out and make our walk to the coffee shop everything is sparkling clean and there are never any bad smells.
We went out in service yesterday. Took a taxi to the bus terminal, then the bus to the Kingdom Hall (well, close to it. We have to walk about 4 blocks).  So amazing how these brothers work at trying to find interested ones.  The addresses are so hard to find because they don't have them.  You look for the yellow, two story house next to the blue one story on such and such street.  We went to the territory with two brothers in a car, then met up with another group because the brothers were going on a study.  We walked and walked and walked some more.  Found a couple of people we left literature with.  Went to lunch and then to a place that makes donuts pretty close to American made, then took a taxi to the bus terminal in that town, the bus back to our town and the taxi home.  There will never be any whining in my car group.
Food, glorious food.  Almost every restaurant in every place we have visited has the same lunch special.  It's a bowl of soup, small salad, rice, vegetable, meat and a glass of juice.  Now, it's never cooked the same so there in lies the diversity.  Soups have different ingredients, salad can be lettuce with tomatoes or cucumbers with onions, the veggie can be potatoes, beets or whatever. You can get chicken, fish, beef. One place had tongue.  All of this and its usually $2.50.  Some places cater to the American taste buds.  There is a guy here from Florida and he has a place called "Sloppy Joes" and he serves the best hamburger and fries. Usually a hamburger here is kind of a meatloaf patty with who knows what in it.  Today we had chimichangas and they were pretty close to what we can get in the states. Tonight we went to the open air market.  They pack up all of the booths at dusk and then the food vendors take over.  We ate corn on the cob roasted on a grill, these tamale things that are not made of masa but fresh corn ground up and mixed with other ingredients and steamed in a corn husk.  A version of that that is sweet and steamed in a grape leaf.  And my favorite fried bread.

We went to a neighboring town today to visit a couple of weavers.  We saw them comb lambs wool and how they die it natural colors and weave it into beautiful wall hangings and blankets and clothes.  These are a very industrious people.  

Sherry was just reminding me of the exciting bus trip that we had.  We took a taxi over to this little town, but decided to take the bus back.  We had Charie with us so she was explaining the difference between the buses.  We got on and the bus took off before poor Sherry could get in her seat.  She never made it back to where we were before she had to plop herself down.  We couldn't tell her that when we got to our destination that because we were on the "blue bus" you had to get off the back.  The bus stopped and even though all of these people were pushing past her she was making her way to the front.  The bus driver let her off the front anyway, so all turned out okay.  It just gives us a good laugh when we think of all of the funny things that happen to us.