Bye Bye Cuenca

*****By the way this was supposed to be posted over a week ago

Oh my gosh………   Cuenca is coming to an end. That also means that we are getting closer to the Galapagos. Our first set of grandparents are gone, but our next set of grandparents are coming tomorrow. I bet they are really tired.

Jasper and I have not been doing lots of schoolwork because the grandparents have been here. Buttttt I am okay with that because I despise homework.

My mom, my brother and I recently had our last lesson with Luis. He is our Spanish teacher. At the last lesson Luis had prepared lots of games. My daddy could not join because he had to go pick up our abuelos. Buttttt he was able to join half way into the lesson. We gave Luis wine and some new whiteboard markers as a thank you gift.

I will not miss hearing the  sounds of the noisy streets, the smell of the gas from city buses and cigarettes, and last but not least, I will not miss the dog poop in front of our house.  I will miss Cuenca, Hacienda Chan Chan, and most of all I will miss my friends in the daycare that I volunteered at. I will also not miss the “cook- a- doodle- dooing” and the weird dog barking in the middle of the night!!!!!

DIFFERENCES

Here are the differences between Cuenca and Calgary. The first difference is that in Cuenca when there is a festival, they put a time to show you when it will be “starting”. However, when you arrive at that time the people that are performing are still just practicing. It is pretty annoying, but we are really lucky to be in America del sur. Locals have activities like we Calgarians have too, but when locals don’t want to go to their activities they will skip it. I think that is pretty mean to the teammates and the coach because A) you have committed to a team, and B) what if your team has started a fun game and made teams and you show  up the first day but not the next day, then your coach has to make a whole new team? Anyway back to differences…, Cuenca says “Markosoft” instead of “Microsoft”, which is pretty weird.  South America also puts Guacamole on their burgers. Cuenca also puts 60 seconds on the signal for crossing the road, whereas in Canada there is only 20 seconds. I find that so far South America and Cuenca are night people, meaning they tend to do more activities at night than in the morning like exercising and festivals. Ecuador also has cobblestone roads because some towns like Cuenca are really old; whereas in Calgary we have all paved roads because we are a younger city.

Andean monkeys are little stinkers because they sneakily steal your food. The Andean monkey is at the Amaru zoo. They are yellow, fuzzy and really cute, but when they want to steal your food they are not cute.  When you’re trying to shoo them away they grrrrr at you. I got really scared because this one boy was poking at a monkey and then the monkey got mad and jumped on him like it was a rope or something. Also because my mom was shooing the Andean monkeys away but they were not scared surprisingly. When they people who worked at the zoo came and shooed them away I was not as scared. One of the Andean monkeys stole someone’s jello and took it to a tree.

Cuando estuvimos caminando para ver a los muy grande monos, mi papa vio algunas personas alimentándose los monos unas botellas plásticos. Y las mismas personas trataron de dar otra botella plástica a los monos. Y mi papa dijo, “la botella no es para los monos”. ¡Me sentí muy enojado porque cuando mi papa agarró el plástico las mujeres no dijeron “gracias” y plástico no es para todos los animales!!!!

THE DRIVE TO GUAYAQUIL

Oh boy…. that drive was a mess and I will tell you the reasons why. First of all we were in a car for four hours and Jasper, we all know, gets carsick and sometimes so do I. Jasper and I kept asking what is the road going to be like but my parents didn’t know because they had never driven to Guayaquil, that was also a reason why.  When we started getting  on the main road it started getting really windy…..I mean really windy! I hated it. When we stopped for a snack after the windy-ness it was really humid.

Mom got out of the car first, then me, then Jasper and then Jasper’s food came out of his mouth next. It was really gross!It splattered all over the ground and grass, but luckily there was a really kind cleaning lady that cleaned it up and gave Jasper 3 limes and some salt to suck on.

After Jasper vomiting, it was time to get back in the car.

The rest of the road was flat.