Ecuador Days 6 & 7

October 6 & 7, 2014

Well we've been on the farm a few nights now and WOW were we unprepared for the COLD temps at night! The daytime temps are in the 70's but the nights get into the 40's and there is NO HEATER!!!!!

Mom fail. Wife fail. Self fail. Total epic failure. Minor detail I forgot to inquire about with our host family first. You know that feeling when you are so cold that your teeth chatter and your body starts to shiver in an attempt to warm itself? Thank goodness for lots of blankets and fleece pajamas that we borrowed from our hosts for Reese! Dean and I wore layers of clothes and hoodies to bed! Needless to say this is very new territory for us as we came from south Florida where we sleep half naked with fans on! Poor Reese bear didn't know what to do. She's never slept with blankets before. Body heat is amazing when you feel like your close to having frost bite. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating. I wish I were folks. But I'm not.

We're surviving, just adjusting. Finally after a few somewhat sleepless nights (I never sleep well in a new place and I was freezing) we're getting acclimated and things aren't so bad. We actually got good sleep last night! During the day Reese and I are mostly with Lindsay and Gus (their 11 month old adorable son) while Dean works on the farm with Shawn. We rotate cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner and washing the dishes after each meal (dishwashers are common here). I've also done some light housework like sweeping, wiping, organizing, etc. while little one allows me. Lindsay and I enjoy conversations about motherhood, Ecuador living, babies and other wonderful fluffy stuff.

Today Lindsay taught me how to make corn tortillas! I was surprised that I liked them so much! Reese and I also wandered the farm to find daddy to see what he was doing. Today he worked on the pig enclosure. The new baby piglets were small enough to escape the wide gaps in the existing fencing so Dean attached chicken wire to it. He's enjoying his manual labor! And I enjoyed watching him sweat and get a little dirty. :)

Nap time was a bit of a struggle today. But I can't blame her. We've been on the move for several days now AND we all caught colds (was it the airports or the climate change - I'll never know!) which makes things even more challenging when she tries to sleep. You know what though? There's no reason to stress or worry about it. I just want baby girl to be comfortable and I do what I need to do around her.

So here at the farm they raise pigs for butchering. They process the meat from start to finish. They warned us in advance that we needed to be okay with the entire process (including killing). Wahhhh poor piggy! Gimme bacon. Lol. This evening the guys cut and packaged some previously butchered meats. It's really an interesting process to watch. They cut, trim, weigh, package and seal the meats in order to sell them. Talk about home grown!

Tonight we had a delicious Mexican dinner of stuffed peppers compliments of Lindsay and Shawn.

Ecuador: What is Workaway?

As you read this blog and my recents posts about our current life in Ecuador you may be wondering how in the world we ended up in Ecuador and why.

Most of you know that Dean and I love traveling. We met traveling in college on Semester at Sea and we've continued our travels through our relationship and marriage. We've been to over 30 countries together and don't plan to stop! But now we are a family now and it isn't quite as easy to just take off anytime anywhere. There's a financial piece too. How do we afford it? What about jobs? That part will be a separate post so stay tuned.

We first decided that we wanted to spend a few months in Ecuador and we were brainstorming ideas about how we could make it happen. We both love to research and with the internet at our fingertips we began a zillion searches. That's when I happened upon the website www.Workaway.info. It's a website that connects hosts with volunteers all over the world. The hosts are looking for volunteer help for anything from A to Z and volunteers give 20-25 hours a week of their time in exchange for room and board! Say what?! Aside from flights, room and board is usually your BIGGEST expense while traveling! This is HUGE! And you can literally find anything you can imagine to do...anywhere! I'm not joking guys, check out the website!

Anyway we loved the idea of doing this for a portion of our trip. After lots of searching and communicating with potential hosts, we arranged to stay with a family on their farm outside of Quito. They raise pigs & chickens, have 7 dogs, and a son turning 1. They are from the US but have been living in Ecuador for the last 6 years. As we are traveling as a family, we agreed that I may not be able to 'work' the full hours so we were going to chip in a bit for food costs. Still an amazing deal for a unique traveling and volunteering experience.

I can't recommend the experience highly enough. More posts to come on our 10 day Workaway experience including what we did, what we ate, our accommodations, etc.