June 26-27

Flowers for Jayne when she arrived in December, 2007.

Thursday June 26
Jayne and I went to Quito today.

We went to Matt’s office to pick up the copies of the ID. He had them with his secretary but he didn’t have the second ID that I had asked for. So, I had to take what we had to Giovanna’s place.

I also dropped off my computer at Matt’s office.

We stopped in to see Giovanna and shortly thereafter the Judge arrived. Jayne told him that the embassy said that the cost to marry outside of his office is $60, but he had previously said that the extra $60 is for him. Jayne said that she’ll tell the embassy that so they can update their files. Well he got nervous and said don’t do that. He said this is because the wedding is on the weekend and they just get paid Monday through Friday. So, he just took $60 and said that the other $60 can be paid on the wedding day. He did not give us a receipt though we asked for it.
Giovanna said that this is the corruption in Ecuador. Jayne later said to ask for a receipt from him when I do pay him and to have it video tape – with the recording of what he said and translated.

Giovanna asked Melva if she could help us when we buy rings as she said that many sell jewelry that is not the grade that it’s marked plus they might charge more because we are foreigners. So we met Melva and we went to some jewelry shops.

The price of 18 kt. Gold varied from $30 to $50/gram. We found one store that had the rings that we wanted and their price was $35/gram.

Melva is a good worker. After she went home, I went on the internet while Jayne looked for a handbag to buy for the wedding. She didn’t find what she liked.

When we got home I got a call from Matt. He told me that the computer man is there and that he found nothing wrong with my computer. I told him that’s strange and Jayne and I saw the problem here. I told him to have the guy restart it again. This he did and said that everything is ok. I then told him to check for viruses. Now I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see what happened.

Matt said that he’s had no problem with his computer man. Well now he should see something is wrong. I’ll tell Matt that when the guy put in new RAM memory that was wrong and I paid for that for nothing. A two year old computer that just has a browser open and Word program open doesn’t need more memory. If there is something that indicates that it does that means there is some virus operating using the memory. By the way, I didn’t get an indication that my memory is low.

In the evening, Jayne and I discuss what Giovanna said when I asked her how many waiters/waitresses we’ll have and she said two. Only two for 22 people! She said that she’ll use the two waiters who’ll be working at the restaurant. I said at the time that what about if customers come and she said not to worry as they don’t have any customers at that time.
Thinking about this at home, I said to Jayne if she remembered when we walked past the restaurant today. The time was about 4.30pm and there were two tables with people sitting outside. So, we don’t know how many if any were inside. Now, this is Thursday a day that is not as busy as Saturday when we would be having our wedding. And it was at the time we would be having dinner. So, we can be sure that people will be there.

We decided to go and see Giovanna Friday to tell her that we want out own waiters and to have three of them. I also said to Jayne that I bet that Giovanna figures she could make extra money by using the people who are working on the time clock of the restaurant. You can be sure they are not on my bill, though I’m paying for it. Whenever people have wedding planners the cost of the meals also includes the waiters/waitresses. So I don’t what her to charge more for this and if she does, I’ll say this isn’t fair but I’d rather have our own waiters than have people waiting a long time to get served.

I’ll tell Giovanna that is there really are no customers to worry about, I’ll say fine, so I would like her to close the restaurant down for the night and have a sign outside saying ‘Private Party’. This will call her bluff. I’ll say that since I’m paying for the wedding service, that includes waiters, too. So I want my own waiters.

Friday June 27
The first place we stopped was at Matt’s office to pick up the IDs. I saw my computer there running. So it looked ok at his office. I decided to come back later in the day so I won’t have to carry the computer around. Next we stopped at the restaurant where the wedding will be as Jayne wanted to see how the service is. We just ordered coffee.

The service was fine.

Then we stopped at Giovanna’s other restaurant (her mother owns everything). I started to tell her about the waiters and she said that since there will be another party at their big restaurant (the one we had the meeting in), we’ll have our own waiters. This is good and I hope it’s true.
We wanted to pay only half up front the rest on the wedding day. Giovanna said that wasn’t possible because of the ‘law’ here. Jayne and I thought that was bull! First, she knows us and second how will the government know. We said that when you go to a restaurant you always pay after the service unless it’s in a fast food restaurant. We also told her that we are friends and that she knows where we live. But she stuck to this.

Then Giovanna said that there is a legal contract that has to be filled out. Well, she never said anything about this before. So we asked for it and she said that it has to be filled out with the details of the wedding. We said we want to have this translated (as the contract will be in Spanish). She wondered why, and Jayne said no contract is valid unless its understood by the other party. Giovanna said that she’ll email a copy to us.

Such nonsense here in Ecuador!

Then I had a color copy of the IDs made that Matt gave to me.

Then we looked for a pocketbook that Jayne needs. We didn’t find any. I told her that we can look in other stores on Amozonus Ave, near where we’ll have something to eat (we hadn’t eaten today yet). After eating at the Magic Bean we looked for pocketbooks. Jayne found one but not exactly what she wanted, but she’ll use this if another can’t be found. The cost for this leather pocketbook was $10.25. From there we went to El Jardin, which is a big mall in Quito. I looked around for a video camera and bought one. It’s a Sony DVD-D305. this cost $675 with the 10 % discount. That’s nice I got a discount. I also had to buy a flash memory which cost about $79 (minus 10%) and some mini-DVDs that the film is recorded on.

Now I have something to record the wedding on.

Back to Matt’s office to pick up my computer. He offered to have his driver take us from the hotel to the reception – that was nice of him. So we took him up on his offer. I offered to pay but I don’t think he’ll take the money.

Matt asked if the musicians know about the change of date. This is something that Jayne and I never thought about! Matt said that he did call the other day and said something about July 5, but suggested we go and see him right away to make use. Then I thought about the change of time too, to make sure he knows about that.

Then we went to find the shop but saw that it was closed (it was after 5pm). I called Matt to ask him to see him Saturday morning, which he said he will.

We went by the hotel we’ll be staying and, so we stopped in to pay for the two nights we’ll be there. The cost including tax was $238.00.

Afterwards we went to Papaya Net to get something to eat. We had omelets and an Ecuadorian soup called Locra. This is a potato soup made with cheese and avocado. The soup was delicious.
From there we took a taxi home.

Note: I didn't do any editing work, so I don't want to hear about misspellings, etc.