New Year’s Eve

Wednesday December 31

We got up early and had breakfast. We then left about 8am. Amparo, her daughter, Bernadette and the baby will leave tomorrow with her friends. Matt just took his son, Juan-Carlos. Then we picked up two boys who are the children of Ampro’s friend.

We made some stops at different stores so Matt could pick up some things for the party. Without stopping I was told that it’s exactly a two hour drive. Matt has a Chevrolet pickup truck with a back seat in it.

Matt and Ampro’s farm is 12 hectares – most of it on sides of mountains. He has a family living there that is sharecroppers. It’s good to have people living when you can’t live there full time. Otherwise people will steal what you have in the home and what crops you have. The farm cost him $40,000.

There is a home for the workers – which include a husband, wife and three children. The cabin next to that is where Matt’s family stayed. We also stayed there, too. It’s rustic there, as there is are indoor bathroom. The two bedrooms are separated by a burlap curtain. There is not even a wall between the rooms and hallway but one long burlap curtain.

He did have a cabana build which is rather large, and an outdoor dining room where there are two brick ovens build. Both building are made with wood and bamboo with a thatched roof.
About 100 feet from the house is the bathroom with a shower.

Matt has many kinds of fruit trees on his property, including papaya and avocado plus exotic fruit that I don’t know the names of. He also has yucca – which is a starch vegetable that grows underground. There are bamboo and teakwood trees, too. They also have a horse and two mules.

Matt showed us around the property. One place we walked to is down the ravine where there is a small waterfall.

The three boys that came with us rode the horse and mule (just one mule was used for some reason). They took many rides on the horse and mule with practically no stopping to let the animals rest. That is a shame. I wanted to ride but I thought I let the horse rest a bit but before I knew it they were off on it again. So, Jayne and I didn’t get to ride today. The horse doesn’t look well yet the kids rode all day.

We had lunch there but it wasn’t much. The worker didn’t cook much but Matt didn’t say or notice that there wasn’t much food.

Later in the day one worker and two boys caught fish that Matt raises in three ponds he has. He has another one but it was empty for some reason.

For dinner we had yucca and fish. I don’t recall the name of the fish but they were small and bony. I only had one fish as there is not much meat on it and a lot of picking of the bones to get to it.

In the evening we sat in the cabaña and drank wine. We told Matt about our plans of selling my properties and moving to Cyprus. He was sorry we were doing it. We told him the main reasons of doing it, which are:

Jayne’s family would not be able to visit us here and we would not be able to visit them as it’s very expensive to fly back. Also, that the house will continue to get moisture from the foundation. This will create an on-going expense plus property value will continue to drop. Ecuadorians pay less and less for a house the older it is.

At midnight we lit the fireworks to welcome in the New Year. Jayne went to bed about 1am and I along with the rest of the people went to bed about 1.30am.

Christmas Pictures pt 4

By the way this is our 2nd anniversary when we first met, but it’s our 3rd Christmas together. Every day is like a honeymoon!

Christmas Pictures pt 3

Christmas Pictures pt 2

We had champagne when we opened our gifts and had Christmas music on.

Christmas Pictures pt 1

Here are some more Christmas pictures. I’ll put them on different posts because this blog seems to jumble up the pictures.

Picture on the left is when we were ready to have Christmas diner. It was fish and pancakes with stuffed vegetables.

December 26

The gardener came – the guy who wanted to come Christmas morning!

Jayne didn’t want to go to the internet café, so I went. There were a lot of people there – just like it would be in many countries the day after Christmas. Some exchanged gifts I presume while others were enjoying their day off from work.

I had put the pictures I took on Christmas and put it on my memory stick. On the internet I sent pictures to family and friends.

Christmas Day

I got up first which was about 7.30am. Jayne got up about 8.30am. When I had my coffee it was peaceful with just the birds singing. About 8.30 I saw a worker on a roof of a house that they are building next door. Later I head others with heavy machinery on the roof making noise.

Typical Ecuador!

This country really pisses me off. You can’t have peace and quiet on Christmas. In the U.S. and many other countries even if the company is non-Christian owned they give the workers the day off, but not here!

I guess the company/workers are just heathens!

When Jayne got up we said Merry Christmas to each other and Happy Anniversary. It has been two years ago that we first met - though this is our third Christmas together. We will always have a double holiday on 25th of December.

I called Richard to wish him a nice Christmas. He told me that he is sick and has been for the past couple of days. He said he took some pills for his neck and it has made him sleepy and lethargic. I said he should have stopped taking them as soon as he felt that way. However, we had a nice chat.

In the meantime, Jayne called her daughter, Nat, to give her Christmas greetings. She also called a friend of hers, Rowena, whom I know. She hasn’t talked to her since she came to Ecuador in April.

Then we got some champagne, some good chocolate and went to open our gifts. I put Christmas music on, too. I had Jayne open her gifts first. I gave her some canvases to paint on, paint, and things for her future computer such as: two types of microphones, and memory stick with 4 GB.

Jayne gave me a book by Donald Trump and some socks – which I needed. The book she bought is in English. I haven’t read any of his books but I always wanted to as I should get some excellent business advice from them. (I found out later that he co-authored 10 other books.)

Living in Ecuador there are a lot of phone calls we have to make. I wrote down the times we have to make the calls and when to expect calls. For example, for me to make a call to Russia I had to do this in the morning as they are 9 hours ahead of us. The calls to Cyprus, they are 8 hours ahead. To Holland, for Jayne to call her daughter, they are 7 hours ahead. Jayne’s mother lives in England and they are 6 hours ahead of us. Her mother said she’d call us at noon our time (6pm their time). For me calling America (eastern coast), they are the same time as us. But I have to call when the family is at my aunt’s home as they will be there for dinner. My aunt, Carol, said it would be good to call between 7 – 7.30pm.

About 12.30pm Jayne’s mother, Lil, called here.

Later, I called my mother. Sharon (my sister) picked up the phone as she was visiting there and gave our mother some gifts. I talked to Sharon first than my mother.

After this call, I called Yiannis – a good friend of mine who lives in Cyprus. We had a nice conversation. I told him of our plans to move back to Cyprus and hope to be there in a couple of months. He was pleased to hear that. I called about 1.30pm my time so it was 9.30pm his time. He had his son over for dinner and he was home all day.

About 3pm Jayne and I had our Christmas dinner. It the first and only meal we had today. Jayne cooked a beautiful dinner. We had white fish, avocado salad and a stuffed pancake. I never had pancakes that were stuffed, but this was delicious. She made the pancake itself with fresh carrot juice instead of milk and it was filled with brown rice, mushrooms, tomatoes, cheese sauce (and probably something else that I forgot). With the meal we had champagne.

Then we watched a Christmas film called Santa 2 with Tim Allen. This was a kids’ film but it was nice. We still have one more Christmas film that we haven’t seen.

About 7.10pm I called Carol. This was the last call of the day I made. Carol answered the phone and we had a nice talk. She said they were just finishing up the desert. They wait awhile after they eat their meal before desert, which is good. I also got to talk to my cousins and my brother-in-law. Since I already talked to Sharon when she was visiting our mother, I didn’t feel the need to talk again.

One of Carol’s sons was not there as he was with his girlfriend who lives in Texas.

In the evening I lit the fireplace for the very first time since I moved here. It was nice, especially with the Christmas decorations. I got some wood that was cut and put in the driveway that had plastic covering over it. When I was about to bring it in the house I notice a lot of ants crawling on it. So I carried only the pieces of wood that I would put on the fire right away.

Then I went to get some more wood and that had even more ants on it. I don’t know why so many ants are on it. I see piles of wood at the lumber yard in town and I don’t think they have problems with ants. I wonder if it’s because the wood is covered and it gives a good environment for them.

The wood that came off the roof crackled a lot and shot out some amber on the floor. Of course we had to step on it right away. I don’t like the idea that it does it; if no one was in the room it could burn the floor. If we had a rug down it could burn that. Jayne and I thought it would be good in the future to use coal. It would burn longer, give off more heat, and it would not throw out burning amber.

While the fireplace was going Jayne and read a book. I started to read the book that she gave me, Think Big by Donald Trump. So far it’s really good. I’ll save some of the reading when we go to the farm on New Year. We also had a drink of Irish Cream Whiskey and some cheese cake that I bought while we were reading.

So ends a wonderful Christmas together!

We hope all our family and friends had a good Christmas, too.