Photo Roundup November 24, 2013

Many of you have been missing my blog posts--I've been missing putting them up as well. These past few days have given me an incentive to want to get one up for all of you but especially for my Mom.

Mom fell and broke her hip on Thursday (not to worry, she's a tough woman and is doing fine) then had surgery to repair it on Friday--her birthday. As my middle sister said, "What do you give a woman who has everything?" Well, I'm giving her a blog post. It's a little late but here it is.

By the way, she went home from the hospital today and rumor has it she's ready to take on the world--well, maybe not the whole world but at least her little corner of it.

The raffle afghan our needlework group, Loose Stitches, has been working on is finally complete! There will be a whole blog post about it but here are the photos to start you off. I took them when I was kitty sitting and Little decided there was no way I was taking photos without her Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval in full evidence.

While we're talking about animals, these guys looked so cute up on their roof. Dogs frequently live on roofs here, especially when the family doesn't have a back yard for them to play in. Thus they are called roof dogs. These two were keeping a close eye on the folks walking past on the sidewalk below them.

Photo Roundup -- March 30, 2013

Time for another Photo Roundup.  I love gathering photos and sometimes they just don't go with a whole blog post so you get little bits and pieces of life as I see it.

Even the police use internet cafes.  These three police officers as well as another one who isn't visible in this picture, are busily typing away on the computers in one of the tiendas we have that serves a multitude of purposes.  There are a few computers to rent for 50 cents an hour, they sell minutes for phones, make copies, and have "Cabinas." Cabinas are little phone booth things where you tell them where you want to call (local or long distance) and they charge you by the minute depending on where. I think they may have a beverage cooler ("cooler" is what it's called when they keep a beverage around 50 or 60 degrees).  Ah yes, one of the ads is for "Red" juice.  I think that's a high caffeine drink.  They also have someone who sells Avon here.  Oh, and there are the gum machines out front.  All of that is in a space the width you see in the photo and it only goes back another 5 or 6 feet from the wall you see to the right of that last police officer.  They are very good at squeezing in value for your dollar.

Photo Roundup -- March 5, 2013

More odd and sundry photos for your enjoyment:

I was telling someone what it costs me to have my dirty laundry picked up, taken to the shop, washed, dried, folded, and delivered back to me on the same day.  She agreed it was something fun to put in a post.  Here's the laundry I just got yesterday.  There was a set of sheets, a full-sized blanket, bath towels, and a couple of small piles of clothes.  Total cost--$7.30.  I have to tell you, that dose not make me unhappy in the least!  I figure I would have paid between $5 and $10 for the machines in my apartment building back in Minneapolis just to wash and dry them, not to mention the soap.  Then there's just the general luxury of having someone else do it.  What a treat.

Photo Roundup -- February 22, 2013

Enjoy some miscellaneous photos that didn't warrant their own blog post but I wanted to share with you.

I have many visitors to my roof and I hear just about all of them.  The noisiest (because of their size) are the kitties.  These two are the most frequent visitors and they look like they do pretty well in the eating arena.  There are enough smaller critters around that I suspect they don't want for much food.  They're a little hard to catch on camera but this isn't a terrible shot of them going from the wall that makes up one of the sides of my house as well as the fence around the property to my roof.

Photo Roundup -- February 17, 2013

It's been a while since I've done a photo roundup so I went through my photos for the last month or so and came up with quite a few that I don't think made it into regular posts that I want to share.

I love this picture.  I took it quite a while back when I was in Ibarra.  The indigenous people have different traditional outfits for each tribe or sub-group within a tribe.  Please understand that I really know almost nothing about this. It's on my list of things to do: get more information about the place I live and the people who live there.  Until then, I'll just have to share what I know for sure and what I kind of know and correct things as I go along.

Photo Roundup January 24, 2013

Today is the day I return from Mindo.  I'm quite certain I won't be writing any blog posts tonight and probably not tomorrow so I decided to share some of my photos that are just fun, interesting, or both.

I LOVE this guy.  He was here in town with his friend (wife, partner, whatever) and I made the mistake of assuming he wasn't from here because of his attire.  It may not show up adequately here but those are silver lamé plants.  When I asked, in English, if I could take his picture, he responded in Spanish.  Uh, once again with the assumptions on my part.

Photo Roundup, Nov. 15, 2012

Enjoy some of the fun sights from the last little while.

You really need to click on this one to enlarge it so you can truly see the details of this ladder.  It's one of the "best" I've seen yet.  Ladders are almost always hand made here.  My landlord makes his out of bamboo, which seems to be the most popular material but salvaged wood comes in a very close second.

Photo Roundup July 1, 2012

Wow!  It's already July!  Half the year is gone and I have no idea where it went.  Well, wherever it went, there's still lots to come and I can hardly wait to share it with you.

Some of these photos have been hanging around for a little while but I figured I'd better get them tucked in here or I'd forget about them completely, so here we go!

This was taken almost a month ago.  I had someone come help me with some cleaning and she enjoys having TV on while she works.  This was the first scene that came up after the TV was turned on and I couldn't resist trying to grab a photo.  This is from a telenovella (soap opera) and it would appear that woman is the maid.  I was totally blown away.  It's not something we're used to seeing in the States.  Yet another thing that's very different than what I'm used to.  Some days it's tougher than others to leave my attitudes back there.

Photo Roundup

With all the activity going on with Inti Raymi, I still had a chance to get a few odds and ends of photos that I thought you might enjoy or just get a little chuckle from.


This photo is taken from the official Cotacachi website and it shows the very beginning of the Inti Raymi celebration with "the ritual bath, the ancestral offering, and blessing of the products of Pacha Mama [the mother volcano]" that took place on June 16 at  Cuicocha, a nearby lake.

A Few More Photos

Since I managed to mess up the photo roundup this week, I'm just adding another little post to add on the photos I would have tacked onto the end of that one.  I really have to pay closer attention to things like this.  Ah, well, it is what it is, right?

I ordered a cake to be delivered for a friend of mine.  She's in Canada so it was a bit tough for her to do it.  I trotted down to the little bakery just down the block and ordered this little cake (about 9" or so, maybe a bit larger--you can see the bigger version to the left of it) and had it delivered by taxi

Photo Roundup, June 17, 2012

I'm not sure what happened but I managed to publish this on the 11th.  I'm not sure where this will show up when I've actually put photos in it but if you're seeing this when it doesn't appear it should be where it is, you're right.  Well, I guess there have to be goof ups somewhere along the line, right?

So, for this week I have some fun shots that I hope you'll enjoy seeing as much as I enjoyed capturing them for you.

First of all, I know I've told you about seeing horses in town but this is the first time I've actually captured it.

A friend and I were walking up the street toward the bus terminal and fresh food market (look to the far left and you'll see the buses lined up outside the terminal and the archway into the market) when we saw this horse standing there patiently waiting for his (OK, I don't know if it's a he or a

Photo Roundup, June 10, 2012

One of the local food cart delicacies is a mango that is cut into thin strips with this hand operated peeling machine.  I had one of these in the States and I used it to peel and core apples (among other things).  This version doesn't have the part that cores things but the rest of it pretty much the same.  At any rate, after the mango is cut into its little strips, it gets put into a plastic glass and sprinkled with vinegar and salt.  Yep, vinegar and salt.  I haven't tried one yet but one of these days I'll get brave and give it a try. 

I had no particular reason to take this picture other than how much I liked the texture of the bricks.  They're handmade and fired here in Cotacachi and this is just part of a stack that sits in front of another six or seven rows of bricks.  They're quite lovely.

I never cease to be amazed at the hand work done by the local women.  This traditional blouse is made entirely by hand.  The embroidery is done on a piece of fabric and then made into the blouse, then the sleeves are added and the crocheted edging is added at that time.  I can walk down the street here and see women crocheting thread for necklines or edging as they walk down the street.  I have no idea how they do that AND manage to avoid tripping hazards but they do.

This is the courtyard at one of my favorite restaurants, Solid Rock.  They always have a special of the day and while I may not have that, it's always something good and reasonably priced.  It's also a good place to check the bulletin board and see what's going on, whether or not there's an apartment or house for rent (if you happen to be looking), a piece of property to buy, or something to sell, like the recliner I saw there shortly after arriving here.  The woman sitting at the table is Sheiran (pronounced "Sharon") is a new friend of mine.  Unfortunately, she's only going to be here another month.  She's looking up at the new construction happening on the second floor of Solid Rock, below.

That's the ceiling of concrete blocks we're looking at and they're being held up almost exclusively by those tree limbs or trunks or whatever they are.  I'm sure there's rebar in the middle of the blocks but that's still a lot of weight to be held up by those poles.  There are a couple of real supports (one on the right and the other on the back left) but they really don't seem like quite enough to me.

That's it for this week. 

Photo Roundup, May 27, 2012

Wet dog.  This little guy wandered around the house warming as if he belonged.  Actually, he's one of the stray dogs who happened to smell the hot dogs cooking and came looking for a handout.  He actually did quite well.  He didn't get much meat but he got plenty of hot dog bun to keep him happy.

Just a block from a fairly busy street is a house that has seen better days.  The sign out front tells the directions to a nearby pharmacy.

Up a bit closer it's even easier to see the vegetation growing on the top of the door frame.

Weekly Roundup of Photos

I love these little food carts.  To be honest, I didn't even take a look at what he's selling but it looks like it might be beans with lime juice.  It's served in, what else, a small plastic bag and comes with a plastic spoon.

Road construction, Cotacachi style.  As with the street cleaning, repairing damaged cobblestones is a low tech happening here.

Not all indigenous women carry everything in those fabric carriers.  This woman has traded hers in for a modern backpack.  Actually, she has the fabric alternative wrapped around her shoulders so she's prepared for larger parcels.

Weekly Roundup of Photos

Since I seem to be accumulating more and more single photos with no real blog post to attach them to, it seemed to make sense to start a weekly post that has the pictures of things that I found interesting during the week.

I hadn't been out in the back yard for several days and when I went out on Wednesday morning, this beautiful surprise was waiting for me.

This stick isn't attached to a tree or anything else.  It's simply serving as host for the plants on either end of it.  I wonder how long it's been growing like this.

 

The fronts of houses and apartments almost always look grim and dreary.  There's room here for a car to be parked behind the decorative gate and then there's the lovely patio in the center courtyard of the home.  This is just the part I can see from the street but it goes off on either side.

I love these bicycles.  I see them every once in a while and I have absolutely no idea why they are so beautifully decorated but when I find out, I'll definitely let you know--well, if it's a fun explanation at any rate.