All my letters to God, my frustrations with girls, my poems, etc.

They are posted here:

http://www.strive4impact.com/chronicle.

It's been fantastic to get people's feedback on my writings, how what they have read has helped them and how people have framed a couple of my poems and put them on their walls.

I'm flattered, and glad the words have found new meaning in your life.

Just as a reminder, if you haven't been reading there or don't know what I'm talking about, I'm posting my writings 1/day from now until whenever I run out of writings (at least 2 years from now).

If you're interested, you can read more at http://www.strive4impact.com/chronicle.

It's a bit noisy
It doesn't have an oven
It doesn't have a washer and a dryer.

Otherwise, we LOVE this place.

So, we've made 2 videos to show our apartment in Quito. Hope you enjoy! (And if you want, there's room for you to come and visit - Hint! Hint!)

We thought it meant quiet because earplugs are called torpedos de ruidoso.

So when we were in Panama City we thanked the Hotel Santana staff member for moving us to a room that was more ruidoso (thinking we were saying we appreciated a quieter room).

The lady laughed and left our more "ruidoso" room.

I'll come back to that in a minute.

While we've been traveling, we've noticed central and South America are pretty noisy places.

It's a friendly reminder in the form of a very powerful ad.

We got a new camera (which I love) for Christmas from our parents and families.

There's a problem with the lens (has a black smudge somewhere inside) which mysteriously appeared one day in Panama and hasn't gone away.

I need to get in touch with Nikon to see what they can do about it (since it's under warranty).

With us being in South America, I don't know what they will do, but hopefully they will replace it or have a place to repair it here in Quito. (Wishful thinking?)

Every Friday in our Spanish classes, Jonathan and I have to try to decipher the words to a song in Spanish by a guy from Colombia.

It's a listening and comprehension exercise.

For those of you who know Jonathan even remotely well, you already know that listening to a song over and over and over (seriously about 15 times) is as close to torture as it gets for him.

He's been singing this song ever since.

I just thought I'd share it with you, so that if you hear him singing a song in "some weirder foreign language", you'll know what it is.

I'm a visual person. He's strongly auditory.

He is much better at this activity than I am. I don't think it would matter what language a song were in, he'd still be better at it than me.

In the category of *language*, I would include HTML, Spanish, business language, and geometry.

This is about my efforts at learning the language of Spanish.

I was super frustrated in Spanish class this past Wednesday. It felt like high school pre-calculus all over again.

I just don't get Spanish yet...

So Valentine's Day is very special for us.

We like to celebrate Valentine's Day by cooking each other dinner.

We'll be making chicken parmesan and having pasta with homemade sauce, followed by a dessert of no-bake cookies.

Yummy!

For lunch, we went out to a little Italian cafe' close by here and ate like a king and queen for less than $14 (including tax + tip).

The place was all decorated in Valentine's Day decor... made it a really fun lunch date.

It's also carneval (Car nuh vahl) here in Quito (and all over Ecuador - and the world really), so we got sprayed with a little water from the back of a pickup truck on the way to the store today.

More about Carneval in another post.

How about you? What did you do for Valentine's Day?

Today Jonathan and I met up with our friends Alex and Kyra (whom we met at the language school). We decided that it would be a great day to go up Pichincha Volcano via the Teleferiqo.

El TelefériQo comes from teleférico (gondola) and Quito.

The TelefériQo takes you from the west of Quito up the mountain.

These pictures are from the tradition of eating cuy, or guinea pig.

WARNING:This post contains some pretty graphic pictures of dead and cooking animals that still look like guinea pigs.

If you're okay with that, continue on.

I've got a video of this experience as well, so be sure to check that out below. Before the video though, here are a few of the pictures from us cooking and eating cuy.

I watched this video tonight about a technology called Sixth Sense from a conference called TED (A conference which I would love to attend sometime).

From this video, I hope you will enjoy learning about how technology is making relevant and important information instant and useful in our daily lives.

There are very powerful applications for this technology today and into the future.

They're HUGE!

Take a look:

Paolo told us that there is a government-sponsored bus that runs down a main road (6. de Diciembre). This bus costs only $0.25 per person, per ride. However, it only stops at designated stops.

There are other busses that run a similar route and will stop anywhere, but those are a bit more confusing if you don't know exactly where you're going. And they take longer.

So, when we got to the bus stop, we hopped up on the platform (directly from the road) thinking that we paid on the bus. We were wrong.

The bus security guard came up to us and said that we needed to go through the turn styles, and pay there. Oops. He escorted us back to the booth and watched very carefully that we did as we were told.

The challenge though, is that we didn't know where the bus would stop, and where the closest stop to our school would be. We were just hoping that we would recognize street names as we drove past them.

At one point, we thought we'd gone too far, so we got off. After we left the bus stop, and checked our map (given to us by Javier yesterday), we realized that we were only about half way there.

So we had to get back on the bus, and pay again.

The next time we got off the bus, we were at the right place. Exactly. The bus stopped right at the street we needed!

So we started walking to the school. We got a few blocks and realized we'd gone the wrong way. No big deal, but we were already late meeting Pablo there.

Apparently being late is a bigger deal in Ecuador that it was anywhere in Central America. But, Pablo loaned us his cell phone, and we settled up on the groceries he bought us yesterday.

Once at the school, Sophia showed us around and gave us a welcome packet. We'll start classes on Monday.

We were too early.

Check in took approximately 6 minutes, and security took even less. So, we were left with plenty of time to wander the airport.

We went to a small café (the only one we saw in the airport) for a cappuccino. We each ordered one. We thought that they were on the expensive side ($2.50 / 8 oz.), but thought that since we were in Panama home to excellent coffee, that we would go ahead and enjoy a last cup of Panamanian coffee.

Unfortunately, the coffee was not good. Not good at all. It was a waste of $5.

Then we went and boarded our plane. To Costa Rica. Yes, we had to fly from Panama to Costa Rica before flying to Ecuador.

(There is no way by land from Panama to South America. The highway doesn't go through an area called The Darien Gap. The Darien Gap is home to a vast jungle, and many indigenous people of Panama. There are several reasons why there is no road connecting Panama with Colombia. One reason is the jungle. Apparently the jungle can overgrow the highway faster than they can build it. Another reason is drug trafficking. The Panamanians didn't want an easy way for drugs to come into Panama from Colombia.)

Traveling through Costa Rica was no problem at all. We didn't have to stop for customs or anything. I was expecting the same process there as what happens even just passing through the United States.

When we went to pick up our bags from baggage claim, we noticed that they had dogs. The dogs weren't just there smelling the bags.

Oh no, they were walking over everyone's bag as it went around the conveyor belt.

As we left, we were hoping that the representative from our Spanish School would be there to pick us up, as transportation from the airport is included in the price. But, we hadn't confirmed it, so we weren't sure

Luckily, Xavier was there holding a sign with our names. We gave him the address for the apartment that we found.

Javier dropped us off at Finlandia 443 30 minutes early. We waited outside for Paolo to show up. But, he was already there.

When Paolo came down, he said that he wasn't expecting us until 5 because he thought our plane arrived at 3. So, we weren't just 30 minutes early, we were 2 ½ hours early. That's unheard of here!

He was willing to let us come up and see the apartment anyway. It's great! It's on the 8th floor, and has 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, a big kitchen, and a balcony overlooking a large park...all for $20 / day ($600 / month). Awesome!

Paolo was nice enough to take us to the grocery store so we could get set up. Unfortunately, we'd forgotten to bring our money with us, so he even bought us a few groceries (we paid him back the next day). He's a really nice guy.

Our first day in Quito was really good. We're looking forward to spending the next month here, learning Spanish and exploring Ecuador.

Anyone have any suggestions for what we should see / do in Ecuador?

I remember hearing something about Manuel Noriega when I was a child.

I remember thinking he was in Nicaragua.

"Noriega" sort of sounds like "Nicaragua", especially to a 9 year old.

Why do I bring it up in a review of Hotel Santana in Panama?

The United States invaded Panama in 1989. To some of you, this isn't news. To me, (and I imagine to many people in the US under the age of about 33,) this is surprising news.

The United States invaded a country as close as Panama?