On March 18th last year we decided to take the bus up to Saraguro, since we’d heard a lot about this town and its indigenous people by the same name. We left Loja early and settled into the front seat of the bus (cost: $1.75 each), where we enjoyed completely amazing views the whole way….
It didn’t matter so much to Keith since he’s not a big fan of live music performances, but one of the reasons I was so interested in Loja was because I love live music—especially symphony music—and Loja happens to be the music capital of Ecuador. When I found out that Loja had its own symphony…
These days, Ecuador receives a lot of attention for being a paradise for expatriates—or expats. The cost of living, the climate, the wonderful people, the beautiful scenery and the slower pace of life tantalize us as we endure the hectic pace, commercialism, extreme temperatures and other shortcomings of life up here in the North. But…
I learned Spanish in Mexico as a kid. My command of the language is a little rusty but quite good. Nevertheless, in Loja I learned all kinds of new words—or new meanings for previously known words. Here are some examples:
My posts about Loja, Ecuador are the most popular on my multi-themed blog, and I’ve received many notes and questions from various readers about Loja (keep them coming, by the way—I love hearing from my readers!). I thought I’d share the answers to some of them in this post, and hopefully more people will find…
Last week I wrote about 19 different weird and exotic fruits you can find in Loja, Ecuador. This week I’d like to continue the trend by throwing a few weird veggies into the mix! (By the way, if you want a ton of great info about Loja, Ecuador, check out the book I am writing!)…
Most of my past week has been consumed with drafting my book about Loja, Ecuador. The act of writing brings happy memories to the forefront of my mind. One such memory is of all the exotic fruits we got to know while living in Loja. I do not exaggerate when I say that every single…
Many of my friends and readers who followed our earthbag house build last summer have asked, “So, how much did you get done before winter?” The short answer is “Lots, but not as much as we’d hoped.” In this post I’ll share our final projects up until we wrapped things up just before Thanksgiving of…
Below is my account–as written in e-mails at the time–of my final weeks with Stella the Starling. Monday, June 19, 2000 I am playing a CD of 50 bird songs. You should see my birds! Stella is listening intently–I can see how she would start imitating them if she heard them enough.
Just in case you haven’t been following my blog lately, I recently published my first children’s book, Stella the Starling. I’ve delved into my old e-mails to find things I wrote about Stella while I raised her. Here are weeks 5 and 6 of “The Stella Diaries” from the summer of the year 2000. Enjoy!
We’ve recently moved to Dickinson, North Dakota for a few months of work. While Keith puts in 70 or more work hours per week, I plug away on my books and business, cook our meals, keep the house motorhome in order and do my best to keep everything running smoothly. To prevent myself from completely losing my…
Thankfully, the cough/sneeze that John mentioned on May 25 cleared up. By Stella’s fourth week of life, she had really developed a personality, and quickly endeared herself to everyone around! Here are some notes I wrote during that week. If you’ve read Stella the Starling (my children’s book), then you’ll no doubt recognize where…