This week we have decided to fully take advantage of the bakery that it right outside our apartment gate. A dozen freshly baked delicious wheat rolls are less than a dollar. There are bakeries all over the place and they are a common daily stop for local folks. I will never feel the need to bake while living here. Baking at high altitudes is more complicated anyway! When the kids complain about some aspect of life here, we tell them to remember something they are thankful for. The bakery is on the "thankful for" list.
Monday and Tuesday: First days of in person school for the kids since last March (first time ever for Naomi)! Woohoo! Elise doesn't start with her class until November 3rd, but she does her virtual school in the library with a cohort of other elementary staff kids. I'm helping out in the library to monitor the kids (I'm trying to use the time to study Spanish too). Here's the view out of one of the library windows.
We all love being at school. We are taking the city bus to and from school. The kids get done with school at noon, then we eat lunch together as a family. After lunch the kids usually play for a little while and then I head home with them while Dane stays for the remainder of the day.
Wednesday: School at home for everyone. The school wasn't open for the day because some demonstrations were happening. Grocery shopping in the afternoon. Dane is interested in trying out the snacks that we've never seen before so we got a guava wafer snack this week.
Thursday and Friday: School at home with the kids. Dane went to the school to teach on Thursday and then participate on Friday, which is a day for the middle and high schoolers to come to the school for a "social" day. The kids and I stayed at home in order for the internet to get worked on as well. I don't really understand how the internet works. Our current service is apparently being transferred to another ECA family and then we are getting a new service. Not sure why they don't just set up new service at the other apartment. They came Thursday, but couldn't complete the hookup, so said it would be completed the following day. The didn't show up Friday and we were a bit stir crazy by the time Friday afternoon rolled around so got outside and burned off some energy.
Saturday: We attempted to find a hike that Elise's teacher told us about. We went the wrong way. East instead of west. It ended up being more of an urban hike, which was not what we were expecting. We hiked up the side of the mountain and had some beautiful views. Here are some of the pictures from our expedition. First, a view of the side of the mountain that we were on. We were up in the middle of all those buildings somewhere. Dane took this picture to accentuate how development seems to work here. Everything is really densely populated and urban and then, bam! there is nothing...maybe some cows or in the case of this picture, woods.
Now, some pictures of our "urban"hike.
Sunday: It was an active day for Dane. First he went on a 40 kilometer bike ride with a couple of co-workers. That would be roughly 25 miles. I was impressed! The ride was on one of the main highways going north out of the city. A busy road on a typical day, but on Sundays bikers take to the streets and take up one of the lanes. Dane said that there were hundreds and maybe even thousands of bikers.
The afternoon was spent with several staff and friends from the school at a soccer (futbol) field playing ultimate frisbee. Isn't the backdrop beautiful!? We both played, but Dane put much more energy into playing than I did. It's pretty exhausting running up and down a big field at over 8,500 ft in altitude! Needless to say, Dane was pretty tuckered out by the end of the day.
A couple of random pictures. The school's student council puts out a challenge each week. This week the challenge was to carve a picture or pattern into a fruit or vegetable. Justus took the challenge!
And you'll find Elise doing lots of this...
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