Ecuadorian Snow!

Kyle calls it Ecuadorian snow, but in fact it is hail.

In the Andes Mountains of Ecuador there are two season (Summer aka the dry season and Winter aka the rainy season.) Summer starts about March of every year and goes more or less through September.  During the Summer months it rarely rains and it is very sunny.  Though the temperature never gets above 80 degrees it can be pretty hot at over 8,000 feet when the sun is right on top of you.

During the Winter months it typically rains every afternoon, but sometimes it can be rain for several days without stopping.  In the Winter the temperature is in the 70's but it often feels much colder (especially at night) when it rains. So far our time living here has been in the Summer.  However, a month after moving into a different house we were welcomed to the rainy season by  few days of heavy rain and hail.

When the hard rains and hail began to fall we learned our house has numerous leaks in the roof.   Workers came this past weekend and repaired the roof (we hope), but we will find out soon enough when another hard rain falls.  Chalk this up to another great cross-cultural educational experience as we deal with owners and workers to get the needed repairs.

For now we are warm and dry as we work at learning the language and the culture.  We pray soon, with God's grace, we will know the language and the culture well enough that we can help reach, disciple, and train the people, believers, and leaders of Ecuador!

Nickel & Dime Size Hail.

Buy One Chicken Get One Chicken Leg Free...

A free chicken leg!  A deal you cannot refuse.

A few days ago Kim & I were at a local grocery store named "Mega-Maxi" doing some much needed grocery shopping.  Kim went down the meat isle to quickly pick up a few things, but when she returned I noticed she had a grossed out look on her face.  She was holding the chicken pictured above.  I asked her what was the matter and she stated chicken juices got on her when she picked up the chicken because they had attached a free chicken leg to the side.

We laughed about the incident (well I laughed), and it reminded us of a few other unusual or culturally different things in grocery stores here we have learned about since living in Ecuador. 

 1.  When you unload your shopping cart to pay for your items you then just push it to the side in the middle of the isle.

2.  A family of five will strategically place one member of their family in five different checkout lines to see which line turns out to be faster.  When the fasted line becomes obvious the other four members of the family will merge into that line with many more items.  (This one has ruined my short line on more than one occassion, but is a perfectly acceptable practice here.)

3.  There are two different ways people get a receipt.  One is "factura" and the other is "consumer final".  This in particular caused a great deal of confusion for us our first month or so.  You see they would ask, "factura?"  Of-course like any good American male who really does not understand but does not want to look like he does not understand I responded, "si."  At which point the cashier would begin asking me a long series of questions while I stood there dumbfounded thinking I have cash can't I just pay.

We now know to say "consumer final"  and I have mostly stopped saying "si" to questions I do not understand.  Shopping goes much smoother, but there is still an occasional free chicken leg that gets thrown into the mix of things when we least expect it.