A Day in the Life

Rain, rain go away! It has been raining nearly non-stop since Sunday, and projects to continue. So what else should we do, but blog! 

The week-and-a-half that followed our Quilotoa trip was pretty quiet. Normal day-to-day stuff, with a laid back weekend out at Diego & Inga’s house in San Joaquin (a “suburb” of Cuenca). As such, I thought I would write a summary of our typical day here.

We wake up with the sun – when it’s out. Being at the equator, there’s not a whole lot of variation in the sunrise and sunset. It’s pretty consistently up at 6:00 and down at 6:00. The weather here is all over the place – it is said that you experience the four seasons every day in Cuenca. When the sun is out, it will be warm and 75 degrees. When the clouds roll in, it’s cold at 67. It will be cold and rainy in the morning and warm and sunny in the afternoon, and then cold and rainy again in the evening. So far, we’ve been fairly lucky. It was quite rainy our first week, and then we went a good 5 weeks with mostly sunny and warm weather, until this week came along, anyway.

In any case, we arise, get dressed, the boys get ready for school and we have breakfast. Then, around 7:45, I head out with the boys to catch the bus and go to school.

Waiting to catch Number 12

After I drop them off, I walk back home. In the meantime, Shannon has cleaned up the apartment and gotten ready for her day at school. She takes off for her Spanish studies around 9:50 a couple blocks from our apartment. She spends two hours with her teacher, one-on-one, in an intense course.

Shannon preparing for her teacher's arrival - what a building!

While Shannon and the boys are at school, I am at home, working at the kitchen table on my various projects at home, listening to music.

School lets out at 12:30. At that point, one of two things will happen:

(1) Usually, Shannon will leave from her class and walk to get the boys, and then bring them home, at which point we have lunch and relax for a bit. At 2:00, Finn and I head to la Escuela de Futbol. Finn has soccer practice from Monday-Thursday from 2:30-3:45 at the Coliseo – the city’s sports arena and outdoor complex.

He plays on the 6-7 year old team. There are no other teams – this is entirely instructional. They generally work on various drills for the first 45-60 minutes of practice, and then put on penny-jerseys and play a game. The difference in skill level at this age is extreme, as you might expect where one kid started aged 7 years 11 months, and others started at 6 years 0 months. The other aspect that stood out to me were the kids who watched a lot of professional soccer on tv. These are the kids who (a) understand the game a lot better than their peers and (b) emulate the showboating nature of soccer stars (i.e., running and sliding after they score a goal).

In any case, as it turns out, this is part of the national soccer network that ultimately feeds into the national team. After the kids make it through the 11-12 year old team, they’ll compete for the 13-14 year old Seleccion de Azuay – the province’s team. From there, it’s further whittling down till the national selection is complete…

While Finn is at soccer, Elliott is usually at home having quiet time, although occasionally Elliott joins me at soccer and we goof around, and sometimes he’ll get to go to the park near our apartment by himself.

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(2) On most Fridays, and occasionally on other days, I might pick up the boys and go visit the park near our old apartment, which is also within walking distance from the school. We’ll grab hot dogs and chips from a nearby stand and enjoy the park for a while.

After we finish at the park, it’s a walk up the river to catch the bus home. And being three boys, we might sometimes stop to sit on the banks and throw rocks in the river for a while.

Once everyone is back home, it’s general free time until dinner. Frequently, I’m back doing some work on the computer, Shannon is working on dinner, and the boys like to go downstairs and play in the parking area of our building (which is closed off from the street) with some of the other kids in the apartment building.

Finally, it’s dinner, and then playtime for a bit and off to bed for another day!