Well, look at that. Another few months have gone by.
At the end of August, I left Dolores, Colorado and headed back up to Telluride. I spent the week working for the Telluride Film Festival. On Monday night I worked in the office and on Tuesday I painted objects, and parts of me, black. The rest of the week I had the best job ever. I handed out free goodie bags to the staff of the Festival. People came into my office and I gave them lots of nice stuff. They were very appreciative and it was a lot of fun.
Susie came back out to work at the festival and John came up to watch movies. All told, I saw about 18 movies that week. For two days straight I saw five movies a day, boy was my bottom sore. On the Sunday of that Labor Day Festival, I served ice cream in the park and then went and watched some more movies. I saw a lot of really excellent movies, a few I did not understand and some I did understand but did not appreciate.
After a day of hiking to get some blood flow back to our legs, Susie and I went back to Denver. I spent a few hours with my friend Wendy and then went back to Colorado Springs with Karla. We did a nice hike and hung out. Then Karla went back to school and I spent the day at REI, the outdoor equipment store.
On the 11th of September I left Colorado Springs to go back to Florida. An hour into the flight the pilot announced that, for security reasons, we had to land. We landed in Amarillo, Texas and were told about the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. All the planes were grounded and I spent a few days in Amarillo with lots of other stranded people. We made the local news a lot and mostly sat around and talked. American Airlines was nice enough to put us up at the Holiday Inn and buy us our meals.
On the 13th, I flew on to Dallas. The four other passengers and I all got to sit in First Class for the 44 minute flight. I guess it was back to business as usual for the airlines. They lost my luggage and one other guys. My flight back to Florida was delayed for several hours because they could not find a flight crew willing to join us. Eventually they did and I got back to Florida in the wee hours of the 14th.
I spent a few weeks visiting family and then went up to New Jersey to do the same. I saw Uncle Jim. He gets upset if I do not mention him specifically by name. I also hung out in New York with Milo and saw him perform a puppet show, which is his job. Then I went up to Boston and Connecticut to visit family there. I ate out a bunch with my dad and played with my sister. I also put a bunch of pictures on to my picture pages. You should check out the new pictures. The format is my best effort ever at making my web page fancy in any way, shape, or form.
After a three weeks up there, I flew back to Florida for another week and a half of family visits. I also had a chance to mail off an application to work in Japan.
On the morning of the 26th of October, I flew to Costa Rica and spent the day wandering around the capital, San Jose. In the evening I flew down to Lima, Peru. I spent the weekend with my friends Karem and Luis. I had a lot of fun with them for the weekend and then headed north. On the 29th, I took a bus to Trujillo and enjoyed the scenic desert coast of Peru. On the 30th, I took a few different buses up to Tumbes, Peru and spent the night there. Yesterday, I crossed into Ecuador and bussed up here to Cuenca.
Cuenca has over 200,000 inhabitants and is a little bigger than I prefer. But, it seems like a nice town otherwise. There are a lot of plazas and the surrounding hills look pretty close for some walking around. I have spent today looking for a family to live with and a teacher to study under. I plan to spend six weeks here studying Spanish. Spending that long in one place may prove challenging, but I think I can do it. I hope to start lessons on Monday.
The currency of Ecuador is the Dolar. One Dolar is equal to one US Dollar. In fact they do not even produce there own bills, they just use American money. They do have their own coins, but use American ones as well. So, I am in the middle of Latin America, spending dollars as the local currency. It is very easy to convert one Dollar into one Dolar. You just remove one of the "l"s from the American money and you have Ecuadorian money. The only problem with the system, as is common thorough out the world, is the fact that torn bills are either not accepted or not worth as much as the face value. I am already stuck with a five dollar bill that is missing a corner. I will probably be stuck with it until I return to the US in February.
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