May Update: To Make You Laugh!!

I'm sending two entries to my blog this month. The first is really just to make you giggle, the other more detailed information! Thank you always to you for taking the time to read these, it constantly amazes me of the interest so many of you show in the work and the people here, and that is a real encouragement to me.

Anyway, here goes.... three events of the month that are particularly amusing!!!

Number One: Caterpillar Kebabs!
I have got quite used now to being served ceviche (raw fish) for breakfast when I am travelling with PEPE, as I usually stay in family homes. However, caterpillar kebabs was certainly a first!! In Coca, I was taken by my hosts to the local indigenous market at 7am before church!! I'm afraid I blew all cultural sensitivity out of the window and refused out right to sample them!!

Number Two: Lunch Guests

I have decided to invite different families from church around for lunch on the Sundays that I am not travelling. This has been lovely and is a good opportunity to get to know people a bit better. However one lunch as one of the men from church tucked into an apple and blackberry crumble (with English custard!!) he then began to spit the tiny seeds from the blackberries out of his mouth and onto my lounge floor!!!! His wife didn't treat this behaviour as odd or rude, so I guess it is normal for here!! Fair enough if you are outside, but not in someone's house!! I have vowed now only to make apple crumble for any future guests, leaving out the blackberries!!!

Lunch guests, folk from my church here in Quito

Number Three: Mice in my House

This started off as quite amusing, although I have to admit that it has now gone beyond a joke. In fact after watching two mice emerge from under my bed last night for the umpteenth time and after finding their droppings on my pillow when I returned from my latest travels, it is no longer funny! I thought I was just trying to kill one mouse, but it appears to have multiplied and I'm really not sure how many there are. I've tried venom, mouse traps, even the neighbours wandering around my house with a broom ready to 'splat the rat'! But yet he and his little family continue to survive!

It's been the one time I've been grateful for the difference in time zones in the UK as last night after discovering they'd been on my bed again and after realising they have multiplied somewhat I phoned Dave in the early hours of my morning in quite a tearful state!!!

I have four PEPE teachers staying over at my house next weekend, hope they don't mind sharing their beds with mice!!

All fun and games in Ecuador hey!!!