Trip to Quito, November 2016- Part 3.

Church by yourself with a toddler is hard. In the Miami Shores ward, I am the organist. Since I sit on the stand all sacrament meeting, Brandon has been in charge of Cora by himself. Now that the rolls are reversed, I am amazed at how well he has done. Cora is crazy!

Cora and her buddy Grandma.

 Some missionaries came over, and saw this waiting for them. Cute little diaper bum!

 She was just making herself at home.

Cora refrigeration.

My parents just happened to come back just before transfers. So I got to experience one for myself. Boy, it was exhausting!

 We were excited for the opportunity to pick up some new missionaries from the airport. Since I never went on a mission, it was exciting!

  

 My mom has quite the set up for her dinners. She knows exactly what to make for the goodbye dinner, and what to make for the new missionary dinner.

 They even have nice themed decor for the dinners.

 The biggest difference between the leaving dinners and the new missionary dinners are the levels of Spanish. During the testimony meeting for the missionaries going home, I couldn't understand a word of what they said. Even the American missionaries sounded totally fluent to me. During the new missionary testimony meeting, however, I could understand pretty well. I bore my testimony in very VERY basic Spanish, basically saying "Yo se que..." 

One of the elders was SO nervous. He said he was terrible at Spanish. So after the meeting I told him, "When my family came down here just a few months ago, my mom and Cole didn't speak Spanish at all. Now look at them!" That seemed to make him feel much better.

The next day was transferring the new missionaries to their areas. Cora was scared of the loud cheering (which they do every time the missionary is assigned), so we had to stay outside with the poor wifi so Cora would stop crying.

 Poor girl.

 Some guagua bread always helped.

 They have ceviche in the malls. It was delicious! (However, the mussels were super rubbery and weird.)

 Cora got to try out some new riding toys.

 But we ultimately got her a doll and stroller. She pushed it up and down the hall about 85,000 times that first day.

 Traffic... seems typical of Miami.

 I wish I could have gotten a better picture of this.

 There is some crazy architecture on the buildings.

 We got to stop by Papa's office. He had some candy for Cora, which won her affections for a second.

 This girl was dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood with a zombie face.

 Cora needed to bring her stroller to Papa's office.

 Hot and cold: Hot again. She at least tolerated giving him kisses.

 We went to go see "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them". It was a great movie, and an epic installment into the Harry Potter world.

Hot and Cold: Cold again.

 

 At the beginning of every transfer, my mom and dad bring the new missionaries to Panecillo. It is where missionary work in Ecuador was dedicated.

  

 Cora slept in our closet. We were so excited to see Dad in the morning!

Trip to Quito, November 2016- Part 2.

We had to find ways to entertain ourselves while my parents were in Cusco Peru. There was no way I was driving around (even with my Miami driving expereince), so we killed time in Quito ourselves.

The view over the city was just as amazing at night, over their bathtub.

 Cora got a major kick out of Mariana cleaning the balcony. She wanted to go out there SO BAD. 

 We took some walks around the city. To go from such a flat city to a hilly one is exhausting! 

 There was a Swedish park that we visited. It was nearby and up a small hill, and it was beautiful and well-maintained!

  

 Cora made a human (Mateo) and dog friend. It was cute since neither of them spoke, the language barrier didn't matter. I was barely able to communicate with his mom.

 Seriously, look at these hills! Normally I don't strap Cora in to the stroller (since she has the tray to keep her in and she doesn't try to climb out), but here I HAD to strap her in. She was dangling parallel to the ground at some points.

 We tried to find a Subway that was supposedly nearby, but we found an odd local sandwich shop instead. It was a nice little tour of Quito.

"Do you speak Spanish?"

Friday night, we decided to try to walk to Domino's. While we were heading out, it started to rain. We thought it might let up, but it didn't. So I took the pizza and Cole pushed Cora, and we ran as fast as we could home. Poor Cora did NOT like it. Luckily that sidewalk was a little bit more normal than the other ones, but it still took a while. So we got soaked!

 Cora FINALLY made it out to the balcony. As long as she was no more than 6 inches from someone's hands, she was able to check it out.

 Just 2 girls taking the city.

My parents got home early (EARLY) Sunday morning, which was good so we could make it to church.

Trip to Quito, November 2016- Part 1

We had the chance to go to Ecuador for 3 weeks, and talking about it will take a million posts. So here we go!

Originally we were going to fly out for about 2 weeks. My parents had a mission presidents' seminar the second week of November, so I was going to fly out November 3 and then fly back the 17th. But, then we realized that Brandon had the entire week of Thanksgiving off. So why not just extend our trip and have Brandon meet up with us for a week? All I had to do was cancel my half marathon which was supposed to be November 19. But that was a small price to pay (especially since they gave me all of my money minus $10 back) to spend 3.5 weeks with my family in Ecuador.

Flying with Cora was not too bad. It was a redeye flight, which means with customs and everything we got in at about 1:00 AM. We had a porter offer to take our bags through customs for us (which I was prepared for), and when I tried to tip him he grimaced at the amount. Even though it was $3 (about a day's wages) for 5 minutes of help. Ugh.

 The view is AMAZING!

 We got there right about Dia de los Muertos, which is a bigger holiday than Halloween. They have a bread and juice that are only available around Dia de los Muertos. The bread is guagua bread, which is a sweet bread shaped like a swaddled baby (creepy). The juice is colada morada, and it's like a delicious smoothie of all sorts of fruits. The yogurts are also WAY more watery than I was used to, so we needed to improvise a bib.

  

 Look at Cora's first pair of boots! We were worried about her freezing to death, and walking on the sketchy Quito streets in her moccasins so I bought these. She finally fit in them.

 We found a Christmas outlet store, which was like heaven for Cora.

 Since my parents don't have any kid toys at their house (obviously) we went to a toy store to pick up a few for Cora. She went straight to the biggest, fluffiest toy possible. Sorry, kid!

 We tried some barbecue from a new restaurant. My dad says if they have tile floors they're probably safe to eat from. I hope he's right!

 Since they live on the 7th floor of their building, it is stunning. Even if the balcony is terrifying with a not-totally-stable walker (so we just kept the balcony door locked at all times).

 The first trip out of town we took was to the Teleferico. It takes us up into the mountains just outside Quito, which was an even more amazing view.

  It was also nice to have my dad there with us. Even if Cora was ambivalent about Papa.

  

  

 We also got to go to the National Basilica. It was beautiful and terrifying to climb.

  

 We climbed up all the towers, and it was so scary. On the way down, people were yelling "Ya! Ya!" ("Already!") because I was moving so slowly. But there was not even the slightest feeling of security that you have while climbing scary things in the U.S. There were no security lines, and barely handrails. Add that to my somewhat crippling fear of heights and it took a VERY long time to get down.

 A very large KFC. Apparently it's a big deal down here!

 Cora and Grandma got along after church just fine.

 Cora discovered how cool these stools were, which was very scary because she was not very stable on it!

 And to have a personal piano player just for you? Perfect!

Cora showed off her new trick of talking to Siri. Of course Siri didn't understand her.