Ecuador 8/21/2025 |
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Thursday, August 21, 2025 - New Water Filter, Party PreparationsAntonio had the day off again today. I had a meeting during breakfast, so I ate upstairs in Sisa and Shina's room. We had bologna and cheese on a fresh roll, potato pancakes, juice, and coffee.The big baptism and Confirmation party is the day after tomorrow, so family and friends came over to begin preparations. Firewood was delivered. The two pigs which the family had purchased arrived. Men led them out back, dispatched them, and burned the hair off with a blowtorch. Working with the women, they scraped the remaining hair and burnt part of the skin off, gutted the pigs, and cleaned them. All of the neighborhood dogs began to circle, wondering if they would get a piece of the action. Lunch was soup and spaghetti with meat sauce. Shina helped to cook. Any time people come to the house to help with something, the family feeds them. So they brought bowls of food out to all of the helpers in the back yard. The "maestro" whom Antonio had hired came over at 2 o'clock to install the water filtration system. This was exciting, as we had been drinking bottled water since the old filtration system broke. We couldn't take the chance to drink unflitered water. The maestro had almost everything set up, but Antonio was short some plastic tubing. So he had to wait while Antonio made a quick trip to town to buy more. In the meantime, the family fed the maestro, and I made him a cup of coffee. Craig also had a cup of coffee, and I had hot chocolate. By the time the maestro was done with his food and coffee, Antonio was back. They finished up the work and we had a fully functional reverse osmosis water filtration system! It took a little while for us to figure out how the tank and pump worked, but soon we were in business. The people who had delivered the tents yesterday came back to continue the set up. There were two large square tents positioned side by side to create a large rectangular space. They had two layers of tarps and a trough between where the tents meet, so that water would roll off in case of rain. People came to collect the gutted pigs and took them away to cook them. We gave Aida Nena's new dinner plate (with her photo and her new legal name, Eralith Kailani) in secret. Nena had been upset that the plate that we gave her last year (that had her previous name, Adelis) was no longer accurate. The new plate had a daisy design, which matched the jumper we had brought for her.  After dinner, we went to our casita at 9:15 p.m. |
 Scorching the hair off the pig  Achi Mama, Kuri, Sisa, Nena, Achi Taita  Shina cooking lunch Photo Gallery August 21 |
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