mountain climbing and numero 1

First of all, I want to apologize for not putting anything on the blog in a while. We have been busy helping with a volunteer team up near Cayambe (a bit north of here). The little time that I've been on the computer in the last week or so has been spent on my space.
The pictures here are from another hike up Mt. Ilalo that me and my neighbor Jim went on last week.
This was taken of me near the top of Ilalo.

Here's one of my friend, Jim. We are thinking about climbing Mt. Cotopaxi...guess we'll see. Watch out, Cotopaxi. This was my second time to climb Ilalo (I have pictures from the first trip back in the March/April archives). It was a nice trip but a bit drier and dustier this time.


Here is a picture of some strange grafitti, it says, in Spanish-'I urinated here.' Instead of 'I wuz here', 'Here, I made my mark.' It's just kind of funny. Here in Ecuador, people write grafitti in different places. A lot of the messages are political, or otherwise, are philosophical observations about life. I'm not sure what this one is. It is painted on a wall in our neighborhood. We'll have to share more grafitti statements later on...
Check out this lawbreaker...citizen's arrest. The sign here says, you guessed it, 'do not urinate here.' I guess some people don't just care (this picture is taken of, guess who? and this is only a publicity stunt). A neighbor and I were discussing public urination one time and he stated that it is a mark of 'maleducacion' or a lack of education. This brings me to my next story...sorry for this blog all about #1. Anyways, to start out I can explain that from our front window we have a view of the street below. Well, we had some neighbors over for dinner and a Bible study. They were preparing to leave and we were just casually looking out the window to the street below. And lo and behold, this guy was doing his business, you know, marking the territory. Well, he kept going and going, kind of like the energizer bunny...finally, my neighbor remarks in Spanish, 'dude is going like a horse.' I then commented to him that we have the same expression in English. The moral of this story is you learn something every day and we never cease to be amazed at things we see and hear here.