School, new friends, celebrations, frustrations and success

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Sorry for the delay for the post, hope that you enjoyed reading our previous one.

On the 27th of September, Henry and I celebrated our 12th year wedding anniversary and on the 28th, his 9th year of retirement. We enjoyed breakfast with the kids at the Surf Shak, happy hour at Bambu, then dinner alone at the Shamrock (it was nice being alone).

The kids ended out the month of September at the school in Bahia, but will now be going to a school in San Vicente. Manglar private school, is only 15 minutes away by bus and has a true spanish immersion program for the kids (they will now get to sleep in till 6, yey for them and Henry too!). They will start the new school on monday at 7:30 and get out at 1:20.

We have met so many wonderful people. Noi was just here checking on the construction progress of her new home. Noi, her husband Sam, and 2 kids will be moving to Canoa at the end of this year (we met Sam last time we were here, what a wonderful family). Fernando (another mexican, tattoo artist) and Kate (a british girl, what a cool accent) are here visiting and are looking to move to Canoa at the end of this month ( our little community is growing already).

This week we had to go to Quito to register our visas. We (the 4 of us, and our neighbors Mike and Needa) took the wednesday midnight bus from Canoa to Quito. We arrived in South Quito at 7 am on thursday, took a trolly to downtown Quito and the taxi cab adventure started (let the frustrations begin). The first taxi cab dropped Henry and the kids off at the corner where we were told the building would be (I followed in another taxi with Mike and Needa), upon exiting the cab, the driver sped off with our luggage in the trunk. We could not find the building and asked another taxi driver who took us accross town only to find out that we were at the wrong place ( I had just about enough of this country at that point) . To make matters worse, we took another taxi back to the original location only to realize that we were 20 feet around the corner from the right building in the first place.

So now we are there and there is lots to do. We find out we need to make a deposit in to an international bank of 10 dollars per applicant. Make numerous copies of our passports and visas, buy file folders and manilla envelopes, hole punch, and organize all paper work before submitting our forms and passports for registration. Unfortunately for Mike and Needa, they were informed that they had to pay a substantial fine for not registering their visas within 30 days. They decided to return to Canoa that afternoon by bus and try to straighten things out later. We submitted everything and then find out that we would not get our registration and passports returned to us until monday (no bueno because our luggage was stolen!). We were informed that only the director of the department of extranjeria could expedite our requests for registration any sooner (we felt a bribe coming on, ha ha). After waiting for an hour and a half for the director, we pleaded our case and had success (no bribe necessary). So they were able to process our visa registrations and returned our passports in about an hour and we thought we were done (wrong!!). We then needed to make more copies of our passports, visas, and now new registration stamps, more manilla envelopes, as well as provide a passport photo for each applicant (are you kidding me?!?!) to submit to a different department (same building, thank God!). We were fortunate enough to receive our new ID cards at 4:29pm (they close promptly at 4:30).

After all that taxi drama, Greg was able to get us in contact with a private taxi service, who becomes your private driver, Jose (and guardian angel). Jose was able to get us around safely and effectively to accomplish our mission. After all of the drama, all we wanted to do was get back to Canoa, so we called to book a flight to Manta at 4:45 to find out we had to pay for our flight by 5:00 at the airport (20 minutes away). Jose worked his driving magic and got us to the airport with 5 minutes to spare. We flew out promptly at 6 and arrived in Manta at 6:35. At 6:55 we got in a taxi to Bahia which arrived at 8:20. Took the panga (water taxi) to San Vicente. Jumped in a cab to Canoa and was home by 9:00pm on thursday. In 21 hours, we managed to sit on a bus for 7 hours, get squished on a trolly bus, take 6 different taxies, one airplane, one panga, get robbed, take care of business, and make it home safely (the Wonsey way). Amen.

It has been great hearing and seeing our family back in the states on skype. We were able to see and talk to Caleb, Erin, and Trace, as well as Steve, Allison, and Hannah, Terrina and family. We have talked to Morris and my mom every week (sunday is a good day to contact us via skype).

Thanks for following the blog, makes us feel connected. Please continue to make comments or ask questions via this blog or email. Hope you enjoy the slide show, we are trying something new.