Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Seriously...I will get you a prize.


Dear Blog,

I messed up. I was selfish and stupid and I took you for granted. I didn’t appreciate your value and so I neglected you. I’m really sorry. Please forgive me and consider giving me another chance. Probably several more chances. Thank you.

Love,

Amy


So, God has given me this great gift. He brought me here and set me down in the middle of an entirely different country and people and culture, and allows me to experience things I never would have experienced in the U.S. And that is awesome. And silly me…half the fun of this is being able to share it with those I love back home. Oh, and I came up with a world full of excuses for not sharing like I know I can. (Imagine the following in the “Chris Luna Mocking” voice) “ooOOOoooohh, I’m Amy Morrison…I’m so busy. I don’t have time to blog. oooOOoooh, I don’t have the internet in my apartment. It’s too hard to blog. OOOOOooh, there’s nothing new going on. I don’t have anything to blog about.”

Lies!! Well…not the no internet in my apartment one. That one is true. But the rest…I’m not busy. I choose to busy myself sometimes with things that can wait. I do have time to write. I can make time to write. It’s not too hard. It’s just not as convenient. That’s not the same thing. And there’s always something to write about. Maybe there’s nothing new to me. But how do I know it’s not new to you? Maybe you’ll find things interesting that I’ve grown accustomed to.

So, there you go. I’m going to try again. I’ll start from the beginning.

I live in South America…in Ecuador, which is a small country on the west coast, right on the equator. Ecuador is divided into 21 provinces, plus the Galapagos Islands.


I live in the Guayas province which is on the coast. The Guayas province is divided into 25 “cantónes”, which I guess you could say is kind of like a county.



I live in the cantón called Durán, which is right next to Guayaquil, the largest cantón in Guayas. The cantónes each contain a big city that shares the same name as the cantón and lots of small “ciudadelas” which are the little towns surrounding the big city.



So within Durán, I live in a small ciudadela called El Recreo. The ciudadelas are divided into “etapas”, or sectors….kind of like the zip-code system in the U.S. I live in the 3rd etapa of El Recreo. The majority of the houses here are not divided by streets…they’re really more like apartment buildings, in the sense that there are rows and rows of houses with just sidewalks in the middle, and the actual streets are few and far between.

So a row of houses is called a “manzana” and all the manzanas have numbers. And the houses in each manzana (MZ) have a villa (V) number. I live in manzana number 361, in villa number 9. So my address looks like this:

Amy Morrison

El Recreo, 3ra etapa, MZ. 361, V. 9

Durán-Guayas

Ecuador


If I wrote my address that way in the U.S. it would look like this:

Amy Morrison

Bakersfield, 93314, Hinault St. 13506

Kern-California

U.S.A.

I wonder if my letter would make it if I sent it to that address. I would try, but it costs a lot more to mail a letter there from here than it does to se

nd one from there to here.

So now you know all about provinces and cantones and ciudadelas and etapas and manzanas and villas. Congratulations! I expect you’ll be able to send me lots of letters now that you know how to address the envelopes. Just letters, tho

ugh…no packages…unless they’re under 4 pounds. Anything bigger and they will charge me a million dollars to get it out of customs. J They tax packages and boxes that come through the mail by the pound…especially if whoever send the package sent it with any kind of certification or priority. They think there’s something worth something in the box, so they make you pay extra for it. We discovered shortly after paying a lot of money to get a Christmas package out of customs a couple years ago that if you send a package that’s less than 4 pounds from the U.S., and if you just send it in the regular mail wit

h no guarantees or certifications or anything special…well they just pass that package right along to Durán…it doesn’t get stopped in customs in Guayaquil. I guess they just figure it’s not worth anything, so it’s not worth anything to the

m to keep it there. Hahaha!

Anyway, that’s how it is. I hope you’ve enjoyed

reading about addresses and corrupt customs offices. And now for an unrelated riddle:

I'm stuck in Amy and Ismael's toilet! Boiling water won't flush me down. A plunger won't plunge me. A wire coat-hanger can't fish me out. A bottle of bleach won't budge me. Lye can't liquefy me. Acid doesn't persuade me to leave. What am I?

Firs person to answer correctly wins a prize!

4 Comments:

Blogger Denise said...

You are a hairbrush.

This is an answer to the riddle. I know you are not a hairbrush.

3:12 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

toidy bowl ring

jules

what's my prize?

7:20 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Its a tooth brush.... that was an easy one.

11:58 AM  
Blogger Amy said...

Curt...way to go. You win the prize. The prize was going to be an ecuadorian chocolate bar...but I can tell you have finer tastes. Therefore, I am changing the prize. The prize is that I will let you take me out to a lunch and/or dinner at The Happy Donkey anytime between January 1, 2012 and May something, 2012. Congratulations!!!

1:58 PM  

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