Music in the Night

May 15, 2012

Yes, all five of them
can ride the bike at once.

I mentioned before that Todd and I moved several months ago into a local 2-bedroom/2 bath rental house for the next 10 months to a year while we construct a new house on the lot we’ve owned in Jardines de Olon since 2007 when we purchased our house there too (which has since been sold to a great gal named Sarah, and still available as a vacation rental)... As it is, the other last 3 remaining lots for sale in Jardines have all recently sold, so it appears there may be four of us beginning construction sometime this year. Todd and I are still mulling over plans/ideas for our house.

We love our new neighborhood! Our landlords, Klever and his wife Eulalia and their adorable and polite kids (Natalie, Klevar Jr. – also known as Alex – and sweet little Ameli are pictured at left and below). They have been wonderful helping us get settled in, and will eventually complete the upper level on their house. Klevar brings/sells us fresh milk several times a week, which is delicious, once you get over the fact that it’s straight from the cow.

Our neighbors are wonderful. We live on a side street (sorta a cul-de-sac) with 3-4 other homes behind the Olon police station. I suppose our rental house and the one directly across the street are the nicest/most finished on the block, but no one locally would consider the adjoining houses or their owners as “poor”. Their homes are typical of most homes here.

Across the street from us:
Manino & Nick's place on the right;
Julia's family house on the left.

Across the street lives “Manino”, who is part of the management team of “Sunbawa” – a successful, popular, surf marketing and sales company. If I remember correctly, Manino is Argentinian, and speaks ingles fluently. His roommate “Nick” is Ecuadorian, lived a long time in the States, and back here now to work with his family in the tuna cannery business. Both are great guys.

Next to Manino and Nick lives Julia and her husband and their 4-5 kids (not sure I have all these youngsters straight yet). Julia has been wonderful about keeping an eye on our place while we have been in Cuenca for dental work for most of this month (we just returned from our third trip, which have averaged about 4 days each time).

Our house on the front left,
looking east

The first time I met Julia, which is shortly after we moved in, Julia and her kids were unabashedly going through our trash (left out for trash guys) looking for plastic and other redeemable/recyclable things…And maybe just for stuff that we consider “junk” that isn’t to them. While I was initially surprised to see folks on my driveway pawing through my garbage, I went out and introduced myself, and then helped them sort through the stuff too.  Since then, I always set aside a separate recycle bag for Julia and her family. One of our plastic living room chairs broke in half, and they wanted those pieces too.

Our house on left.
Caesar's house to the right.
Taken from behind the police station.

When I think of all the stuff Todd and I wasted while living in the States, I now feel ashamed. We were only two people living in one house in Palm Springs, and yet we managed to pack to the brim – TWICE a week – TWO HUGE garbage cans, if not more (though, in our defense, we did entertain guests often there). Since living in Ecuador, we have learned so much better how to recycle or re-invent broken things for other purposes….And we are down to about 1-2 garbage sacks a week on our trash.

Still, we have nothing on the Ecuadorians, who never fail to astonish me with their creativity and inventiveness using whatever is available.

Caesar drying his pants.

Directly next door to us is “Caesar”  (I think his last name is Moreno, but he is one who speaks with such a deep coastal accent, I can hardly understand him, so I’m not sure I have his name/nickname correct). He is an older, modest, “shy”, unassuming man that I know also keeps an eye on our place when we are gone. At first he intimidated me a little, because I have such a hard time understanding him….Yet late at night or around dawn (when I like to work/write) the most glorious, dreamy, “operatic” music quietly blooms from his stereo – which in itself is unusual, because most folks around here turn the stereo up full blast.

I think I’ve heard Andrea Bocelli, certain tracks from “Life is Beautiful”, classical music such as Handel, Chopin, and lovely Latin romantic ballads that are new to me.

Caesar is such a “rough-hewn” looking man, and rather taciturn (which is blessing for me, since I can’t understand one word he says), but when he quietly plays his music, I find myself mesmerized, seduced, and drawn to sit on our outdoor front steps to savor the music in the night.

The kids in the neighborhood are fun, cute and friendly…I always try to keep some candy in our bowl for them if they come by. They come over often to borrow a very elementary Spanish/English book I have, and now have a made a tree house en un árbol nearby.

Neighborhood kids on
Manino's porch perusing
the Spanish/English book

View from our front door.
Police station (partially painted blue)
in the background.

Todd and I are more or less getting settled into our new “home” for a while. Local Ecuadorian rentals/prices/accommodations are reasonably priced ($150-400) and can be hard to find if you don’t speak Spanish or don’t know local friends. Generally they do not come with furniture or appliances. We did buy our full sized fridge and a comfortable queen bed when we moved in here, since we’ll move those eventually to our new house. And we did have a desk and a few other items of furniture/kitchen ware/linens we brought with us.

One of the damn chickens
that keeps coming inside.

I’ve slowly but surely tried to make this house a little more homey, because we’re likely to be here awhile... Ummm..."sophisticated" decorating choices are  hard or expensive to find, usually. And the outdoor chickens (belonging to Julia) keep finding their way into our house when I leave the front door open for a breeze during the day. They manage to find their way in to our front room to peck around until one us chases them out.   Not quite fond of them.

But a couple of things I have found:

I needed a dish-drying rack and could only find it in this color. Our friend Mel says we should call it the “Barbie” kitchen set….I rather I agree with her, and now giggle every time I look at it.

I also happened to come across this “Persian” rug one day while the traveling bazaar came through Olon. Anyone who knows me probably knows I am more inclined towards Japanese-influenced or mid-century 50’s modern ascetics rather than anything like this rug……Still, it only cost $10, and I was all over it. It goes well with the plastic chairs and storage bin coffee table.

The thing that is really starting to scare me is the chandelier built in the living room. I hated it at first, but now I’m starting to really like it. It came installed with those awful/blaring/dangerous mercury “power-saving” GE light bulbs from China.

Despite having to look at it through a cardboard filter (like looking at an eclipse), I’m actually starting to appreciate its gaudiness.