Fun and sadness

The apartment feels empty this evening. Samuel and Ben left this evening, and are on the bus heading for Quito as I write. They pulled out about 6:00 p.m. this evening, and should arrive in Quito at about 3:00 a.m., where they will take a taxi straight to the airport to catch a 7:30 flight. They could probably have caught a bus an hour or so later and still made it fine, but we decided that it was better to have the extra slack in their schedule, in case the bus had a delay of some sort.

They should be back in Albuquerque tomorrow evening, and are planning to head back to Las Cruces to sleep in their own beds tomorrow night. We hope that all goes well. I have been reading accounts of security checkpoints on international flights into the US, so it will be interesting to hear what their experiences are.

Anyhow, a couple of the young single women from church decided that they needed a proper send-off, and so took us out for lunch today, where we ate cuy, or as they are called in English, guinea pig. Indira and Karina are sisters, and their English is somewhat better than my Spanish, so we talked more in English than Spanish, but Susan and I also asked a lot of questions about Spanish words and phrases.

Here is a picture of roast cuy on a plate.And here is a picture of me taking a bite of cuy. It is quite good, but there is not a lot of meat on a single cuy. Fortunately, they also served it with lemonade, potatoes, boiled eggs, hominy, and a couple of other side dishes, and we ordered trout for Susan, as we agreed that cuy would probably not be good for her.Here are Indira [left] and Karina [right].And finally, here are Samuel and Ben just about to board the bus. We are so glad that they could come and stay with us for this time, and they agreed that they had a really good time, but the downside is that they have to leave. I am sure that in a couple of days we will be back in our routine, and things will be fine, but it sure seems quiet tonight.