Change!

Change is the only thing that will always be. A fundamental truth of life.

We will go travelling through Ecuador for a few months. Plans have changed.

Now that we have our visa and our cedula, we will buy a 'new' cheaper, older car, get our Ecuadorian driver licence, terminate our rental agreement and travel.

Now that I have let go of a big part of my life (and also are no longer haunted by the idea of courtcases) I feel the space for a new chapter in my life. Now that we have seen hundreds of kilometers of State Highway driving up and down to Riobamba, but have not seen much of the actual country yet.

Now that the piece of land seems to run into stagnation, because it is hard to get electricity going yet and to have water access -and that everything we would want to do to solve this will take more money, time and effort- while we know this is not actualy the land we want to live on.

Now that Eric - who had a strong feeling we were not in the right place yet, but tried to postpone this feeling and make something of it- finds out for himself that his initial feelings are usually correct (albeit sometimes difficult to discern from his wishes).

Now that the kids seem mostly like zombies and don't want to do much of anything anymore. And we want to find out what brings us happyness. And it will not happen from behind their computer.

Now that Lem has recovered. Now that we have had the time to arrange our things from a quiet, sheltered place and are virtually done with that.

Now that we know we have to figure out what we want to do, soon. Because otherwise we will not have the money to do it.

Now that that time has come, apparently. We will travel. 

We looked at the map of Ecuador with the five of us and each of us pointed out a place where we would want to be. A place we might want to live, even. But first: a place to look into and feel about.

We started making the land ready for our departure. We made a nice pile of useable wood with a raincover over it and made a start with burning the rest of the wood.

Coming week we will go to Cuenca to buy a car and try and sell the one we have. We will go past Loja on the way to Cuenca to ask the driving school there what we need to do for our drivers licence and set things for that in motion. Already we have been learning 20 of the 300 questions daily for the theory exam.

Our Spanish is going well. Every day we still practise on our online program and each monday Elsa comes by to chat with us in her native tongue. And to correct our sentences and make us repeat them. 

When neighbours come by-and they come by every 2-3 days for various reasons, but usually because they want to sell us something- we notice that we can understand them a lot better and vice versa. Sometimes we can even keep a conversation going for a while.

And usually we don't buy what they want to sell (with the exception of local honey or vegetables).

We have informed our dear French friends and they feel it is absolutely right for us to go as well. And how it works with friends; the 'right' choice of one will benefit the life of the other. So their life seems to have picked up as well after the news. Things they have been waiting for, are finally coming through.

Mar was receiving guitar lessons from Nikki and now that Nikki knows we are leaving, she is teaching Mar to self study.

Our dear German archery teacher, Hans, has also been notified. We were all improving very well (I am especially good with moving targets, Eric never misses target when he focuses well, Mar has grown great confidence with shooting and Beer is a natural talent, also with throwing daggers), so we will probably buy a bow and arrows from him, to practice en route.

We have notified the landlord(s) of our plans. We have asked them if they want to buy the wood we put into the house, over from us. Otherwise we will take it out and store it, before we leave.

We are in a 'wrapping up'  energy and preparing for a journey again.