As stated before I hadn’t been to Ecuador since the Regan administration, so my memory of my family on my Mom’s side is a bit fuzzy. My cousin Ivan Jose helped me put together a family chart of my Mom’s four sisters and five brothers.

Ing. Wither was a director at the power company and was my Dad’s boss when my Dad was in the Peace Corps. He is now a professor of Electrical Engineering. He has four children from his first marriage (Quitin, Gussi, and Wither Eduardo, and Maria Rosa) and three from his second (Lalo, Vanessa, and Marival)

Lcda. Lina is a public school teacher. She lives with my Grandmother.

Sr. Walter passed away in a car accident

Sra. Myrna is a businesswoman who deals with real estate in Los Angeles. She has a husband Walter Delgado and two daughters, Rosemary and Cathy.

Ing. Pablo runs a business installing power poles and wires in small towns and residential developments in Manta. He has a wife Alicia and three kids (all doctors) Gunter, Pablo Eric, and Karen Alicia. They live in central Manta.

Sra. Astromelia is a homemaker in the United States. She married David Kral and has three kids, Chris, Cathy, and Nicolas (me).

Egda. Elena is divorced and has one son, Ivan Jose. They live with my Grandmother.

Paco is a successful Mazda salesman in Manta. He and his wife Judith have a big house and three kids Pablo Fransisco, Franklin Eduardo, and Judy Elena.

Ing. Franklin works for the power company. He has a wife Amarilis and three daughters Toty, Lina Maria, and Belen. They have a house closer to the airport.

Lcda. Mariana is a teacher at a private school. She has a husband Hernando Ponce and two kids, Steven and Hernando.

There is a some pretty big age span between my aunts and uncles, which means I have some cousins older than my aunts and other cousins and nephews near the same age. Considering I have troubles remembering names in general, I was constantly confused.

My Mom’s family had planned to meet us at the Manta airport, but due to some flight mishaps – the 7 AM flight was delayed until 9 AM only to have us board at 7:45 and take off by 8 – we were met only by my cousin Wither Eduardo and his kids. This quickly grew into a mob as the family started arriving at the airport. (Please excuse the “huh huh huh” in the background – apparently I giggle like Beavis and Butthead)

The woman in the green pantsuit is my grandmother. Note – we came to Ecuador for her 9oth birthday. I’m not sure what her secret is but I think it’s worth investigating.

My brother, parents, and I all met in the Miami airport Saturday morning, and that afternoon flew from Miami to Quito. It was after dark by the time we got there and the what I saw during the drive over to the Hotel Quito was very dingy and run down. We were all really tired from traveling by the time we made it, and my brother and I fell asleep almost immediately.The light of day revealed a very different city from the one I saw just hours before.

Quito is a colorful cosmopolitan city. It is nestled between mountain ranges, so the city is very narrow but very long. My dad hired a tour guide to take us around to see the historic sights of the city. Coming along for the ride was my Dad’s brother Dan, who was in Quito on business.

The last time I was in Ecuador I was 8 years old, and my memory of what I saw while I was there the last time is fuzzy at best. Mitad Del Mundo had changed the most. It is a monument to the discovery of the position of the Equator of the planet, which was done by a French expedition in the 1700′s. They hiked through the jungles of Ecuador using the stars to calculate their position until they found the equator. Here’s me doing a bad job explaining the previous sentence The monument is still very imposing, but now there are a whole collection of shops for tourists. Due to the direct sunlight on the Equator Dan’s head was being cooked, so I encouraged him to get a Panama Hat so he could have the “American Businessman in South America” look. This made him a favorite for panhandlers when we went into central Quito, which had a number of things to see. The Church of the Company of Jesus was a giant baroque church. All of the ornately decorated walls were covered in gold. They had a giant pipe organ in the back of the church that could never be played because the sound would rumble the walls. Independence Plaza is very European, with a central monument and the Bishops house on one side. My Dad was quite amused that the Archbishop’s residence connected to the “Mia Culpa” restaurant.One of my favorite things was the gondola up Pinchincha mountain. It took us 4100 meters above sea level near the top of the mountain, where there were trails to hike. Hiking uphill at that altitude is really hard!

The last day in Quito we were looking for a place to eat, and settled for the “Happy Chifa” restaurant whose name strikes me as neither Spanish nor English. I couldn’t argue with the price; I think we all ate for less than $10.