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Andrea in Ecuador |
Claudine and I are in Riobamba Central with Esteban who is an archaeology student at the University in Quito and he has been working with Ross for a few days a week. He is very interested in learning about paleoethnobotany so today he was going to do flotation with me. I had to move the machine outside of our house walls because the landlord thought I was spraying water all over the place (actually it had rained all night so everything was wet). So, I just moved outside instead of arguing about the house deposit. This morning I melted the fittings onto my 23 m piece of hose in order to get water to where I needed it. Esteban and I waited with anticipation for the machine to fill up with water and we found that the pressure was very low and then no water at all. We checked the hose and then the tap only to find we have no more water at the house. We are on the municipal water system which only flows once a day at about 6-6:30 pm and fills up the cisterns for each house from the water main. It looks suspiciously as if we never got our water last night and then 8 filthy adults (myself included) and a 4 yr old came home from the field and took showers. So, hopefully we will get water tonight. If not, there is a problem because we can't continue with floatation or artifact washing either...let alone take showers or flush toilets. So Esteban is out of luck as far as learning the floatation process. Next week he will go to work on another project near Otavalo. So, the three of us came downtown for lunch while Laurie and Maeve wait at the house for the fire truck to come by and fill up our cistern.
On our way to lunch I noticed a horse cart near the downtown streets loaded with tractor tires and two country people with the bright handmade cloth shawls or capes, negotiating how to load these tires....I wonder how far they need to go? Then we went out for hamburgers because Claudine has had her fill of rice which is served at every Ecuadorian meal. You can order your hamburger with either beef or chicken or both. The simple beef hamburger comes with french fries, runny ketchup and mayonaisse in it. The french fries are a little different too, but mainly because the potatoes here have a different flavor and texture than the classic Idaho bakers at home.
Yesterday I went in the field because I needed a sanity day from the little difficulties of getting floatation going at a decent speed. Glad I took the day to do that because today's disappointment would have crushed me yesterday. After spending a day smearing artifacts around in the mud I felt better. Hope all are well. Adios... Andrea
p.s. We managed to make the front page of a national newspaper today called El Commercio...not sure if you can find it online or not. Anyway, a reporter from Cuenca was out to interview people last week and take pictures and the story appeared in the paper today. The front page has a small picture of the excavation with a leader and the full story is further into the newspaper. Pretty cool though.
[ I did find it online, though they change the front page every day. Here is the online version of El Comercio. Here is the photo they showed of the dig. And here is the article itself in case anyone wants to practice reading their Spanish. - Ernie ]
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