Mixed Emotions

Here we are, fourteen months later, on a Delta flight from Atlanta Georgia, at 9:00pm getting ready to land in Quito Ecuador. We were thrilled to be arriving in Quito only 5 hours and 25 minutes after we left! We found a great airfare on a non-stop flight. Now this is the life! Despite the good feelings about the easy flight, Ken and I were both experiencing mixed emotions about this trip back to Ecuador. For me, the realization that this would be the longest separation from the kids and grandchildren was weighing on me heavily, and was impacting Ken some too. After the long time away, was the bloom off the rose for us in Ecuador? We were dreading the thought of having to deal with immigration again in our effort to obtain our cedula, the national ID card. We were headed to the Hotel Bonanza, home to Nora, the facilitator we hired to complete our visa, and her husband Patrick. Dealing with Patrick via email over the past few months had not always been easy, and at times, down right bewildering. To their credit, Nora and Patrick seemed to have done the impossible, completed our visa. Now, we were dependent on them again to get this last step finished. We determined to be pleasant and cordial no matter what the circumstances. Ken's back was in bad shape, and I primarily was handling the carry-ons and the four overweight suitcases while he was being escorted in a wheelchair. We burst through the doors after going through immigration, relieved that our residency visa allowed us to move ahead through the resident's line. Standing there holding a sign that said "Leanne" was a pleasant looking man with a big smile. It was Patrick standing next to his wife's cousin, Ishmael. Patrick is from the US, and his wife Nora, is originally from Ecuador. They met and married in Florida, and returned to Ecuador 8 years ago with their young son Nicholas. Patrick was pleasant, helpful, and wouldn't let Ken or I touch a piece of luggage. It was surprisingly warm for an Andean evening and we learned we were their first guests to ride in their new, large, VW van. We chatted easily and arrived at the hotel about 15 minutes later. The large doors surrounding the hotel opened to reveal a large, lovely garden area,easy to distinguish despite the darkness. We were led to an outside room off the porch and gulped when the door opened to reveal a double bed. This was going to be a loonnnng night! Surprisingly, despite the undersized bed, we slept fairly well, at least for a little while. Right on cue, the Ecuadorian sun rose at 6:10am, and much to our surprise, shone down on us, startlingly us awake. Over our bed was a large, and I mean large skylight! We looked at each other and wondered aloud how long was this cedula process going to take?!

WE'RE BACK!

It's been a long time, more than a year, since I've written about our adventures in Ecuador. Most of you already know our youngest daughter became seriously ill last year, and without hesitation, I headed back to the US, South Carolina to be exact, to help care for her and our two precious grandchildren. Ken followed six weeks later because we expected our residency visa to be ready at any time. When it was obvious that wasn't going to happen he headed home too. Thankfully, Raelyn is doing wonderfully now, and even blessed us with another grandchild, Logan! Ecuador takes their immigration laws very seriously. Unlike the US, they work hard at preventing illegal aliens from flooding their country. In recent years, Columbians, Peruvians,Cubans and Chinese have been coming in droves. To crack down on this, every few months it seemed, new laws were added, and other laws changed, making it increasingly difficult to keep up and remain compliant. When we left Ecuador abruptly to help our daughter, we essentially made it impossible to return to Ecuador in less than a year without our residency visa. Our attorney, marginal when we were in country, became totally incompetent once we left. What should have been completed within a few months of our leaving took 14 months! Family and friends thought we were absolutely nuts for continuing to work through the problems. To the Ecuadorian government's credit, they have kept their standards high, yet have restructured the process so that attorneys are no longer required. This of course happened after we finally got our residency visa completed! They have even added bilinguil staff to assist the large number of Americans and Canadians looking for a better life in Ecuador. In September alone, there were 3000 English speaking visitors to Ecuador. Many believe this is directly related to the political situation in the US. Don't want to bore you with all the details. We had to fire our attorney, (no easy feat as she didn't want to be fired!), get a power of attorney to get her off the case and transfer authority to our newly hired facilitator, (no more lawyers for us!), and delay after delay until finally August 30th, our new visa was inserted into our passports and returned to us so we could return to Ecuador. Next step, getting our cedula!