Moving2Ecuador

Spring is coming to Baltimore, it feels that suddenly the grass is green and the tulips and daffodils and crocuses are everywhere. And our move to Ecuador is ever closer. I am getting accustomed to informing my patients and colleagues and friends and neighbours and everyone I meet that I am leaving and each time I tell someone, it feels more real and more imminent. I am still wading through papers and clothes and more junk than I ever imagined I could accumulate in a short seven years. It feels as if I am leaving my life behind forever, I will NEVER come back to this life, so I have to say goodbye every day. I am amazed that I am still eager to go. I wonder if this is a convenient time to have a midlife crisis. I am leaving my life, a life I wanted to leave, a life I needed to leave. This is my chance to start anew, not just inside but in every way imaginable. If I was not going to Ecuador, I would simply be repeating the same life, and a year from now, nothing much would be different...

Eric asserted yesterday that I was the driving force behind this move. That is not exactly true. It was Eric who came up with the destination for his sabbatical. I have been ambivalent at every step. However, when he suggested at one point that this was altogether too BIG a move and that perhaps Montreal or another institution in the United States would be a wiser choice, my reaction was clear. Ecuador is a once in a lifetime opportunity, it would be folly not to take advantage of the possibility. That was before I knew that we had to empty the house, perhaps sell it, and for some reason it never occurred to me that I would not be working as a physician. I did not realize that we would be living on such a reduced salary. I have no idea how to live simply and have never kept to a budget. I wonder if Eric sees this as an opportunity to change our lives so dramatically, that we can never go back to the life we once had. We have lived to excess for too long, much like the rest of the nat...

Maya, Eric and I saw Kooza today, the latest Cirque de Soleil spectacular. It was magnificent. I began to wonder what we will do for entertainment in Quito. I like to go out and see movies, listen to music, experience theatre, try different foods. I am not one to stay at home and watch television or pursue hobbies. What do Ecuadorians do in the evening? How do they entertain themselves? When I dragged Erika out for a dance performance one night in Quito, she was not impressed and told us she preferred staying home. There were several events happening at the cultural center we visited. There is a theatre in the historical center of the city. It has been recently renovated, and when we visited, I was quite sure I saw a billboard with advertising of culturally relevant entertainment. Being in a different culture will be interesting in and of itself. We will have new experiences daily, everything will be an adventure, so that evening entertainment may not be relevant anyway. But I am curio...

I heard last weekend, when Alejandra and Santiago were visiting with us in New York, that a plane had crashed in the area of Gonzales Suarez, one of the places Eric and I had chosen to live in Quito. The occupants of the plane were killed as well as some inhabitants on the ground. There was a fireball and panic. Apparently this we not the first time that this has happened! I quickly went online to find any articles or information about the incident, and of course there was a video of smoke and people running both toward and away from the scene. I imagined that I recognized the location. When searching for available apartments, I was more concerned about earthquake and fire safety. It is not unlikely that a volcano will erupt, or that an earthquake will occur in or around Quito while we live there. In that case I am not sure any one area is any safer than any other. It will be impossible to escape the city, even if there is a significant warning system.When I expressed my shock and dism...

Today was a day designed to accomplish a long list of tasks. I came to work early, saw my first patient, took a wonderful 90 minute hot yoga class, returned to my office and contemplated the piles of paper and items to attend to. Before I knew it, my two available hours had passed and more patients were scheduled. I wonder if the more time one has the less efficient one is. I have been winding down my practice for several weeks now and have two intense days on Tuesday and Thursday and half filled hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I try to make progress on paperwork and referring patients when I have free time, but I find myself preoccupied with everything but the work that must be finished. I have always been efficient with my time, using every minute and starring in multi-tasking marathons. I am ordinarily proud of my effectiveness and my ability to do ten things at once. However, now that I have more time available, I find myself less and less effective. It happens at home as we...

Oh dear, it is tax time and I have been avoiding facing this unavoidable misery for as long as possible. Eric's attitude is that it is a privilege to be paying taxes, it means that we are earning money and that is a good thing. I am always frustrated because I never feel that I have enough deductions. I am brutally honest and do not claim anything that I do not have proof of. And my accountant is not creative or slippery, and I get away with nothing. I am always shocked when my patient who makes maybe 30 million dollars a year comes to my office thrilled that he has once again been able to whittle his tax burden to less than I am paying!!!! I am shocked every time I hear it. I do not ask how he does it, it just reminds me that life is not fair. Tax time is usually a reason to travel to Salt Lake City and ski. My accountant happens to live in Salt Lake and has taken care of my taxes for more than a decade. Spring break for Tara used to be in mid March, so in the past I would take Ma...

Eric is looking forward to a simpler life. He believes our year in Ecuador will be life-altering. We will be moving to Quito with a suitcase each, without expecting to accumulate much. I agree with Eric when he makes his pronouncements about our alternative lifestyle, but I truly know nothing about living quietly and simply. I have been waiting to slow down for years now, and I continue to wait. I convince myself to let things go, and I make efforts to streamline my schedule, but my time is quickly filled up with other activities and responsibilities., and I am running running running. I look forward to having less junk. It is stunning to see what I have managed to accumulate in the seven years we have lived in our house. I remember getting rid of more than half of my belongings when we moved from Salt Lake. I loved the spareness of every room in our new home, and I recall telling myself that I wanted to keep from filling up every space. Somehow my resolve did not last, and every room ...

We are making progress on the house. Eric began with hours and hours late in the evening before we left for Ecuador, but since we returned, he has been less focused. Part of my lack of enthusiasm was simply an expression of my ambivalence. I did not want to sell, and am still uncertain about selling, but since our return, I have been pushing through piles and piles of clothes and books. I had not entered into my expansive walk-in closet for years; I was horrified to find a mouse running across the top of the hanging clothes one day when looking for Halloween attire. That was it! I refused to use the closet, but did pile up unused papers and clothing and whatever else I did not want to look at. The closet filled up with debris, and I am learning that the mice continued to make their homes amongst the papers and rejected clothing. There must have been some sustenance for them as well, else they would not have made themselves comfortable in my space. Whenever I opened the door to the cl...

I interviewed a psychiatrist who may be perfect for my office. It is vital that I find someone who will connect well with my patients, and I definitely have a good feeling about her. There are several interested psychiatrists and I will interview each of them in the next few days A woman is preferable This one is willing to start immediately and gradually build up her practice. I am not worried about restarting when I return; either my patients will join me on not. I do not have any expectations about that. I am less and less anxious about the transition. I have a nurse practitioner at my old office who is very competent as well. I was SO worried that it would be a struggle to find a good fit for each of my patients, but I am feeling more confident about placing each of them. The more details fall into place, the more it feels that this move is right for us. It is as if fate is working with us when good things happen. Last week the bad news about the house gave me doubts. Is this a go...

We waited until Maya finished her dance performance last night and drove directly from Baltimore to New York. Thankfully Maya fell asleep in the car and almost slept through the transfer to our hotel room. We stayed right on Time Square, but just for seven hours. We met Alejandra at the Border's Bookstore at Penn Station. Alejandra is from Quito, and has spent the last two months at the Smithsonian in Washington DC taking a course at the Natural History Museum on curating. Her fiance is Santiago, and he is a biologist at PUCE, the university where Eric will be working in Ecuador. Santiago was collaborating with some scientists at CUNY and was working with them for a week. We coordinated our schedules to meet in New York for a few hours. Our whirlwind tour of New York with Alejandra started with a walk to Time Square, a visit to ToysRUs and the M and M store (at Maya's insistence), watching the filming of a commercial for HP touchscreen laptop computers on Time Square, and a dr...

I teach pilates twice a week at a gym in Baltimore. I have been instructing for five years and am still as enthusiastic and motivated about teaching as I was when I started. I completed hundreds of hours of training through Power Pilates in New York. Looking back on it I am utterly amazed that I would have put so much time and effort and expense to learn a new career. I teach entirely for fun, and cannot imagine depending on it for my existence. On the other hand, many people teach pilates for a living and do well. Since I cannot get a license to practice medicine in Ecuador, and will not be a psychiatrist for a year (does one ever stop being a psychiatrist?), I wonder if I will find a studio that will hire me. Of course I will have to teach in Spanish! Yoga does not come naturally to me. Perhaps my body is too old or not designed to be a pretzel. When I bring my daughters with me to a yoga class, I am stunned at how pliable their young bodies are. Maya was told that she was a yogi in ...

When Maya and I were together in Quito this January looking for schools and neighbourhoods, we met a dance professor from Colorado, who was guest starring in a performance at the Casa Cultural. I was looking for a good dance school for Maya, without success, so I decided to check out the recital to see what style of contemporary dance was current in Quito. I dragged Erika (who never goes out in the evening and prefers to stay home) to the recital. I think Erika was shocked. The show was avant garde and often distressing. I was squirming in my seat throughout the performance. Maya was less affected, but I think we were all confused by the raw emotion and the ugliness of the movements and the lack of art in it. I did not understand if it was Ecuadorian or American or both. The choreographers were from both countries. After the show, Maya and I were introduced to the dancers and their friends, and we asked questions about where to find a good ballet teacher for Maya. In Baltimore, Maya da...

It was with much resistance this morning that I met with the real estate this morning and received the bad news, which was that our house was worth much less than I imagined. The economy has taken dive after dive and the house values keep sinking. She was insistent that we price our house lower than other like houses to ensure a quick sale. She is the expert, so I must defer to her, but I could not sign the papers. They remain on the dining room table. I dare not look. Added to my ambivalence, this disappointing information makes it more difficult to move forward. I am paralyzed when I see the piles of clothes and books and clothes that litter the rooms on the second floor. I remind myself that the work must be done whether we sell or rent. I made very little profit on my last house. I moved just after the tragedy of 9-11, and the country was in a state of fear and houses were not moving then. Again, I am selling when the market is depressed. Of course, many people are losing their ho...

I talked to Madelaine, a student at my pilates class today. I learned that she spends the summers in Italy. Her husband teaches art to MICA students in Montegiovi, a small town in the Maremma, not far from Grossetto, and therefore not too far from Montemassi, where my sister Karen had a home for fifteen years. Madeleine was familiar with Castiglione della Pescaia, with the sculpture garden of Niki San Phalle, with the Etruscan villages throughout the valley. It was surprising to encounter someone who is has intimate knowledge of a part of the world that I have visited many many times in my life! It also happens to be one of my absolute favourite parts of the world. Madeleine is very enthusiastic about my plans to move to Ecuador. I expressed my envy at her yearly two month sojourn in Tuscany. For Madeleine summers in Italy are ordinary, and a year in Ecuador is exotic and a great adventure. I would move to Italy in an instant if it were possible. I suggested to Eric that he take a sabb...

I am definitively telling each patient I see that I will be leaving at the end of June and that I will be transferring their care to someone else. I have had to make a conscious effort, and I have struggled. Most are fine with it, some are hesitant, many are dismayed. I reassure them, telling them that they will be well taken care of. And of course they will be, I am replaceable, their care will not be interrupted. I have found myself putting off this inevitable step, suddenly realizing that I have only three months left to end my practice. My identity is tied to my work and my relationships with my patients, I feel close and connected to many of them and I will miss seeing them regularly and catching up with their lives. It is a curious relationship, that of a patient and a psychiatrist. So I am finally really saying my goodbyes to each patient, transferring their care to new therapists and doctors, making this move more real. Telling someone of my plans every hour or half-hour makes ...

I have recovered from whatever it was that attacked me yesterday, so I think it was a Baltimore bug, which could just as well be an Ecuadorian bug. And I did not take the Cipro. Whew! I spent the day getting my office in order. I am looking for someone to take each of my patients. Not all of them will suit one psychiatrist. I am urged to sell my practice, but I am uncomfortable profiting from patients in that way, it does not seem right for me although I know that physicians do it all the time. I did not sell my practice in Salt Lake City when I left and won't do it now. Of course I expect to be back in a year anyway. I made a decision about Maya's school. I asked her which one she wanted to go to and whether the 45 minute ride each way morning and evening would bother her. She reassured me that she would do her homework and read in the bus, but I hope it becomes a social event for her. I am relieved to have made a decision finally, and will next start planning where we will lo...

I am sooooo sick today, in my own house, in my own bathroom. I am always so worried when I am in Ecuador. We are given bottled water at the hotels and on the boat and are told only to drink and to brush our teeth with bottled water and I always forget to, and end up at least brushing with tap water. I expect to become ill and so far, it has not happened in Ecuador. I am not sure what that means. Does it mean that the water is safer than I am told? That after five visits to Ecuador my body has adjusted to the foreign antigens? Anyway, somehow I was spared any gastrointestinal challenges there, but am sick as a dog back in Baltimore. Eric hands me a Cipro, his solution for all GI suffering in any city. I handed out the Cipro to all the travelers who were ill on the trip, and there were several. It is not worth spending any extra time in the toilet, not on vacation and not at home. When leading groups of students or the alumni, I play the role of physician, not that I know much, being a ...

There has been a significant change in my sense of home. My heart has moved on to Ecuador. Being in Baltimore means taking care of all the details before we leave, and in truth, we have loads to do and not enough time to take care of everything. But my mind and my heart are thinking forward to our lives in Quito. I have no idea of what our lives will be like. So far, I have been a tourist there several times, which is not at all like living there. What my day to day existence there will be, how I will take care of everyday tasks, how I will make friends, how I will coordinate our lives, all this will sort itself out when we are there. We are lucky to be staying with Isabel when we arrive. Erika will be in Syracuse studying for her masters, David will be in another institution, Erika's sister will be in Oregon. So it will be just Isabel and Maya and myself and Eric will come later in August. Hopefully Maya and I will be comfortable in Spanish by the time school starts. We will take ...

My focus has been on my younger daughter Maya and what school she will choose for our year in Ecuador. However I am far more concerned about my oldest daughter Tara, who studies theatre at NYU. At first I just presumed she would come with Eric, Maya and I and work or volunteer or attend university in Quito. I was very excited to see the students on the tropical ecology course on the boat in Galapagos and asked the professor about whether NYU would give her credit for studying biology for her year abroad. I enthuiastically told Tara that she should enroll in the course for a semester. But then I realized that I was the one who was excited about the course and not Tara, that I would be thrilled to be taking it, but that Tara may not be interested at all. Tara has been ambivalent about joining us in Ecuador. I think she wants to get away from NYU and experience something different, but is not sure of what she would do there. There is no program that NYU would give her credit for, so if s...

I don't speak Spanish yet. I muddle through when in Ecuador and am amazed at how much I actually understand. If I focus, I can almost understand everything, or at least the general sense of what I hear. Isabel is from the coast and speaks much more rapidly than the Quiteños, and I was able to keep up with her. I have had the intent for years now to make the effort to learn Spanish and have taken an evening course at Johns Hopkins on two occasions. I am always enthusiastic at first, but get bogged down by the grammar and lose my focus halfway through the eight session course. I do better when I join in a conversation and forget about the grammar. That went over well for years, until I took a weeklong course in beautiful San Miguel de Allende, Mexico last June, and my teacher scolded me for speaking without thinking and messing up my grammar. I am more hesitant now, and let Eric speak for me whenever possible. Eric's Spanish is much better, and he speaks in more than one tense. ...

We arrived home late, the house looked great, Maya and Monica did well together, Maya's violin teacher texted me just as we landed and told me that Maya won second in her violin competition and will play in New York in April. Work was busy with patients and messages and prescriptions, but I had time to drive Monica to the airport in the early afternoon, got Maya to her ballet class, taught my pilates class, got homework done, Maya bathed and in bed. A usual sort of working day. So amazingly different from my life the past few weeks, cruising through the Galapagos, driving into the jungles and up in the highlands, planning our lives in Ecuador. I am going back and forth about the school decision and tried to ask Maya and she was not much bothered about the 45 minute drive to and from school. I asked my father about it, and I remembered that when I lived in Rome as a child, I went to the Overseas School and lived almost an hour away in a more modern part of the city called EUR. It ha...

Waiting in airports, waiting for any form of transportation, waiting is part of the Ecuadorian experience. We are told to arrive at the airport three hours early, which we almost did. Sometimes the time is absolutely necessary and the lines long and frustrating, but today we breezed through and the saving grace is free internet in the waiting area. This time our flight is not delayed, at least not so far. I am working hard not to buy anything. There are several wonderful souvenir shops lined up almost like a gauntlet as we wind through the hallways to our gate. I remind myself that I have bought so much from Ecuador and that whatever I buy I will have to pack up or bring right back to Quito. The reality of actually living here is hitting me. I left most of my jungle clothes at Erika's house, knowing that I will not be going to the jungle anywhere but in Ecuador and it made no sense to bring the clothes home to Baltimore and then back to my new home in Quito. I left my leather jacke...

Quito was bright and sunny and warm and inviting this morning. The sky was clear, and the view of the mountains all around the city was spectacular . It would have been a perfect day to take the funicular, but today was not a day for sightseeing. We slept in to avoid traffic and then drove to Cumbaya to visit the Colegio Aleman. The road to Cumbaya is too long to manage every day, so unless we live in the valley, it is unlikely we would choose this school. The Colegio is quite wonderful, but Maya cannot be admitted because she speaks no German. In the early years, non-German speaking students are admitted and learn to speak the language, so by the time they are Maya's age, they are fluent. There is an entrance exam which she would not pass. Unfortunately I loved the school, so I was very sad that I had never taken the time to teach Maya German. The University San Fransico de Quito was close by, so Eric tried to connect with the professor we had met on the Santa Cruz, Kelly Swing, ...

The Napo moves quickly through the bend in the river, and the noise outside our cabin was loud. I struggled falling asleep and woke up earlier than I had planned. Eric and I stayed up late with Andrés at the bar, exchanging stories, laughing, anticipating our move to Ecuador. I was asleep by 1:30, I know Eric came in much later. There was a knock at the door at 9:30 this morning, one of the staff asking us if we planned to come to breakfast. All the guests were off on their adventures for the day. Benny was at Casa del Suizo with friends from Switzerland. He was planning to take them down the Napo by canoe to Sacha later in the week. Andrés had been there with his wife and children to see Benny, it was unusual for him to be in Ecuador twice in two months. We wandered around the property, looking for places where the group of 30 could practice yoga, checked out the town of Ahuano, looked at where the guests would stay, where the boats left, what sorts of activities were offered. I belie...

I am finally at peace, sitting in my cabin on the Napo River, listening to the river rushing by, wondering if I can sleep tonight with the noise. Our journey to Casa del Suizo was long and arduous. We were told that it would take four or five hours for the 220 kilometers, and I guess I did not believe that it would take so long, and I mistakenly believed that the road was paved and easy to drive. When we arrived at the rental agency, I had Eric call Erika, who reassured us that it was not too difficult a drive, and Felipe, who did not dissuade us from our adventure, so I encouraged Eric to rent the car, and off we went. We made errors during our drive out of Quito and took extra time to get out of the city. I was excited because we took the road through Guapalo to get to Cumbaya, which is where Orellana and Gonzalo Pizarro started on their journey, and followed their route to Pappallacta and on to the jungle. I kept imagining how difficult the trip was for the conquistadors in their fu...

Our days in the Galapagos were intense, so full of activity and almost too much exposure to new things. It feels shocking to be back in civilization again. We are in Guayaquil, another unexplored city for me. It is so very different from Quito. It has a much larger population and the city is more compact and has a European feel to it. Clearly tourists are not a usual sight here, and our walk through the 'Malecón' was an occasion for stares and awe. It was a surprise to see the Seminario Park in front of the neo-Gothic cathedral full of iguanas. They were wandering around, climbing up trees, arguing with squirrels, grouped in large numbers. They have been here for years, and are fed by the locals and don't leave he park. It was their habitat before the park was built and they chose to stand their ground and remain the main inhabitants of the park. It was a bizarre sight. The Malecón was built in 2000, and runs along the river. At one end it has an anthropological museum, a g...

We sailed into the harbour at Puerto Ayora, the largest town in the Galápagos. Its economic base is tourism, so that every person who lives in the town depends on the tourists in some way. I hope that means that all are intent on preserving their environment, because tourists will stop coming if the animals disappear. We visited Lonesome George at the Darwin Center today. He is the last of his kind and has resisted efforts to have him mate with female tortoises. He either cannot or won’t fertilize the females that are offered to him. He was found on the island of Pinzon, and it was puzzling that no females were found with him. Ships would come to the Galápagos Islands for years and collect thousands of turtles for food. The islands were full of turtles once. The Darwin Center was developed to preserve the tortoises, by finding the eggs and incubating them, hatching them and keeping the hatchlings alive until they are ready to be reintroduced to the wild. They have had some success in t...

Our wake-up call was at 7:00 AM, so I guess we slept in this morning. Our morning walk was on an island called 'Rabida', so I wondered if it originated because rabid animals lived on the island, but in fact it was the name of a convent or order of nuns in Spain. That still does not explain why the island was named Rabida, but I did not ask more of our guide. The soil was red, there were sea lions sprawled all over the shore, and our walk was mildly interesting. We saw a sea turle swimming offshore, so I was hoping we would see more during our snorkeling excurison. When we arrived at the island, a young Galapagos hawk was sitting on a rock waiting for us and posing. It did not move as panga after panga arrived. People were madly taking photographs and it continued to sit for us, its head moving around one way and then the other. I wondered if the guides had ordered him for us and placed him there for a photo op. Our walk was not particuarly eventful. I hardly remember if we saw ...

The Santa Cruz is a well organized boat. There is a schedule which we follow to the minute. We are woken up at 6:00 AM and roll out of bed. We eat breakfast and then are ready for our first excursion to Bartolome Island, where we take a climb up about 400 steps to the top of a pile of lava rock to look over the gorgeous view of almost all the Galapagos Islands. There is limited vegetation on the island and subsequently few animals. We pass by a hill of sand where our guide tells us that 'Master and Commander' was filmed. The crew was there for ten days and only a minute and a half showed up in the film. The guides were trying to advise the director that there were no cormorants on the island and that cormorants did not fly, but the only scene that survived the cutting floor was using a flying cormorant. I will rent the movie when I come home and check it out. Snorkeling was next on the agenda. I was on my own because Eric stayed on the boat to work on a paper. I was out only a...

We are anchored near Santiago Island in the Galapagos. I am not sure if I am seasick or not. I feel queasy and dizzy and am not sure dinner was a good idea. I am reminded that each time I take this trip I find myself unsettled. I don't actually get ill, I am simply aware that when we finally get to terra firma after three or four days, I feel relieved. This is my fourth trip to the Galapagos, and each visit is an entirely new experience. We walked on the northern tip of Santa Cruz island, and saw marine iguanas, sea lions, flamingos and huge ugly orange coloured land iguanas. I forgot my long lens on the boat, which is unusual for me, and I subsequently saw the sights through a very different lens than I am accustomed to. I am confused by my reaction to the islands. They are stark and severe and ragged and their beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is remarkable that the animals have so little fear of humans and stay in place for photographs. It is like a zoo without barriers. ...

I like the drive from Quito to Otavalo through the valley of the volcanoes. Gua Gua Pichincha (gua gua in Quichua means baby) is the volcano above Quito, Cayambe is snow-covered and to the right as we drive north, and Reventador is not far from Cayambe. Near Otavalo, Imbabura and Cotocachi are husband and wife in legend. There are more volcanoes to the south, one of which, Tungarahua, is currently active. Spectacular Cotopaxi is south of Quito and looks like Mount Fuji. Some of the volcanoes are dormant while others continue to erupt. There are wonderful stories about the volcanoes; Gua Gua Pichincha's parents are Cotopaxi and Tungarahua, and when Gua Gua cries, it upsets her Mother and Father and they may get angry! Imbabura and Cotocachi were together as a couple and then had a falling out, resulting in Cotocachi getting angry. The volcanoes are spirits and impact the humans around them. The indigenous people have always worshipped the volcanoes and prayed to them.  They are trul...