Moving2Ecuador

We did it! Eric and I signed papers to sell or rent the house. I could not bear to meet with the real estate agent, so I left my signature on line after line and Eric met with her and discussed numbers. I have to accept that the house is worth far less than I imagined and will sell for hundreds of thousands less than if we had sold it two years ago. The market is horrible and sinking further. Unfortunately, I do not trust our agent. I suppose she would like to sell the house and make a profit, so in that her interests mirror our interests. I wonder if most people like and trust their real estate agents. Of course, since I do not want to lose my house, I may not like anyone who facilitates the sale. My husband is so eager to sell, I am not sure he cares about anything but removing the burden of the mortgage from our lives. I wonder why I am attached to the house. I did not like it much at first, but then again I did not like Baltimore either and I did not want to move. Eric and his par...

My father's sabbatical year in Bonn and Brussels changed all of our lives irrevocably. Monica studied at the Sorbonne and Paris and stayed to marry a Frenchman and redefine herself. Karen returned to Canada to finish high school and university but ultimately moved to Italy and then France. I stayed closest to home, but have had an incurable addiction to travel, which only increases the more I indulge myself. Eric tells me we will have no money to travel while in Ecuador, but I am convinced that we will explore the country from top to bottom. And I will be the tour guide to any family or friends who come to visit while we are there. Tara plans to leave NYU for the year and try different volunteer jobs and perhaps take a class or two at the university in Quito. She has never been to Ecuador and I am not sure how interested she is in the country. She wants to have a unique and interesting experience. I believe she wants to find a new direction in her studies and needs time to find her...

My high school class is having its 35th year reunion in August 2011! I received a phonecall form someone I did not remember with a funny accent( I am recognizing the 'Canadian' way of speaking). I expressed delight and am committed to going, but I did not tell the caller that I never graduated with my class. During my last year of high school, my father had taken a sabbatical in Bonn, Germany and then Brussels, Belgium. I spent the summer in Japan and then studied Japanese at the University of Bonn, where my father was teaching and researching. I lived with my younger sister Karen and my parents in a town outside of Bonn called Oelinghofen. Our apartment was the renovated top floor of a barn. I went to university with my father several times a week, and as a family we traveled around the Rhine, looking at castles and wine tasting. One week we coasted down the Mosel and ate and drank wine. We visited Cologne and Nuremburg and visited my grandmother in northern Italy. My sister ...

I believe the house is actually coming together and may in fact be done by the weekend. Eric is very proud of himself; he removed the stump of a tree by himself and is painting and touching up and repairing and cleaning. I am trying to shrink the size of the boxes of papers that were removed from my closet and are lined up in two rows in the living room. I have filled two huge boxes of personal papers to be shredded or burned and a much smaller box to store. I feel very proud of the piles of discarded material. When the NCC or AmVets come by to pick up clothes and toys and other donations, I used to make it a goal to give away ten bags, except that one time I prepared ten bags and no one came to pick them up and it rained and everything went moldy and had to be thrown away. Now I never get more than two bags ready for them. They came last week and left with a highchair and a child backpack and baby clothes. I am finally giving up our baby things, somehow I could not let them go for the...

It is before ten o clock at night and I can hardly keep my eyes open. I managed to stay awake until my train arrived in Baltimore, and ran quickly to my car and did not encounter any trouble and arrived home safe and sound. I found Maya and her friends sprawled on the floor in Tara's room on the third level. There had been a storm earlier and a two hour power outage at the house. The areas near my house were still in darkness, and I must admit that everything looks better, not worse in the dark. The children were frightened and uncomfortable about falling asleep with a candle on...but I arrived past 2 AM and they were lined up side by side, breathing softly and looking adorable. They were less adorable when they woke up before 6 AM. I had three hours of sleep!!! I could hear Maya trying to quiet them down to let Eric and I sleep, but her efforts were fruitless and I could hear requests for breakfast. I made pancakes and woke Eric up to join us for a meal. I am sure he wanted to sle...

It is early Sunday morning and I cannot get a connection on the train on my way back to Baltimore. I hope to transfer what I write later. I spent the evening in New York to see my daughter's 20 minute play and join her for dinner. I did not like the play at all, but I always enjoy walking in the city and absorbing the energy and liveliness that is New York. It was hot today and it seemed that every New Yorker was on the streets soaking in the heat. A huge crowd was gathering around Madison Square Garden waiting to see a concert. I tried to figure out who was playing from the dress and demeanor of the concertgoers, and I finally concluded that it was the remainder of the Grateful Dead. They were mostly younger people with dreadlocks and shabby attire. I remember Grateful Dead concerts ten years ago; the crowd was older, dressed entirely differently, but of course it was in Salt Lake City that I attended Grateful Dead concerts, and Utahns are quite different from New Yorkers. I lear...

We celebrated Earth Day two days late and went to see the new Disney 'Earth' movie. Perhaps I was still reeling from yesterday's movie; I was again disturbed by the violence in the film. It was mostly implied -- it was a PG movie and there was no blood and gore; but it was a somewhat disjointed story about predator and prey and the fragility of existence. I found myself covering my eyes in anticipation of an animal's death over and over again, much like my experience yesterday when human animals displayed as much compassion and kindness as violence and evil. The animals in the movie were just surviving, but so were the people in Sin Nombre. I wonder if part of this sensitivity is a reflection of my visit to Canada. My parents are very much at the end of their lives. My father is 89 and although mentally fit, he is fading physically, both literally and figuratively. My mother's personality has changed significantly and although I have always had a difficult relations...

I saw an excellent movie tonight, but it was violent and disturbing and renews my anxiety about our safety in Ecuador. I had read excellent reviews about the movie and I also saw it because it was in Spanish and about Latin America. It was called 'Sin Nombre' and was the story about a young Mexican who is part of the Mara Salvatrucha gang. He and his homies kill and maim and abuse both the members of other gangs and each other. The bulk of the movie is about his encounter with a girl from Honduras who is traveling with her father and uncle through Mexico to the United States. It is beautifully filmed. The vistas are stunning, but the poverty and the privation of the locals and the immigrants riding the trains is devastating. The violence is unwatchable. I spent much of the movie hiding my eyes from the horror. The characters are sympathetic, particularly the young man who tries to escape from his life knowing that he is doomed. It is the poverty and the violence that make me un...

I am making an effort to tell each patient about my departure and finalizing referrals and transfers. It is easy to forget that I am leaving and try to focus on the issues that present themselves in the here and now and avoid the looming reality. It is amazing to me that I can tell patients and then continue on as if the move to Ecuador was not happening and then I find myself functioning as if I was not going anywhere and not closing my practice and not renting/selling my house ( I am convinced it will not be sold, we are nowhere near ready to sell and there is so little time before we go!). But I feel pressure to get organized, focused, get through my to-do list, and sometimes the weight of what must be done is so great I am paralyzed and fearful and accomplish nothing. It is not as if life without Ecuador was not full of activity anyway. School and work and friends and projects and outings and travel and family and more happen anyway. The Ecuador factor is on top of everything else...

I finally told Maya's violin teacher that we were certain about our move to Ecuador and her response was disturbing; that Maya would lose a year of violin and not be able to catch up. I believe her view is extreme, but I am feeling suitably guilty now and worried that I am limiting Maya by taking her away from New York and the Manhattan School of Music. On the other hand, there are too many great experiences ahead for Maya in Ecuador and part of me feels that if she is meant to advance in violin it will happen when it will happen. I also feel some relief, that the pressure on Maya will lessen; sometimes we are held hostage by violin practice and concerts and competitions and accompanists and orchestra; I will definitely have her practice regularly when we live in Quito, but I want to lighten up, if that is possible for me. Perhaps her music education will take an interesting turn that she will be exposed to different forms and styles of music, that she will take a break from classi...

I wanted more stories from my father, but my mother would have none of it. I asked him the same questions years ago, when he was unwilling to answer. Perhaps because we have so little time, he is now ready to talk, but my mother is uncomfortable with his past, and intervenes. I wonder if I will ever have the chance to talk to him alone, without her editing or halting the conversation. My father was not allowed to talk, instead she reminisced about Naples, and her father. She remembers the air raid sirens each evening at 9 PM when the Americans started dropping their bombs. Her father oversaw the families in her apartment building and made sure everyone went to the cellar for the night. When we were children, she would dive for cover every time a siren screamed in the distance, and we were curious and did not understand her. Her father finally decided to move the family to South Tirol, where his family still lived. It was a difficult transition for my grandmother, who did not fit in an...

My mother and I went to see the first half of the Che Guevara movie today. It was far more hopeful than the second half, since it celebrated the success of the Cuban revolution, and follows Che from his early meeting with Castro until the triumphant march into Havana. I understand why Che was so adored and admired. He was charismatic and idealistic and decent and fair and good, or at least that is how he was portrayed. It appears that Fidel was quite happy to send him away to Bolivia; there was no room for two revolutionary leaders, and Fidel could not compete with Che's charisma. It makes sense that Fidel did not help Che in Bolivia; Castro probably was relieved that Che failed. I listened to Che's speech at the UN; he directed his verbal attacks at the United States, whom he described as imperialists. He references North American actions in Nicaragua and Panama and Cuba. I understand more clearly the perspective of Chavez, Castro, Morales, Correa; and it is significant that t...

It is spring in Edmonton after months and months of bitter cold, and the snow has almost entirely disappeared, except for chunks of ice floating down the Saskatchewan River. When we come here for Christmas, Eric, Tara and Maya and I put on layers and layers of warm clothes and take long walks in the snow along the river valley. We have great adventures climbing up the steep ravines and sliding down wherever possible. Such a different experience at this time of year. My parents and I took a walk along the river this afternoon, and it felt wonderful to be bathed in sunlight. It was not particularly beautiful, because the grass was brown and the trees were bare and everything looked dirty and dusty and dull. I was paying attention to the birds and saw magpies and crows and seagulls and chickadees. The beavers had been busy chewing on trees, clearly they had been out and about and working on their dams. My mother cannot walk far, but made an effort to keep up and participate. It won...

I woke up at 5:30 AM, raced to the airport with Eric driving and Maya sleeping in the back seat, made it to Minneapolis and Edmonton without incident, rented a cherry red PT Cruiser and drove up to my parents' house to surprise my mother. No one was home. I drove to Starbucks to read and write and returned to the house just after my mother and father had parked the car in the garage. I jumped out of my car and advanced toward my mother and she looked at me without having a clue who I was. She asked me several times who and what I was doing in their driveway. She did not hear me when I repeated that I was Ruth, her daughter. She looked scared and horrified and prepared for battle. My father said nothing, but nodded in recognition. My mother finally smiled and acknowledged me and there were hugs all around. What a strange and terrifying experience. I had told my father I was coming and wanted my arrival to be a surprise and he was not sure when I would show up. Clearly he kept the s...

Finally a sunny day and evidence of spring! What a difference it makes to wake up to a blue sky and green grass and flowers. We have been deluged for days! Of course it has cleaned everything up and the world looks crisper. The last few days have reminded me of how much I liked southern California. I moved to Newport Beach from Edmonton, Canada ( eight months of dark winter and eighteen hour days in the summertime!) and believed I had found paradise. So much sunshine and warmth! I loved being outdoors every day. When Tara was a baby I would walk with her around Balboa Island daily, and climb over the seawall near my house to sit on the sand and read a book while Tara played with her toys. There was often fog blanketing the shore in the mornings, but it would lift by noon and the sun would shine through for the afternoon and warm us up. I liked the cool winter sun, the perfect time to go to Disneyland and try all the rides. My friend Susan loved to go with us and never tired of the sam...

Instead of going through boxes and bags and packing, I am catching up on episodes of 'In Treatment'. So all day I am in my office talking to patients, and when I come home I watch a psychiatrist treating patients. Doesn't make much sense; after a long day in the office, I choose to watch more therapy! I guess anything is better than working on the house! Actually the show is remarkably good; I am impressed with Gabriel Byrne and the script. And I am absolutely sick of the house! Eric is so much better at this than I. He gets focused on a room or a project and pushes through. Last night it was Tara's room. He believes he will get everything organized in a week. I simply get stuck and confused and can't decide what to keep and what to let go of and I find myself moving things from one part of my room to another. When I complain of being overwhelmed and exhausted, his explanation is that we are putting in time now for our reward later, which is the year in Euador, and ...

It is tax day tomorrow and taxes are all done and mailed away and off my list of things to do! Yeah!!!! For the first time ever I overpaid, and do not have to pay anything tomorrow! I am usually very anxious in the weeks leading up to April 15, wondering how much I will have to scrounge together to pay for both the year prior and the first quarterly payment. I add up all my numbers and communicate the details to my accountant and am always hopeful that the news will be good. Of course, every year I am disappointed and dismayed with the final tally, so with all the bad economic news these past months, I am relieved to sail through tax day. Of course, since I will not be making any money next year, taxes will be minimal. Making money means paying taxes, so it is not particularly good news not to be paying taxes, it just feels wonderful for the moment. My list of tasks to be accomplished before I go does not appear to be shortening despite completing tasks almost daily. More just get adde...

Coming home means having to face the long lists of 'things to do before we go' and sort through piles of belongings and decide what to keep and what to throw away, what to pack and what to take with us to Ecuador. I would rather avoid it all and be in New York! I felt super anxious all day and overwhelmed by the enormity of what Eric and I have committed to do this year. Had I known how daunting the process would be, I'd have started three years ago! Had we sold out house two years ago we would have made a significant profit and the year in Ecuador would have been much easier. The way we are doing it feels unprepared, spontaneous, flying by the seat of our pants. I think I like that phrase and am delighted it fits here. Both Eric and I have lost our focus these past few weeks. It is so easy to get busy with work and children and friends and family and everything but the house. Until recently I believed my ambivalence about selling was the problem, and perhaps it remains an ...

The day was sunny but cold, excessively so when waiting in the TKTS lines to get tickets for 'The little Mermaid'. The children woke up early to search for eggs, all 42 of them that were hidden in nooks and crannies all over the hotel room. There were chocolate eggs and chocolate bunnies and more, and Tara joined in as well. Maya, Belina, Eric and I had all slept in the same bed. The children were exhausted after the long concert, and Eric after his five hour long bus ride from Baltimore. I was squeezed between Maya and Eric and slept very little, but watched Maya while she moved in every direction and wiggled out from under the covers repeatedly. When I suggested the children stay with Tara in her dorm room, they were very excited and so was Tara, but after the performance, both Belina and Maya were exhausted and irritable, and idea of a night in a college dorm was less alluring. We did make it to St Patrick's Cathedral for Easter Mass. The massive crowd in front of the c...

It rained all night and most of the day. When I ventured out my umbrella turned inside out and disassembled, suddenly a sheet of nylon and random spokes, and I became wet. I had left the children alone in the hotel room to find vinegar for egg-dyeing. I had to leave them again later to find more eggs. Maya and Belina were very enthusiastic about their eggs and would have coloured more than the four dozen if they had more eggs. The Easter bunny has been made aware of our current location, so will visit us in our apartment hotel off Time Square tomorrow. I don't believe I have ever spent a whole day in a hotel room in New York, but with the incessant rain, and my concerns about keeping Maya calm and energetic, we did not leave until we were expected at the concert hall for rehearsal. Except to buy beef kebabs and hot dogs at the stand down the road. I was amazed at the tourists in Time Square, still in droves despite the rain and wind. Maya practiced violin, but seemed fine, so I di...

New York is a busy place, and we are staying just off Times Square, the busiest part of the city. The children are overwhelmed by the noise and the activity, and would rather stay in the safe confines of our wonderful hotel room. We did get to the M&M store and ToysRUS (at Maya's insistence) and both Maya and Belina tolerated a long wait in the TKTS line. We got to the end of the line and did not get the Disney musical tickets we had hoped for. Instead, we saw Blithe Spirit, which I only realized halfway through was not exactly children's fare. Tara was in the play last summer in Princeton and because it was Tara, Maya was excited and interested. Without her sister to clap for, Maya was less enthused and Belina was simply polite. This despite a delightful Angela Lansbury and a very suave Rupert Everett. Maya expressed boredom and when I challenged her, changed her tune and asserted her preference for the country and peace and quiet. When our Ecuadorian friend Erika was here...

It was late before we left for New York. I worked all day and came home to throw our bags together and go. Tara was not happy with the delay, half hoping to get to her 10:00 PM rehearsal and half hoping to miss it. The drive was fast and we arrived in three hours. I was entranced by the orange full moon low on the horizon and bigger that usual. I thought orange moons were 'harvest moons' and happened in the autumn. I checked on Wikipedia and harvest moons do in fact happen in the autumn, but moons close to the earth look bigger than full moods high in the sky and they are often orange in colour. The moon was in front of me for much of the ride, looming above the Delaware Bridge, peeking between the vegetation along the side of the 95, hiding and then reappearing behind buildings. I kept looking for it, marveling, wondering what was going on with the moon and why it was so big and luminous. Maya and her friend Belina watched a movie for the early part of the drive and I was than...

There is always much excitement before a trip to New York City, despite the regularity of our visits. Will we drive, take the train or the bus? Where will we stay? What plays will we see? Where will we eat? Will we visit the Metropolitan museum? I will have Maya and her friend Belina with me, and Eric will join us on Saturday to attend Maya's debut concert at Merkin Hall. She won second prize at a competition a few weeks ago and she plays the piece she won with at the recital. This time it is Bach's Concerto in A Minor. She has been practicing daily, and it feels as if it is coming together. I believe I am more nervous than she is, and the anxiety is ramping up. We will travel by car or train or bus ( I have yet to decide) after work tomorrow, stay near Times Square, and focus on activities that children are excited about. I did not expect Belina to decide to come with us. She has been hesitant to sleep over at our house for months, and when she does stay, she will often call h...

It it spring and cherry blossom season. My intent each year is to visit the Mall in Washington DC and view the cherry blossoms, and some years I do get there, but these past two weeks, when driving around Baltimore, I am noticing lots of cherry trees resplendent with blossoms and even more magnificent magnolia blossoms. It is not necessary to travel to DC to see cherry blossoms, they are right here all around me in Baltimore. It is only for a short time, and the wind has been blowing today so perhaps they will not last long, but I am appreciating them. I wonder what spring brings to Quito. Since the weather changes little all year long, how does spring differ from the other seasons? I imagine that flowers grow all year, so is there a sudden growth spurt when daffodils and tulips and crocuses suddenly spring out of the earth? Is there a cherry blossom time? Is it during midwinter or fall? Do certain plants grow at certain times or does the growing season just rotate all year long? How ...

I started a fire today, and burned piles of papers, evidence of years lived in this house. I am taking an inordinate amount of time going through school papers for Tara and Maya, receipts, taxes, travel documents, letters, cards, notes to myself, notes from friends and family, photographs, artwork from preschool through high school, report cards, homework assignments and more. What to keep and what to burn? I really don't want to dispose of anything, but why keep it all in bags and boxes to be explored by mice and creatures that leave parts of themselves behind? I did well for the first few boxes, but then I get bogged down and look at each piece of evidence of my past and I do not want to let go. It is sometimes fun, but gets more agonizing if I persist for too long. I wish I could just burn all of it and not filter through each page, questioning whether this or that memento stays or goes. This is taking far too much time. Eric returns home on the train form Montreal tonight and ...

It is Palm Sunday today and when I stopped at Starbucks for a coffee, there were palm fronds everywhere. I tried to find a parking place near the Basilica while Maya was practicing violin at Peabody, but my limitations at parallel parking kept me from dashing in as I had planned. I had watched the celebration of mass at St. Peter's in Rome and reminded myself that I wanted to acknowledge the day. Instead, we meditated while watching the flowing landscape between Baltimore and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, or 'Pennsyltucky' as Maya describes it, 'the backwoods of Pennsylvania' (her ballet teachers live there). She had insisted that we see ' Coppelia', put on by the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, and the performance was stunning. The main ballerina was 13 and remarkable. It was unbelievable that in the middle of nowhere, a woman has established a stellar ballet school. Maya traded seats with one of her instructors, who sat next to me and explained that the di...

Today was both an ordinary and an unusual Saturday. We regularly wake up early to get to ballet or to see Maya's accompanist; today she had a date with Jake, her accompanist, in the hopes of preparing for an audition later in the day for first versus second violin in her orchestra. After an hour with Jake and Maya practiced ballet for two and a half hours. I rushed home to pick Tara up ( she is visiting from New York) and we almost did not make it to a 90 minute power yoga class. It was wonderful to stretch and sweat and relax before I dropped Tara off at home while I sped back to Maya to feed her lunch at the local art gallery where they did not take my credit card and I did not have my ATM card to get money. The woman behind the counter knows me and agreed to feed us and I promised to bring the money in later. Maya's next stop was her orchestra practice and after dropping her off, I scrambled to get home to find my ATM card. Tara decided to join me for coffee near the mus...

I am wondering about medical care in Quito. Like most places, I imagine it very good for some and inadequate for others. Several Ecuadorians I run into have been to the United States for treatment, many have chosen Hopkins for complicated procedures. I always find it odd that my parents when they visit are so eager to return to Canada for medical care. I try to point out that Baltimore has reputable medical institutions, but they have not had consistently good experiences in the States and probably have heard all the horror stories, and don't wish to get caught up in their own. We had a couple alumni on our trip in the Galapagos who were hurt and required medical care. The physician on the boat was perfectly adequate and did what any doctor would have done in the circumstances. It is probably only in rather desperate circumstances, like when my brother in law was burned on over 70 % of his body and required many months of ICU care and millions of dollars in grafting procedures to s...

I am figuring out how to live with more time on my hands. I have been saying goodbye to patients everyday and consequently have more and more time between appointments. I was able to meed with a friend who is organizing my files so they are more accessible to the new physician who will take care of my office. I was able to struggle through a long and onerous bill that has not been paid and send it out corrected and accurate (not my forte). I saw my therapist and talked about my daughter and her difficulties in New York, I was able to see patients in a more leisurely manner and give them extra time and attention, I could answer my phone messages promptly. This is nothing like my ordinary life, when I am whizzing from patient to patient, always pushing them out of my office to stay on schedule. Usually I have no time to organize or plan or take care of details which get pushed back to the point that I have no choice but to take care of them. I have decided to renew all my licenses while ...

Eric left the house at 3:30 this morning to catch a 4 AM train to Montreal. The journey lasted over fifteen hours, partly because there was some sort of glitch at the border, where Canadian border police took a Sri Lankan man into custody. Eric slept and worked on the paper he has to present on Friday, so it was not a waste of time by any means. To fly would take at least six hours, with a two hour preflight wait and perhaps another hour waiting for baggage at the other end. The return train ticket cost $144, and a plane trip would be at least $350, so the cost difference is substantial, and although the time it takes to get there is more than double the plane trip, if one has work to do, or books to read, or sleep to catch up on,the train ride can make sense. And train travel is fun. Far more relaxing than plane travel today. I love taking the train. Having spent many of my early years in Europe, trains were a regular part of my life. Later, when I traveled on my own after high schoo...