Clouds and Churches... Markets and Music

Here are some of our first impressions of Cuenca, our new home for the next 3 months. Andy's first thought is pigs die here. 

On our first day in Cuenca, we went to The Muncipo Mercardo. This pig is a delicacy that Cuencans have, we got a taster and it was like pulled pork minus the bbq sauce. We will have to try it for lunch one day. But, of course there were plenty of fruits and veggies at the market...

Andy and I are taking Spanish classes again. We are making progress "poco a poco", but on Friday instead having my head jammed with more spanish grammar ( I am struggling with past tense)... we were able to go on a field trip to Mercado 9 de Octubre. Another side note, Ecuador likes to name things after famous dates. This market is probably named after the date of independence, for Cuenca only, from the Spanish Empire. Other cities have other dates of independence.

Anyways, close to the market Andy and I got a "cleaning". 

The two people waving in Andy’s video are our teachers.

Another highlight of our week was cooking empanadas. If you have never tried an empanada…. stop what you are doing right now, look up the nearest restaurant with empanadas and drive…What are you doing?  Why are you still reading this? You should be leaving to go and try one. 

But really, we have a cooking class with the school and one of the teachers gave the lesson. It took 8 people about two and half hours.  We chopped, we cooked, we made a wheat/corn dough, we put it all together and then fried these amazing empanadas.  It was all worth it. To use Andy’s favorite saying in Spanish los empanadas “cambio mi vida” translated the empanadas changed my life.

Cuenca has an incredible amount of catholic churches, our guide book tells us there are 52 churches.  This means if you came to Cuenca you could visit a catholic church for nearly every weekend of the year. We have only visited one, The Nuevo Catedral. 

The church is beautiful with red brick with two white and blue domes. 

 Clouds... Most days have been cloudy and feel cool. The high is usually 70 and the low is 55 Fahrenheit.  Sometimes I feel pretty cold because its cloudy and there is no heating in any of the buildings. But the clouds can be really beautiful as well. 

I seem to hear music wherever we go... on stairs leading to the river, by a church...but this weekend they even had a free concert that featured folk and other latin american music. After the concert, I have a new image in my mind when you say wind instrument. One of the bands had all kinds of pipes and flutes. I could hear the wind  wooshing through as the instruments were blown into. I thought it was really beautiful.

Andy thinks this group took a page out of Johnnie Cash's wardrobe...and maybe ghosts. Our next few challenges are finding a church and a more permanent residence.