Life inbetween Art Club: Mum!!

The week before last I had the amazing experience of having my Mum come out to visit me for 10 days!  We succeeded in our mission to see three of the four regions of Ecuador: coast (Playas for 2 nights) mountains (1 night in Baños) and jungle (a day tour through Puyo), the fourth region being the Galapagos.  Along the way we managed to see a vast range of exotic animals including giant Galapagos land turtles, crocodiles and dolphins and had many ´firsts´, completely new experiences.



Mum and I visited Parque Historico in Guayaquil and saw monkeys, sloths and flamingos.  Ty took us up to the look out point, the Mirador of Bellavista to look out across the city. Also, our very first day Mum and I walked for hours along the Malecón 2000, visited the Giant Lnad Turtle in the uni grounds and up to the lighthouse of las Peñas.

Went to Playas and nearby Puerto del Moro to see the manglars with men fishing up to their necks in water catching crabs, and to spot dolphins (the poor creatures seemed to be constantly trying to escape the noise of the boat's engine!).  Also ate delicious seafood, rode in tuc-tucs and played pool at the Delfin hostel that's grown to become our favourite!

 

 Mum and I headed to Baños and went on a one day tour of the jungle region surrounding Puyo,
seeing monkeys in a reserve and going down the river in a rocky canoe, plus bathing in a waterfall.

Cycling across to see the crocodiles of Isla Santay with Ty:

Plus at the end of it all we had a great day celebrating Mum´s 60th birthday on Sunday 28th September, with presents cake and tapas!

 

Thanks so much for coming to visit Mum, I miss you now you´re back home.

Lots of love! xxx

p.s. one of the presents for Mum was this (long overdue) design for Dad's headstone, intertwining the Scottish and Irish celtic knots:

Club de Arte: office weeks

Since the Club de Arte exhibition I have been mainly office based, working on cmap reports and evaluations of the projects, dismantling the kids´ work to return to them and planning for re-opening the workshops next week on the 13th October .  I have also been out with other JUCONI team members on a couple of occasions to take photos and helped out yesterday at Ronald´s Club de Futbol championship.

In all honesty it has been a pretty solitary few weeks in the office, apart from when Señora Jenny pops up to see me with her sunny smile, and when Becky and I go for lunch.  But something guaranteed to brighten my days is when I have a surprise visit from one of my children from Club de Arte.  Sometimes children come into the JUCONI office when one of their parents has a meeting with a member of staff and the Club de Arte children always come up to our space on the top floor to say hello.  Over these last few weeks, with the office still being full of all the mounted work from the exhibition, it has meant they have had a chance to look through it all at their own pace.  They also get a chance to play with materials, or do word-searches and colouring in, and best of all we get more of a chance to chat.

I´ve taken the opportunity on a couple of occasions to invite the child to share a little about their experience of our workshops through the cmap mini interview.  I was glad to hear from one of our teenage girls from Sergio Toral that when she has been to a Club de Arte session she feels ¨good, happy and content¨! 

Life between Art Club: Lucy laughter

Tales to come of my weeks holiday with Lucy back at the start of September.

Suffice to say it was BRILLIANT to see you Lucy! Big love xx

:-)

1. Devil's Nose Train in Alausi (not such a scary experience as the guidebooks would like you believe since you can no longer ride a-top the carriages, but the scenery was breathtaking and Lucy and I had a lot of fun squashing coins and sticking our heads through to become temporary farmers!

2. Enjoying the beach and spotting dolphin signs in Playas (Lucy does a mean dolphin impression!):

3. Lucy was an invaluable help with the set up of the JUCONI Club de Arte Exhibition - here's us laughing about a batido spillage outside the gallery one day:

4. Enjoying a beer up Las Peñas:

 (remembering the strong winds of our Sussex coastal ride with Emma!)

5. Our Sunday cycle out to Parque el Lago, and joking with Danny afterwards: 

6: Kory "Little Cuz" who also helped out with the exhibition! 

Good times! :-) x