Turning Things Around

In our first two forays into the historico centro of Cuenca, we got twisted around. "You don't usually do that, are you ok?" Suzanne queried. I actually WAS a little rattled. You see, I've always been one of those people with a keen sense of direction and the ability to follow my nose and magically get to where we wanted to be. As a youngster, when we first moved to suburban Pittsburgh, Pa. My father used to always insist I accompany him downtown so he wouldn't get lost. I was not only his third born, I was his organic GPS.

Not suprising therefore, that after two episodes of mis-direction here in Ecuador's third largest city, that I became just a little mildly concerned for my mental and physical well-being. That is until I discoverd the reason for my mild confusion was NOT early onset Alzheimers. It came to me on Tuesday, the 21st of June. The folks up in the northern hemisphere recognize that date as the first day of summer as the sun treks north to warm the cockles of your pea picking hearts. Down here, we're south of zero and the sun's passage over the equator means it's moving away from us. And while it still rises in the east and sets in the west just it does for the norte americanos, we are watching its trek across the sky as we face north instead of facing south as we once did when we resided in the ole US of A.

Good ending...my brief and mild disorientation was NOT due to an organic malfunction, a major disturbance in the "force" or any other threat or crisis. It was just a simple misconception on my part that some things would be the same here as where I was from. That's not an uncommon mistake for newly arrived expat wannabes to make here. But it can sometimes be a hard thing to learn from.

Now that I turned things back around where they should be, I'm delighted to go walking more assurredly and hand-in-hand through the centro with my beloved partner of 40 years. We are confidently again: juntos en el camino de la vida!