We Yazells are just about unpacked. It will soon be three weeks since our container arrived at Casa Yazell and the homefront is starting to take shape.
As you might suspect, after unpacking a twenty foot container, we had a plethora of cardboard boxes. Several of our neighbors dropped by for a box or two for their own use as we were unpacking. However, the mound of cardboard continued to grow and pile up in our front courtyard.
There is recycling here in Cuenca. In fact, cardboard is at a premium and is the number one recycled material. In fact, you can readily tell recycle day in any neighborhood by the people who push carts down the street scavanging the piles for cardboard that they can take to the recyle center and turn in for cash. We had originally planned to have a local charity come and pick up our cardboard and use the proceeds for their cause. However, after three days, they had failed to show and one of our neighbors, an indigenous lady by the name of Maria, had been promised she could have all the cardboard she could handle if the organization we had called didn't come. It took Maria three trips but she hauled it all away, helped sort out the other material for our trash pickup and even swept our front courtyard!
When ever you do something nice for a neighbor, it is customary in Ecuador to make an effort to say thank you in a special way . It was barely a day later when Maria rang our front doorbell and graciously presented us with a bag of oranges and the bag she presented us was closer to 10 pounds than it was 5!
We, of course, graciously accepted her generous thank you and went busily to work trying to figure out how the two of us could consume this quantity of fruit before it spoiled. Any friend that came to visit over the next few days was assured of being offered some fresh fruit to take home.
It was, however, during our next visit to the market that we hit upon the best solution to our challenge. We searched for and discovered a hand juicer! The next morning, I attached the stack of rapidly ripening citrus with gusto. The results were nothing less than yummy!
Because we gifted a neighbor with scrap cardboard, we will be enjoying the freshest of fresh juice each morning for the next week or two. How wonderful it is to be settling in, here in the land south of zero. We are truly enjoying our new country, new city and our new neighborhood and our new home. Blessed and fortunate are we as we continue our journey: "juntos en el camino de la vida"!
Oh come on, Roger! Good grief! You make orange wine out of it. That should be a no-brainer for you. Just don't ask me to be the first to try it. Sounds like you have some nice neighbors. Continued good luck to you and Suzanne with the unpacking.
ReplyDelete