The Super Double Secret Major Sporting Event Appreciation Society

We managed to get to a soccer match the other day. Now before you go wondering what kind of schedule a family on sabbatical could possibly have that would keep them from seeing even one soccer game in ten months, you should know that soccer here is like one of those flash rave parties they used to have in my 20s. You know, it would be in some warehouse one week, and in an empty parking garage the next, and they would only hand out flyers to certain people and let news spread by word of mouth. Same here; you have to be "on the inside" to know when a game will be.

"Summer" camp

I swear one day I'll write a "when the First World isn't" post, explaining why the difference in the worlds is really categorical and useful for economic textbooks, rather than any individual's daily life or experience. Upon learning of our plans for Ecuador, one (very successful, highly-educated, intelligent) friend asked, "Do they have flush toilets?" So perhaps an easy way to understand the worlds is to say, yes they have very nice flush toilets here (many even wash your bum with a warm, soothing...oops, too far). But the difference is that there are many people here who do not have them. So one of the measures to measure your country's world level is flush toilets per capita, but the lack of flush toilets affects me personally as much here as it does back in the States; that is to say, not at all. Now, I said all that to say this: They have "summer camps" here just like we have at home!