Temporary flower stands are erected every day on the side of the New Cathedral. A myriad of cut flowers are displayed and sold.
This morning, J.J. and I passed by to take photos. Nearly all the vendors are females and they work hard unloading flowers from trucks, unwrapping from a large bundle in newspaper to make them into smaller bundles. Then the flowers are displayed within their kiosk. J.J. bought me a bouquet of roses from a very shy vendor name Celia.
LAN Airline had sent us an email message regarding our departure time on May 9th. Instruction was to contact LAN office for the revised schedule. Fortunately, our departure from Cuenca is delayed by a few minutes and it would not affect our departure from Quito to Miami.
For lunch, we attended the Spanish Club luncheon. Jim and Linda are from Wisconsin. They are among the 4,000 to 7,000 American retirees in Ecuador. The large discrepancy in the number is whether we follow the Ecuadorian government figure (lesser) or an American who is alleged to be the top recruiter of retirees from the United States. For $25,000 investment in real estate or other government approved investment, US citizen may obtain a residency visa. One attendee told me that a requirement is to have a monthly income of $800.
Some have been living in Cuenca for over 2 years and appeared to be comfortably settled while others were still searching for the "perfect place" to spend their retirement years. As long as J.J. and I are able to maintain our health, our preference is to continue to live in Honu and call wherever we are "our home."
Santiago, an engineering student in automotive mechanic, joined us so we could practice our Spanish with a native speaker. He is from Loja province and apologized that his Spanish accent is different from that of Cuencanos. We politely smiled since we could not tell the difference.
Aloha -- Cathi
