Bank Day

Today we went out to spend some time in our new home and had a nice visit with the current resident who is a delightful woman from Virginia.  Bruce wanted to practice some power-lounging on the front porch and took a couple of pictures of the view from  his future power-lounging bench.

This afternoon was an appointment with our attorney who gave us a letter of recommendation to open a bank account.  When you open an account you need to produce a utility bill from the place you will reside and show your visa.  If you have a letter of recommendation from an attorney and a utility bill and your passport, you can open an account prior to completion of your permanent visa process.  It was quite an experience.  We were in the bank close to two hours.  We were first in the President of the banks office waiting for the young woman who would be helping us.  Then we were escorted to wait outside her office until she had finished with the current client.  When we  had our turn in her office, she was interrupted several times by people and phone calls.  It's interesting that there doesn't seem to be undivided attention given to the person you are currently dealing with.  We have been told it is the same way in the doctors office.  You can be in the middle of an appointment and have another patient just walk in, wanting the doctors attention.  Not the same sense of privacy or attention we are used to in the States.  One other interesting thing Bruce witnessed was after the bank was closed and we were still there he was sent down to one of the tellers to make the deposit into our new account.  He couldn't believe the piles of cash at all the teller windows being counted.  Even with his past experience working in the bank he had never seen that much cash in one place.

After leaving the bank we went to get dinner at an interesting brick oven pizza place.  You had to ring the bell outside a gate and be buzzed in to the restaurant which was located adjacent to a charming little courtyard.  After dinner we went to buy tickets for the English language movie at the new movie theater.  When we arrived much to our disappointment the theater was not open tonight. Guess we will just have to wait for our return in January.

We're back at the hotel hard at work studying for our Spanish class in the morning. 

View 1 from power lounging position. Cotacachi Volcano.

View 2, mountain adjacent the volcano.

Our pizza experience. Check out the oven.