In a wonderful fulfilment of non understanding, Friday morning was chaos. From our woeful understanding we took it that we were off to school Friday to meet our teachers, with Mama. Vamos at 8.a.m. had Rikki and I running for bags, coats, hats, scarves etc as papa stood with his keys in the doorway. Papa took off without mama. Stoically we decided we had missed the point. But Papa was role playing again - the journey to school. Now, driving in Ecuador is only for the hearty and getting onto or off a road is about daring and feistiness which papa had in good measure, but he also had 2 other things going on, 1 a stubborn gear box and 2 some English folks who needed to learn the route, so the drive was particularly challenging for Rikki in what is traditionally called the suicide seat. Turning onto Av Bernanda, teaching the vocab for 'right', repeating Av Bernanda about 16 times, grinding the gear, not stalling, tooting at a fellow driver who was not moving fast enough for his liking, papa took us away. As he indicated 'pa-ra-da' and held up fingers we cunningly worked out that we were going along a bus or tram line and that we were to alight at stop 6. He then drove along where we would walk. But, as we went past the school at kerb crawler pace we realised we were not actually stopping. Off on a totally different but parallel route, we got back home to see mama waiting. Words were exchanged in spanish. Then, Rikki found himself in test situation - he had to guide us back to the school. Papa loves his role play. Back at the school, we alighted and were taken in by mama to meet some of the staff at the school.
