LLoa

On Monday of last week, we visited a little town called LLoa. It's up in the mountains not very far north of Quito. We went there because the town had arranged a celebration of one of the local Volunteer's projects. After a false start and an apparent failure, she managed to get her charges to write a book in Spanish and English, and to do all of the illustrations. Practically every kid in the school can point to some contribution he or she made to the book. It has actually been published, so the ceremony was to celebrate this, and to give each child his or her own copy of the book. It was a great day.

The first picture shows a view I captured from the open window of a moving bus. If the car looks familiar, it was just a freak concidence that I could not resist. That model is actually pretty popular down here. Most of the mountains on the way to LLoa were considerably steeper than the ones in this picture.

The second picture is of the park in the center of town. Any town of any size has a central park, and the local church generally fronts on to it. Municipal buildings or other community organizations frequently face the other three sides. The oncoming rain clouds conceal the mountains in the background.