Cabezas Anniversary #3: Wet and Worldly

Javier and I celebrated the completion of year 3 in our marriage history last week.  As we've started discussing our return home, I've been sometimes thinking about whether or not I'll keep up with the blog back in the US.  Our lives certainly won't involve as much travel or eventful sagas.  But I also love that I've blogged about all three of our anniversaries so far and the idea of keeping up that kind of documentary sounds good to me.  Anyway, here is a blog for anniversary #3 no matter what.  Per usual, we spent the day in a cloud of lit candles, rose buds, and sparkling champagne.  Actually, that's not quite true...

One of our big goals for this year was to attend an event (preferably a soccer game) in the Estadio Olimpico Atahualpa right here in Quito, so when Javier realized that Ecuador would host two World Cup qualifier games we new we had our chance.  What I we learned later was that one of the home games fell slap, dab on October 13th.  No problem, we were still in and excited to celebrate our anniversary with a mere 40,000 screaming Ecuadorian fans.

With our $7 fake jersey's purchased and permission to leave early from school to make the event on time, we were more than ready.  Nothing could stop us!  Not even the rain. And rain.  And rain.  Considering it hasn't rained in Quito since Javier and I got back from the summer, it felt like the heavens were making up for all that drought time in the 2-3 hour stretch of the soccer game.  Just waiting in line to get into the stadium made us soaked to the bone!

Shockingly, someone abandoned this hat in the downpour, but our hero saved it from a puddle!

Esperanza, (other) Javier, and Tiffany were some school friends we would be sharing our big number 3 with!
We are all drenched....

Huge surprise: these $2 ponchos were not as waterproof as we had hoped....Javier took off his 'hood' sometime shortly after we sat down.  I look like I'm enjoying it, don't I?  Have I mentioned that the combination of rain and altitude is a frigid one?

The rain slowed enough for me to take some quick pics of our seats and the stadium.  It was much smaller than we had pictured (but that means no bad seats, right?) 

And not super tall (no nose bleeds here!)

This is the crew that stayed for the whole game: Esperanza, Dani (her wife), and our devoted taxi driver, Zenon.

After Ecuador's surprise victory over Argentina (@ Argentina and with a 2 goal difference!!!) we thought they had an easy win at home against Bolivia, but the game was tied 0-0 well into the second half.  Thankfully Ecuador finally scored in the 81st minute and then was awarded a penalty kick a few minutes later (95th minute) to win the game 2-0.  It's amazing how a victory can help you forget the soaking, freezing rain!

Okay, it may not have been our most romantic anniversary, but it was a wonderful one cause I spent it with this guy (hat included).  Besides, it seems more and more that it's the combination of these little (sometimes miserable) adventures that make up the sum of our marriage.  Which is great by me!

An Anniversary in Quito = Numero Dos

Javier and I have been married two years (and some change)!  If you had told me on our wedding day that we'd be celebrating our second anniversary in Quito, Ecuador, I'm not sure that I would have believed you.  I would have been pumped!...but largely skeptical.  Yet here we are.  This year's celebration was kind of a quiet one.  On the 13th we went to school and spent the evening celebrating Canada's Thanksgiving.  But the following evening we went out to a lovely dinner at Zazu, a Peruvian restaurant in Quito.  (I kicked myself a bit when I went to write this post because I realized we took no pictures of the two of us on either the 13th or the night we went out to dinner.  Fail.)

There is definitely not the same 'going out to dinner' culture that I would say you find in the big cities of the US.  It is not unlikely for a good DC restaurant to be completely packed on a Tuesday night.  When we went out for Javier's birthday (also on a Tuesday) the restaurant we went to never had more than four tables occupied over the course of our dinner.  As we were approaching the restaurant, I voiced my concern that this spot might also be kind of empty (even though it was 7:45pm) and less lively of an atmosphere because of it.  Boy, was I wrong.  We hadn't bothered to make reservations and only barely got a table at the crowded restaurant for our dinner (lucky!).  It must be a popular tourist spot, because I received a menu written in English (my first since we arrived in Quito) and we heard English spoken by many patrons.

Here is a quick run down of our delicious dinner :)

We started with pisco sours, a drink we had often on our honeymoon in Chile! (Interesting fact: Chile and Peru have been arguing for years over pisco and who has the rightful claim on the drink.  Even though Peru seems to have
'won' the fight, we still think of pisco as a Chilean beverage.)

Started with pork taquitos and fried calamari.

I had swordfish with stone crab mashed potatoes and a truffle consume. Deeeeee-licious.

Javier had pistachio-crusted Ahi Tuna with wasabi mashed potatoes.

And we finished dinner with an almond chocolate cake.

I said in my instagram post on the 13th that if the next 73 years are going to be anything like the last two, I'm sticking around.  We're doing a bit more celebrating this weekend with a trip to Mindo.  We have November 1st off of school, so we're looking forward to enjoying the long weekend and our first trip in Ecuador with just the two of us.

One year down...

74 more to go!  (I said this to Javier several times over the weekend until he pointed out that we'd be over 100 years old to celebrate our 75th wedding anniversary, so maybe not quite that many more - but you never know!)

Javier and I had an amazing time celebrating our first year of marriage in Frederick, MD this past weekend.  I'm taking this anniversary as an opportunity to pick up Head(s) Over Heels once more!  I figured I'd start with a quick update on our fun weekend and then jump right into our wedding weekend recaps.  (I know I'll want them for posterity sake! so bare with me those of you that were there and experienced it first hand.)

We had reservations at Volt for Saturday night and enjoyed a delicious meal.  Javier had called ahead to let them know it was our anniversary, so we were greeted with glasses of champagne while we waited for our table!  We ordered two options from each course and lucked out when each of us preferred the opposite dish (and therefore got to finish it after we'd both tasted!). 

I think our favorites were the beets (Javier's) and the sea bass (mine).  Our waiter also brought an extra dessert (ice cream covered in pistachios) with a small candle to blow out in honor of our one year!  It was a lovely meal and great to be able to sit and chat with each other.

how adorable is my husband wearing the suit he got married in?

We knocked around Frederick a bit in the morning, buying some new tea for me and a treat from the bakery, then eventually headed out to some wineries.  At the first one, we purchased a wine testing that included some Mediterranean snacks (olives, feta, roasted red peppers, etc).  With each wine we tasted, there was a suggested food item to eat and then re-taste the wine.  It ended up being a really fun way to do a tasting and we, of course, bought some fun wine we're hoping to share with the Cabezas family at Thanksgiving!

Since the Packers were playing the Ravens, we knew we would be able to find the game on at any bar in Frederick, so we went back and parked at Brewer's Alley for some beer tasting (they give you six 5 oz. beer tastes for eight bucks!) and Green Bay victory.  We proudly wore our jerseys in enemy territory and were (luckily) met with only friendly banter.   After the big win (although it got a little nerve racking at the end!), we headed west to Stone Manor to check out our spot for the evening.


We had planned to take it easy on Sunday night; order pizza in (that's what we ate on our wedding night anyway!), drink the wine we'd saved from the wedding, and reminisce over our photo albums.  We did ending up getting pizza and eating al fresco on the bed and breakfast patio.  There was a wedding going on at the manor and it was fun to watch the caterers running back and forth and guests coming to the main house every now and then.  We drank our wine and chatted about our busy day that happened a year ago already!  We didn't serve cake at our wedding (you remember we went with pie!) so there was no top to freeze for this anniversary.  Instead, I made us a fresh pumpkin pie to share with our wine.  It was delicious (I do love pie....) and another sweet item to trigger memories from our wedding.