Domingo, 3/7/2016: Quito wins tourism award, Renewable energy lab, Salsa

Hola, Todos –

I will have family visiting me next week and while I will try to send a translation every day, I might not have enough energy after a day of touristic activities to send one every day.  Do not expect a translation on Tuesday.

Pagina cultural –

Fiesta del Fuego (Fire Festival) – The 36 edición del Festival del Caribe ‘Fiesta del Fuego’ will be held in Santiago de Cuba from 3-9/7 and will be dedicated to “la cultura popular del Ecuador.”  (See? you do know some Spanish.  I expect you to at least make a guess which will probably be right.)

Articles about –

CIDAP – The Centro Interamericano de Artesanías y Artes Populares (Now you know what CIDAP stands for – at least in Spanish.)  is holding workshops around the country to train artesans in the areas of quality, corporate image and marketing as well as generating a registry of artesans.

Premio Nacional Eugenio Espejo 2016 (National Eugenio Espejo Prize, 2016 – the Eugenio Espejo part is a proper name) – Cuencano writer Jorge Dávila  Vázquez has been nominated for this prize with the winner to be selected on 9/8 in Quito.  He has won many prizes and his work has been translated into several languages including English.  He also writes for El Mercurio.

Día del Español (Day of Spanish) – El Día del Español was celebrated yesterday.  In the world, it’s the native language for 472 million people with 567 million who can speak Spanish. (One of these days I’ll be one of those people and I hope that all of you will be joining me.)  Only Mandarin is spoken more widely than Spanish, and Spanish is second only to English as the language for international communication. On the two principal social networking sites in the world, it occupies second place and it is the third most used language on the internet.  By 2060, the US will be the country with the second most Spanish speakers – 119 million people or 1 out of every 3.  Only México will have more Spanish speakers.  (So you really should learn Spanish – even if you’re planning to go back to the US.  If that linguistic and ethnic future offends you, move to Canada which has mostly English speaking white people.)

Otras cosas – 

Titular – El Cuenca pierde 3 puntos y 2 jugadores (Cuenca loses 3 points and two players.)

World Travel Awards – Quito was selected for the 4th time as the leading destination in South America by the World Travel Awards, the maximum prize in the hotel and tourist industry. Peru was selected as the best culinary destination (any surprise there?), Chile for the best adventure destination and Cartagena de Indias for the best tourism in Colombia.

Debts – individuals and businesses are not contracting as much debt as in 2014-15 according to a survey released by the Banco Central del Ecuador.  A percentage of the applications are for loans to businesses to pay taxes or for severence payments for laid off or discharged employees.  This is a bad signal since the money isn’t intended for investment but to meet contractual obligations.

Road closure public announcement – De Las Américas will be closed in both directions between Del Batán and Gran Colombia and closed in the north to south direction between De Las Pencas and Gran Colombia starting Mon, 4/7.  Go to www.elmercurio.com.ec to see the map with alternate routes which are too hard to describe.  (You know the saying – a picture is worth a thousand words.)

Renewable energy laboratory – “Laboratorio Solar” has opened on Paseo de Milchichig y González Suárez in the Juan Alvarez factory.  The business started out making electric showers (the ones called widow makers or suicide showers.  Mine blew out the power for the whole first floor the first time I used it.) and branched out into water heating systems for residential and commercial use including solar panels and electric tank type water heaters.  An agreement will be signed with Universities so that students can use the facilities for research.

Amenidades –

Salsa – Jhon Lozano, the vocalist for the group “Guayacán” from Cali, Colombia, will be in Cuenca on 8/7 at 21:30 in the Space Club (That’s the club in the airplane on Remigio Crespo y Unidad Nacional).  He will sign autographs before the show at the San Telmo Grill y Trattoria (Federico Malo y Tadeo Torres – Stadium sector.)  The show will open with a group from Cuba and Lozano will start his act at midnight.  (I was wondering how he was going to get to the Space Club by 21:30 if the autograph signing started at 21:00.  So how many of you are ready for dancing that starts at midnight?)

And that´s all for today so Hasta Mañana –

Jeanne