View - 31 Things Day 14

Two weeks in - so excited I've kept up but getting sad we're halfway through and it will all be ending soon...

I look out of this window a lot. 

It’s the window right above the kitchen sink. The curtain is usually open - even in the late evening, and I can see all the daily happenings of Claros del Norte going on here.

There are often kids outside, riding bikes or skateboards or scooters down the incline.  At times I have seen teenagers sitting out in front of the neighbor’s wall, heads bent close together. I have seen kid’s peeing on the neighbor’s house, and writing graffiti on the blank wall. Of course I didn’t see the kids who keyed my car or broke our outdoor solar lamps. Of course.

I see our neighbors, going to and coming home from school and work. I watch as the neighbors living in front of us, with one of their six cars, leave and come back and then leave again five minutes later. All day long. I see what they’ve ordered for lunch and dinner (lots of pizza and KFC being delivered to that house) and sometimes wonder if they don’t think the same thing about us.

I watch airplanes taking off and sometimes landing. Wonder where they’re going or coming from.

I track the sun on its daily journey across the sky, watching how Pichincha changes form morning to noon to evening. Mornings it is a crisp, cheerful green, slowly changing to something more ominous and dark as the day goes on and the light sets behind the mountain. 

This is not the most beautiful view from any of the windows in the house. From the third floor we can see the entire length of Pichincha, and know how cold the night has been if we wake up to snow on its craggy peaks. From the living room you can see the ivy creeping up our back wall. From the second floor north-facing bedrooms you can see the park, watch the people in the morning on the weight-bearing machines, the young kids skipping school as they steal through the park mid-morning, the families in the afternoons out with their dogs and strollers, and the university students who park after dark to drink and dance and play music. That is, until the police move them along.

There is a lot of mischief going on outside of our windows. A lot of everyday, ordinary life, and - once in awhile, when the sun is just so and the air clean and crisp with that summer wind - extraordinary moments of beauty.