Scenes from Ecuador

Here are just a couple photos of our lives in Ecuador.

City Dump and Church Work

The students are hard at work at the daycare center at Quito's city dump, and at a local Covenant church in Quito. Only a couple of minor health issues -- which require a bathroom nearby -- but other than that the group is doing a fantastic job. They are hard workers with servants' hearts. Tomorrow we are off to Banos and Shell -- for some fun times.

Dance Parties on cable cars

Today we split up into two groups:

Group one went to the dump and helped out at the day care: Sean, Ryan, Stephen, Courtney, Tori, Victoria, Jackie
-they watched the kids, cleaned toys for the day care, and painted a few murals for the kids

Group two went to the church we attended last Sunday: Matt, Michael, Sam, Sami, Katherine, Teddy, Bradley, and Carl
-we painted desks and chairs and tables for the Sunday school classes and helped cut up their shelving units to create more efficient storage.

Both groups ate lunch at the sites and we all met back up at the guest house. From there we went to the cable cars. Riding up it wasnt cloudy, so we had great views of the mountains and Quito. We got off at the top and walked around on top of the mountain..the clouds were sooo cool...we were in them! We had fun times on those cars....the ride up/down was 15 minutes. Tim had everyone else in the car duck down and pretended to cry when another car went by. For another one everyone picked their noses...good stuff. (we fit roughly six to a car).

From there we went to a mall in Quito and ate at a food court..yummy stuff!

A lot of people are sick, so when we got back to the house we talked and then everyone basically went to bed.

:) Katherine

oh..and for those dying to see some pictures...here are some from carabuela!!

Eating clouds, spitting on the continental divide, and hot springs!

This morning we woke up and headed straight to the basillica. Initially we climed up the turrets, tori dropped her camera off the wooden bridge, and some people came close to peeing their pants while climbing to the top. It was quite the view. Then we all climbed the belfrey. No, they would not let us hang out in the open. Once we left the church we watched a parade outside the presidential house honoring the condor because it is becoming extinct. For lunch we went to McDonalds, quite good. We then left for the hot springs. We got to spit on the continental divide and eat clouds on the way up. The hot springs were awesome, some of the pools were really really hot, and there was one pool that was frigid. A couple of us jumped between the two a couple times....it burned! After changing we got back onto the bus and went to Carlos and Karens for a breakfast dinner. After games and checking emails we went back to the guest house to sleep.

Missing you all.

Waves of mercy..dadadada!

We all woke up really early today and went straight to the foundation. We only had two hours with the kids today but it was really awesome. A few of us got to go into Segundo's parents house to see how he makes ponchos. He wakes up at 3 in the morning for 15 days to make one poncho and makes 25 dollars every month.



As we were leaving some team members started crying and none of the kids wanted to let us leave...really cute.



We went back to the hostal for lunch, thanked Matilda and the staff, and then left for the Equator museum. All the experiments we cool, some of us got Egg Master certificates for balancing an egg on the head of a nail. And the guinea pigs there informed us as to whether or not we had bad energy.



After that we went to the Feijoos house for dinner and some games. They have a really nice house in Quito.



Tonight we are staying at the Alliance Guest house again.



Thanks for all of your support and we really enjoy reading the comments you leave...especially you Mommy O'D..woo!




katherine speaking for the team..again.