Christmas in Latacunga

I ran away this Christmas.

...but instead of running away from home, I believe I ran to it this time...(or at least the closest thing to it.)

Turns out we have a little time off for Christmas, and that combined with our days off equals a good opportunity to go back to Latacunga to see my kiddos.  Myself and a friend braved public transit from Quito on Christmas Day this year and I found myself thinking a lot on the bus.  Thoughts like, "Is this good for the kids? Am I wasting money? Should I have stayed with the bigger group this holiday?"

But upon opening the door and walking in I was nearly tackled with hugs before I could finish saying "Feliz Navidad". Then I knew that we made the right choice.  So glad to be in the middle of nowhere loving on the kids that touched my heart so much these past couple weeks.  We played with the kiddos for a bit then called a taxi to take us to the nearest Christmas dinner, which turned out to be a chicken leg and rice. Then we opened gifts, chatted for hours, and slept.

This morning after feeding them I read them some books in Spanish (slowly with a bit of an accent...sometimes its just too morning for that sort of thing...haha) and I returned to the apartment to eat breakfast and work on my FAFSA for gradschool.  This is the time in which I discovered that goofy Caroline left half of her charger in Quito.  I am currently typing on a borrowed Ipad that I only kinda know how to use since I did the speech therapy language program on it for our non-vocal kiddos...but maybe I can use it tonight if I can sort that out.

Perhaps being in the countryside without technology this weekend is a blessing in disguise... But I sure would love to get some to-dos done too!  We will play it by ear.

We return to Quito on Sunday and continue our ministry there until heading to Africa on the 6th by way of Washington DC and my brother's homemade cookies. Yay!

Amazonian Advenures

So we took a little trip to the Amazon for our days off!

Eating something Random our Guide pulled off a tree.

We started out in Banos and did a day trip excursion into the Rainforest.  We first visited an animal refuge for injured animals to be rehabbed and returned to the forest.  Then after visiting a community of Kichwan people we ate a traditional Ecuadorian lunch and headed off on a hike through the Amazon Rainforest.

We ate, rubbed, chewed, and snorted many medicinal plants (I didn't snort though...not about that...haha but some people have better sinuses now).  And our goal was to make it to a waterfall!  However many dangers stood in the way.  At one point I wandered a couple feet away from our guide and ended up knee deep in quicksand.  Two teammates had to pull me out from behind.

Our paint after visiting the Kichwa. (we blew dart guns!!!!)

Then as we neared the waterfall the already thin path narrowed more on a ledge.  I was trying my best to keep up with the guide and I stepped a little to close to the edge.  Dirt crumbled beneath my feet as the ground gave way beneath me.  My right leg hung useless over the ledge as my left leg anchored to what was left of the path.  My arms held me up having the path at chest level now.  I let out a little scream and our guide doubled back to rescue me.  Once he pulled me back up we both stared at the gaping hole in the path and the subsequent fall.  Breathless I said, that's a long way to fall.  And he responded with, "It's only 3 meters." Um..that's 10 feet father than I would like to fall.

Fish Pedicures!

Once at the waterfall we swam under it, through it and around it until we could swim anymore...and we hiked back out to meet our net adventure.  The last thing we did, in the pouring rain of the Amazon was to hop into wooden canoes and head down a tributary of the Amazon river.  After every set of rapids we hit, our guide would have to scoop water out of the bottom of the boat with an old plastic bottle.

The following day I knew I needed to rest since we had work the next day.  So a friend and I had a girls' day!  We soaked in Banos' famous hot springs and then got a full body massage, facial, and fish pedicure (where the little fishies eat the dead skin off your feet).  We shopped for local made jewelry from the Tagua seed and then had lunch.  We ended our week-long quest for yarn at the best yarn store we have found in all of South America and then headed home on an early bus.  Such a restful day after such an adventure!

A Video to Say Thanks

Since we have decent internet this week, I decided to make a video to thank all the AWESOME people who I have been blessed to know these past couple months.  Thank you all!

“Love, like everything else in life, should be a discovery, an adventure, and like most adventures, you don’t know you’re having one until you’re right in the middle of it.” 
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly