As previously said, our team spent last week in a small town about two hours away from Quito. I’m pretty sure it was the most awesome first week any World Racers have ever had. Our contacts were fabulous, and for at least four hours a day I got to spend time with about 100 beautiful children. We sang songs, and learned Bible verses in Spanish(ehhh, maybe I didn’t do so well at this part), made crafts(!) and had game time. I’m pretty sure we played every game that could be played with a soccer ball known to man plus a few more. The children in Tanguarin(apparently I’ve spelling it wrong, oops) are so gorgeous and sweet. They constantly were hugging and kissing us, yelling out random words in Spanish because they knew we wanted to learn, and generally being awesome. We also had to eat more than humanly possible…my favorite example of this is one day for lunch Marta made a ginormous pile of mashed potatoes, seriously like a pot at least two feet across piled about six inches high of potatoes…for 15 people. Jessica said that it was enough for at least four family reunions.
Best part of every meal. Marta, owning the kitchen. Settin' the table.
Every day Marta cooked three meals for us, so we volunteered to wash dishes for the week. This blog is going to talk a lot about food because a quite large portion of our week was spent eating, or at least trying. My three most favorite things about our food for the week: avocados with every meal, hot milk with chocolate, and what I will refer to as Ecuadorian cupcakes (no idea what they are actually called, but it was some sort of cake wrapped up in a leaf with some raisins…sooo good). We had lots and lots of bread, rice, various types of beans, and generally unknown types of fruit. For just about every meal, our garbage disposal named Jessica would eat everyone’s leftovers so we didn’t feel too guilty about not eating all of our own food.
One night we cooked dinner for our contacts, which was certainly interesting; they have a gas stove in what is basically an outdoor kitchen and only use really, really large pots and pans. We made chicken pasta with cheese sauce, spinach and strawberry salad, some slammin’ garlic bread, and cookies with ice cream on top for dessert. They seemed to really enjoy it.
Just about every night after dinner (and sometimes before as well) we had Jesus dance parties with a little bit of J Biebs (the two little girls, Camila y Daniela, love the Biebs) thrown in, shout out to Sammykins! I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so in love with God as I did during these times of worship and fellowship, seeing the beautiful scenery surrounding us and being in the presence of so many people being obedient to the Lord was occasionally overwhelming. Okay, so the rest of this blog is pretty much going to be as many pictures of my beautiful children that I can fit on here.
Our whole gang. Jessica and I's crew.
The boys and I. Jose(he pretty much looked at me like this the whole week.
Justin, bein' gansta. OSMER! He spoke English and didn't tell us until like the 3rd day, he thought our Spanish was hilarious.
Best. Hugger. Ever. Fo Reals. Jess doing something weird with our kids.
We all got at least two a day.
Alright, I guess that will have to be enough, I'll post the rest of the facebooks. I can't believe the week is over, Tanguarin truly felt like home. I can't even begin to imagine what is in store for my team and I over the coming months. Thanks for reading, love yall!!!
Lindsey
