the whole squad got to quito, ecuador on friday night (the 11th) at about 11pm. all of the teams are working with incalink – an organization in ecuador and peru that works with local and indigenous communities. we will be working with incalink next month in peru too!
we stayed in a seminary school dorm for the first night which seemed like world race luxury – comfy bunk beds, running water, flushing toilets and showers! the next morning when we woke up, we all put on our packs and went for a “short walk” to casa blanca which is another missionary house. the high altitude, up hill, and heavy packs proved to be a struggle for a lot of us. i had to stop half way to take off my pack and sit down because i thought i was going to throw up. not awesome. but when we finally got there we were greeted with a delicious breakfast and a couple hours of free time to rest and relax before it was time to go to the bus stations. most of the teams are staying in quito this month but my team (luminous) and another team (reckless pursuit) are staying in the amazon basin in a small village/town called huaticocha (wa-tee-co-cha). we took a bus for an hour and then another bus for 6 hours and arrived around 7pm.
so…we’re living in the amazon rain forest! we are just about 5-10 minutes from the other team and we get to see them almost every day.
we are staying at the mission school in the “dorms”. it’s sort of like camping cabins but the walls don’t go all the way up to the roof and there are a looot of bugs. but we have bunk beds with mosquito nets! we have an out house that has a concrete floor with a toilet that we flush with a bucket of water we get from the stream–it’s not hooked up to septic or anything. we wash our clothes and bathe in the stream in front of where we’re staying. we have different variations of chicken and rice for most meals and usually plantains too.
there are 5 other missionaries who live here – mark, sheryl, jim (who we call jungle jim cause he knows everything about this place), alvaro, and ulysses. and they’re all awwwesome.
generally, in the morning we do construction on the school (set to open jan 2014) and in the afternoon we visit the children in different communities.
i love living in the jungle. i know, you’re surprised. you and me both.
a few other happenings from this week:
+ the other day jim was on a ladder working and yelled “girls! hurry! get the clothes off of the line! it’s going to start raining in about 30 seconds!” and he was right. 30 seconds later it began dumping rain. how does he know these things!?
+i’m a legit construction worker now. sort of. sun’s out, guns out.
+my bug bites have bug bites and they itch like chicken pox. super fun.
+our first day here we trekked into the jungle with jim to cut cacao pods. right now the beans are drying and in a few days WE CAN MAKE CHOCOLATE!
+i helped mow down grass as tall as me with a machete. and i had fun doing it!
+this is the view from outside my room!
i’ll update more on what we’ve been doing soon!
