Wednesday, May 16
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Erin's Day in Quito
As you probably already know our Alma group has been split into 4 different groups. One group left for the cloud forest on Monday morning, one group is helping out at a local school, one group is taking a second week of spanish lessons at the Academy, and one group (including me) has been volunteering at a hospital here in Quito.
Morning
So this morning my housemate Kendra and I woke up, had breakfast with our host mom, and left for the hospital around 8:30. We met Angie at the hospital around 9, but then had to wait until about 10:30 to be told what we were doing today. Then we were handed some paper, paints, pens, pencils, rulers and other drawing tools to go up to the different floors to play with the kids and draw with them. We had a lot of fun, even though our Spanish is not the greatest. We played, drew, taught a few kids a little English and tried to speak Spanish as best we could. Around 12:30 we left the hospital for the day to go back to the Academy for lunch.
Afternoon
After lunch at the Academy Kendra and I went back to our host mom`s house, changed clothes, grabbed some more cash and went over to an Internet cafe. We checked our e-mails and everything, called a few people then headed over to Carolina park where some of our group mates had organized a soccer game. We watched for a little while, took a few pictures then went to an artisan market with Lindsey and Emily. It was very interesting, we wandered for a while, bought a few things, then went back to our host home. When we got back to our house we rested for a while, ate dinner with our host mom, watched some TV (in English!) and just hung around the house for a while. Then it was bed time. Overall, not a bad day, we had fun playing with the kids, watching soccer, and wandering the market.
Kayla`s Day in the Cloud Forest
Stay tuned for Kayla`s day in the cloud forest!
This morning was SO gorgeous at Bellavista. The sky was clear, (no clouds!) and the sun was shining. We all got up early for breakfast (which was at 8:00) but the sun woke me up at 6:00. That´s very early for us college students, but to Dr. McNally, that´s nothing. He got up and at 4:00 a.m. to go birdwatching! That´s what I call being faithful to your hobby. After breakfast we all decided that we wanted to hike, even though we didn´t have a guide. Discovery Falls seemed like a good place to go to, not too hard of a hiking trail (well not suicidal at least) and waterfalls are always beautiful to see. Dan stayed back at the dome since he was feeling really sick, and slept the entire day, ¡pobrecito! The hike started off very good, since it was downhill quite a ways, which never seems to happen in Ecuador, but suddenly people behind me started screaming and saying to RUN. We came across some angry bees, and many people got stung. Hopefully no one was allergic. And, not long after that, some more people got stung by more angry bees. So, we started going as fast as we could possibly go, but down a steep muddy trail, it´s not that easy to run without breaking something. It was so refreshing when we finally reached the waterfall! We all got pictures, and some of us got more wet then others, but it was beautiful.
Then started the hike back. Of course, it was ALL uphill. This part wasn´t so fun. It was hot and humid, and we were all starting to get hungry. The new joke between us all is that there is no such thing as downill in Ecuador...:). Everyone made it back safe and in one piece. We all took showers, ate lunch and then napped. When we got up it was raining outside, so we all decided no to go on another hike. Some of us played scrabble...Dani was the rule book...others played euchre, listened to music, or continued to sleep. Dr. McNally returned from his birdwatching trip sick. He had caught a cold somewhere along the way, but said he saw around 47 different birds, pretty impressive. When dinner time rolled around, I had to go wake Dan up to see if he wanted to eat at all since he had been sleeping all day, and Dr. McNally was also sleeping, but he decided not to get up, and that he didn´t want to take any medicine. Then for the rest of the night, we all hung out, played more euchre, or others just decided to go to bed early. For othrs of us, we stayed up and talked for a while, and then we all crashed out early (well early to us, about 11:00, but late to the elders...).
