HimynameisKelsiandIwenttoEcuador.

Seriously though.
I got a call from my dear grandfather shortly after I got back from my trip and he informed me that he was expecting a detailed report/novel as impressive as my dad gave when he got back from Guatemala. Disclaimer right from the beginning: that's not going to happen (<--debateable). But before I forget everything and get to tell everyone in person, I thought it might be a good idea to make a little novellette. Is that a word? Basically everyone keeps asking me, "how was Ecuador?" and I either cry, melt, or say "It was amazing" and that's usually about it. So here's how Ecuador really was. :)


Day One: Livin' in an Airport (or two)
This is the part in which five excited girls weigh baggage, take pictures and take off from SLC to LA! We got lost all over the place finding terminals and food and being rather loopy and excited, finally make it to our spot where we meet girls, play games and try to sleep on each other. At 3 AM our next flight took off and we spent the next 24 hours on planes and airports, playing games, sleeping on and off and getting to know each other. We learned not to eat lettuce or tomatoes in other countries since it's mostly likely been washed by their bacterial water, but then a bunch of us accidentally ate some anyway on Subway sandwiches right off the bat. Oops. Don't worry, we survived the lettuce incident.
We made stops in San Salvador (scary) and Bogota, Columbia (drug-checking dogs). Columbia had these NICE people in the gift shops who kept talking to us, and I'm proud to say my Spanish worked for the first time. No big deal. They also had free chocolates everywhere (they were very proud of their chocolate) and sometimes it had pineapple or bananas or guavas inside. Mm.
We finally made it to Ecuador after a two-hour delay on our last flight at almost 4 AM, only to find out our baggage was lost. Yay! I'd kind of been counting on it so it wasn't too bad, but we had fun driving through our new little country <3 There was graffiti and little colored houses, little "ditch dogs" (dogs sleeping in...ditches) and glass on walls everywhere and I was in love from the get-go. Wow.
Sleep: 5 am-9 am. Kimber freaking out about being murdered in our room and making me check the wardrobe and the window twice (we didn't even get murdered). Breakfast: weird wannabe cornflakes that you pour liquidy yogurt on and eat with a spoon. Good hot chocolate, bread, pineapple juice. 

Day Two: (I'm counting the unmeasurable traveling time as one day)
Colored fruit, Magic Carpets, and the World of Dreams...

 THIS WAS THE BEST DAY OF MY ENTIRE LIFE. At least that's what my journal says. After the weird breakfast that was trying to be American, we drove two hours through the jungle and I started telling everyone to look for pink bananas since I heard there were some in Ecuador. Nobody believed me and I didn't know if I believed myself but we looked hard because we secretly did. "Pink banana--nope." That's a flower. That's a pink tree. (We were basically in hooville.) We were also looking hard for monkeys and Kimber wanted to see a Koala bear (...).
We got to Mindo and went through this little village full of people selling and walking to school and dogs with diseased eyes. We finally stopped next to a little bathroom (in the jungle by a creek) and suddenly there's a scream on the bus and my friend Ashlan is pointing wordlessly out the window.

PINK BANANAS!

Right outside our bus window. We got to walk through this BEAUTIFUL little jungle park with a restaurant surrounded by jungle. Do you notice I keep saying the word jungle? I just really liked it. We ate amazing food and french fries because they know how to keep Americans happy. Then came the best part of my entire life: pickup trucking through the trees.

*Restaurant surrounded by jungle

You may be thinking, what? That does not sound like the best part of someone's life. But, it was. Probably second actually. I'm pretty sure everyone has a hidden dream of cruising through the jungle in a boat or jeep and smashing through trees and puddles, they just don't know it until they're doing it. But let me tell you, happy exhileration to the max = dream come true. Get ready for lots of pictures. Once we got to the top of the mountain we went on the terapita. Basically a metal magic carpet that takes you over the very tippy top of Ecuador, and all you can see are miles and miles of trees and clouded mountains and it's beautiful like a dream.

Shortly after our carpet ride we got to go down I think thirteen ziplines. Again, beautiful. Sometimes the nice Ecuadorian workers would go with us and let us zipline upside down or Superman style, as I got to do. Basically you are Jane flying over the jungle with Tarzan holding your back, except there's no chasing baboons and it's a harness instead of a dress, and it's not Tarzan.
Next was la mariposaria, the butterfly preserve with hundreds of butterflies that swarm you and land on your head and arms and camera. There were flowers hanging from everywhere and it felt like a magical preserve of wonder. We got to pickup cruise back down the mountain in the dark and there was lots of screaming and whooping and laughing and I remember thinking that I was probably having the best Friday night of anyone I knew. 

Superman

Las mariposas LOVED my adopted Ecuadorian brother David

Upside down zipline. Woahh.

Day Three: Cute Old Ladies, Coconut men, and more planes


Shopping. Woo! Ecuador marketplaces are simply the cutest. Imagine all the colors you've ever seen in ONE place. Add that to little baby old ladies speaking in whiny Spanish and calling you "amiga" and, in the case of Kimber, patting your pockets for change (ee!) and you have Otavalo marketplace. There are bags and pants and painted figurines and little nicknacks everywhere. I learned how to bargain in Spanish. A nice little man followed me around and said in a very Spanish accent-- "fo your boy-fren?" "No, gracias." And then a little later... "Fo yo boy-fren?" NO TENGO OKAY?

Coconut-machete man

At the entrance to the market was this frighteningly muscly black Ecuadorian with a machete. Don't worry, it was for hacking the living daylights out of coconuts. And hack he did. A couple of the girls bought some and he really went for it to open it for them--I thought he might accidentally hack off an arm. Luckily, all arms stayed intact and the coconut juice was rather divine. Mmmm.
We ate at a scary-ish little shop and got plate-fulls of potatoish-corn, meat, avocados and "tortillas" that were actually sneaky orange potatoes in disguise--all for like three bucks. Prices weren't bad my friend.
Eventually we made it back on the bus with our happy finds--everyone was decked out in scarves and alpaca sweaters and colorful headbands--only to find the pleasant surprise of two Ecuadorian ladies in full attire ready to sing to us in the ancient language. Our trip leader paid them to perform for us and they sang in little high nasally voices an asian-sounding song. Awesome.
Time for one last plane ride form Quito to Cuenca--our final destination for the majority of the trip. We managed to hang on to our luggage this time and arrive late that evening, at which point we hopped on into a cute restaurant to eat crepes and delicious locro de papas--Ecuador's typical potato-avocado soup. AMAZING. I'm going to learn how to make it.
We made it to our temporary home: Best Plaza Hotel, run by the cutest man and his cutest-ever family, and got settled with our new roommates. I was in a room with my mother, my friend Ashlan from Riverton, and two of our new friends Alauna from Vegas and Caroline from North Carolina and the adventures began!

Delish milk straight from the coco

Matching headbands woot.

Oh yeah, and here's one of the rest stops from the day. No big deal.

This is what you look like when you're in Ecuador.

A llama and alpaca. Or an alpaca and llama. Hm.

Day Four: Churchy-church and Meeting the Kids

Up until this point, I'm sure a lot of you are wondering if you donated money for me to go on nothing but a fun-filled vacation. Yes, the first weekend was intensely packed adventure and fun, but come Sunday things got to calm down a bit and start getting really beautiful.
We went to church at 9 AM, got quite a few stares for taking up the whole middle section with our little white girl selves, and settled in for three hours of Spanish translating fun. An American missionary spoke last, he was getting ready to head for home in Draper, Utah no less, and he spoke some in English for us. It was easier to understand his Spanish than the locals and he told a great story about his dad's forgiveness and light-heartedness about some money he accidentally wasted on a $20 bracelet. "Money doesn't matter." It was touching to see his reluctance and emotion in leaving these people--up til then I'd only seen RM's from the American side after they'd come home, but he made it very clear that Cuenca was his home. Aww. Que lindo.
Sunday school was awesome, we had all of us with all the youth, with our trip leader, Allison, translating back and forth. We talked about the priesthood and the importance of spouses supporting each other. He said something like, "The gospel is simple: you either do it or you don't. The prophet tells you to have food storage, do family history, etc., and you either obey or don't. There's nothing in between." He said a member of the 70 came to their ward once and said that you can tell by who reads their scriptures and pays their tithing that someone is a faithful member of the church. I guess too often we make excuses or take time deciding when it should be easy as that. I thought it was interesting.
After church we talked to a little six-year-old girl who told us her name was Teresa. Ashlan said she had a beautiful name and she hugged her and we all melted right there. We went outside and took pictures with her and soon all the primary kids came out and swarmed and we had so much fun talking to them in Spanish (it's easier with kids cuz they don't use huge words or judge us.) I had an entire conversation with an eight-year-old boy about what he's learning about America in school and I quizzed him on his English words. He was awesome. One of the little boys said, "todos son....YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!" and then ran away and we all died.
Later was our very first trip to the OSSO orphanage where we would be spending so much time. Most of the kids have special needs, many are in wheelchairs and can't speak. We were there about an hour and all the girls connected with the kids so fast and seemed to overcome the barriers on the spot. We were dancing and playing and spinning and feeding some of them and it was SO BEAUTIFUL! Some were playing soccer with the boys, or pushing kids on swings or hanging them upside down, or pushing wheelchairs... One of the downsides is that we were never allowed to take pictures at the orphanage because of government privacy policies. The organization did take some for us and give us copies but we are only allowed to post them in private settings on select sites so you'll have to look on my Facebook for those.
We got to have a fireside with the youth that night with a mixture of speakers from our group and the ward which was super cool. Love them.


Day Five: Ladrillos, ladrillos, ladrillos
So remember when I said the novel thing wasn't going to happen? Oops. (Hereditary)
Welp, today we started ouuurrrr... WORK PROJECTS! Yeah! Orphanage at 9, geared up in work shoes and old clothes, and started hauling bricks! We hauled for hours in a beautiful little assembly line and stacked bricks into a dozen piles around the foundation. Everyone really jumped into the work and it was actually rather fun. A truck came in loaded with bags of cement and we hauled them from the truck across the yard and into the almost-finished house--each one was 100+ lbs and we usually took them between two, but some braved it on their own, including our cute little 90-lb 16-year-old Mckenna. More than her weight on her back, all the way across the yard. After lunch we got a really happy surprise--another truck with 2000 more ladrillos (bricks) to haul. It was awesome.
At 5, we finished up, got in the bus and, covered in brick dust, got back to the hotel to take 4-minute showers and then head to FHE at ward members' houses. My group went to the home of a cute young couple who didn't actually know we were coming but welcomed us with open arms anyway and shared their conversion stories and testimonies with us. The woman asked us all about our lives and adventure and kept saying, "Ah, que linda!" Cutest lady ever. They gave us lemon tea and cookies and it was really cool to be in their home and see the pictures of Christ and gospel things around the house in another country.
The bus home was crazy. Lots of singing, crazy girls, crazy stories from the night. One girl had an interesting experience where she went to kiss the mother of their home on the cheek, and there was some apparent confusion as to which side and they ended up kissing somewhere else. Everybody died and she never heard the end of it, but was a great sport and laughed right along with us.

Day Six: Of Parks and Futbol

More work all morning: we began laying brick for the first time. The Ecuadorian workers were very picky, and a little exasperated as they tried to teach us how to set each one perfectly. Sometimes they made us redo whole rows. They spoke no English, (except for "no.") and they sure loved to shake their fingers at us condescendingly. Kimber made a comment that evening at devotional time: "Now I see why God changed all the languages to stop the tower of Babel. NOBODY could build a whole tower with different languages." So true. What are they sayingggg.
Every other day we got to spend half of it with the kids and today was my groups turn. So after lunch we got to go play with the kiddos and today was a special day that we got to go to the park. We each took a wheelchair or stroller or hand and walked about 6 or 7 blocks through the streets of Ecuador, past probably a hundred dogs and tons of cute little cement houses. You could just look around and you were in Ecuador--there were gorgeous mountains and trees everywhere. We got to the park and I had so much fun following little Manuel around. He's autistic and shy, doesn't really respond and likes to wander around on his own with his little plastic blue glasses and four-year-old self. Melt my heart to butter. Goodness. We went up and down the slide stairs and by the creek, and finally when we got to the swings he gets this little grin. Aw. Apparently Manuelito LOVES swings, but not swinging on them, just playing with them. So we'd twist it around twice and let it go spinning and he would just start giggling and finally acknowledging my existence and I thought I would die. He started grabbing my leg and pulling me onto the swing and twisting me around and start laughing when I pretended to scream. The other time I saw him light up was whenever Nancy was around. She was one of the few who had no special needs, and loved bossing everyone around in Spanish and having attention. She would sing songs about "Manuelito" and he would just smile and hug her. Aww.

After dinner that night it was time for mutual with the ward so we went over and had an intense soccer game and had tons of fun getting into it and bonding with the youth. Ecuador people are so cute.

Day Seven: Brick-whisperer
That's right. This is the day in which I laid three perfect rows of bricks. I really developed a knack for getting them set evenly and beautiful, forgive my lack of modesty (again, hereditary). We sang and worked along 9-5 once  again. Every day at around 11 we get a "pan" (bread) break and eat delicious little bread rolls from the "panederia," filled with either cheese, jelly or sugar. They were FIFTEEN CENTS. I know! I'm considering starting a bakery with delicious 15-cent rolls. Eh.
 During our hour of lunch break we all hang out in the little apartment room at the orphanage they let us use to store our stuff. We played games like "Have you ever" and guessing each other's celebrity crushes (yes, we're girls.) Mostly we just sat/slumped/lay in our seats and ate our shrimpy little sandwiches the hotel made us and sat in pure exhaustion. But I loved those lunch breaks. :)

Today we got to see the sights! We walked all through Cuenca all night, looking at statues, churches, little shops and cute houses with flower-covered balconies... We got David to say "Hello my name is David" in English which was a huge accomplishment. Went to an internet cafe and got to email home and facebook and say "I'm in Ecuador!" and stuff, then to a great ice cream shop for weird types of ice cream. Greatest night out on the town, we laughed, we sang, we talked, we conquered.

Day Eight & Nine: Awful Spanish Music and Scary Asians
 Pato, pato, ganza. With WHEELCHAIRS. That's right. It was the greatest, we played duck duck goose all morning, pushing the kids in a circle and chasing them after each other til their faces lit up and sometimes even laughed. Then we fed them and I had a really cool experience with one of the kids, named Roman. As I fed him and watched his eyes watch the world--I swear he knew things I didn't, he just stared at the world with a slight smile and knowing look all the time--and I just thought how it would be to see through his eyes, eyes that are unclouded by worldly views or judgment. A lot of times on our trip we talked about seeing the kids again when they were in their perfected state, but I couldn't help but think that he already was, and that I couldn't wait to see him when I was more perfect like him. I think too often we  become handicapped ourselves just through bad habits, judgment or temptation we get ourselves into. So it was really cool to have that thought and feel a connection while I fed him. Oh Romannnn.
We went to pizza and got SPRITE--it was so extremely good after weeks of nothing but weird juice which was usually just pureed fruit--and then walked through the town again to get to our DOUBLE-DECKER BUS! We got our own tour through Cuenca and it was beautiful! We were going crazy up on top and had to all duck when the lady said because there were low-hanging telephone wires. One girl got clipped in the ear and another got pegged in the face. Ouch. Both still functioning. On top of the mountain was the most magnificent view of Cuenca in all it's lit-up Ecuadorian glory. Wow. On the way back we hung out on the bottom deck of the bus in the bar-room (don't worry, it was just us. No scary hooligans to be seen). We had a crazzzy dance party with loud music and disco lights and everyone commented on us Riverton dancers. I guess we dance weird. And when I say weird I mean AWESOME. Anyway.

 

On top of Cuenca. Wowza.

Bus dance partayyy.

Friday was a bit of a shorter working day since our Ecuadorian workers had to leave to go home for the weekend. One thing about our Ecuadorian workers, they play this really terrible Spanish radio station that is the most irritating stuff in the whole world. There is good Spanish music and then there is this awful oldies Spanish music that I swear is all the same song, over and over and over...it played in my head in my sleep for days. (Sometimes we would sneak over and change the station. They always changed it back.) Anyway, today we laid bricks on scaffolding, which is a really fancy way of saying we put the weight of ourselves,  a barrel of cement and a dozen heavy bricks in the hands of flimsy-looking poles holding up bending planks of wood that laid across the top. Ahhhh! Once I lost balance and stepped down on the other worker's platform so I wouldn't crash down to my death or neck breakage and he came over and got mad at me. "No." Shaking his finger. I almost pushed him off. Instead I stepped back up onto mine.
After lunch I got to sand the inside of the almost-finished house. That is peaceful work. I got to contemplate on what I'd learned and look out the big window and see Ecuador! The sanding sound blocks everything else out. :) Eventually the contemplating got old so us sanders took up Disney singing (screaming), thinking nobody could hear us over the loud sanding. Turns out, they could. The best part is that it drowns out the Spanish music!! This was a favorite job, needless to say.
Legit Ecaudorian food restaurant tonight, with amazing steak and beans and platanos and little round yellow things and beautiful pink juice and coconut milk wonder.... I think it was my favorite place. I'm dying. Then we went to the church for the "dance" which was actually this little round enthusiastic Ecuadorian dance instructor who led us in some obscure knee-lift/jumping jack/hip thrusting "dancing"... It was fun to watch her lead us anyway. We all taught each other some other dances from America/Ecuador and had fun being friends and talking about boys with some of the girls. Turns out I Salsa'd with Anita's boyfriend. Sorry.
So we really liked brick analogies in our devotionals and one of the girls gave one about how she was down scraping extra cement scraps off the ground while someone laid bricks above her and they just kept dropping it. She compared it to Christ's atonement, how we just keep making mistakes and he keeps cleaning it up and it never seems to stop, but He wouldn't have us just stop building. I thought it was cool.
So there's these Asian men that stayed in our hotel and there was a rumor that one of them looked in one of the girls' rooms, succeeding to instill paranoia in said girls and causing them to run out of their room in the middle of the night and bang on papa Jim's door until he exploded from the door roaring like a bear, (thinking they were the Asian guys causing us trouble). The girls screamed the loudest sound I have ever heard and fell onto the ground. And that is what happened.

Dancing with David, Anita's boyfriend. Heh.

Our cute gym enthusiast instructor

Some of us with some of them :)

Day Ten: Incas were Ruined, Rotisseried Rats, and Popcorn Parties

They really were. We saw them. After driving all day through the country and seeing all the little cute Inca descendants in their traditional clothing and hats, hanging out laundry or dealing with their pigs... One of the coolest parts of the trip definitely. We took pictures like crazy. At Ingapirca, the ruins site, there was a huge festival going on since it was the day after summer solstice and the Incas basically worshiped that stuff. So we had fun watching all the colorful people dancing and wearing goat legs (don't ask me why) and selling hats and little knitted llamas... We went on top of the ruins and there was a GREAT view from up there. Really pretty. After we got a lot of the history from our New Jersey/Ecuadorian accented tour guide, we went on a hike to see this natural rock that looks like an Incan man's face. No kidding.

Not a lot to say but a lot to see. Picture time. :)

Mr. Guy with the moon rock calendar thing

Lotsa colorful  people

Traditional garb

On top of the ruins

Inca man

Oh wait! I do too have more to say about this day. This is the day in which I consumed part of a guinea pig. EW. (There's two things I hate, and that's rodents and dead things. I can't even handle flushing fish. Ewewewew.) They call it "cuyi" and it's a traditional dish, but let me tell you, it is a GOOD thing we don't sell grilled rats on the street here. Let's just keep it that way.
The thing still had its claws and TEETH and whiskers and some of them still had white eyes. Gahhhhbleh. It took me about five minutes to eat it, the hardest part was ripping off a piece to eat when the eyes are staring at you and there's not much meat on there anyway, so you have to choose whether you want to eat the dangly skin from near the ribcage or go for a meaty piece from the head (which is STARING AT YOU.) I finally made someone tear me a piece, and then we all took pictures kissing it. I would like to declare that I had a standard of one inch between me and he and I was not bending on it. One of the girls threatened to move it closer so I'd actually kiss that dead rodent and I ran away.

Saturday night=MOVIE NIGHT! Crystal and David went and bought us some pirated movies from a store adn we ended up watching "Tienes un email" (You've got Mail), and it was in English! A bunch of the girls all piled into our room and the nice hotel people made us a bucketload of delicious popcorn and nearly everyone fell asleep. It was the greatest.

Day Eleven: 

Let me tell you about our breakfast. Every single day in Cuenca it was the same. Juicy scrambled eggs, bread, kiwi, nasty papaya, mediocre watermelon, and delicious white pineapple (white! Turns out that's how they're supposed to be, but we genetically alter them here to make them more appealing.) And this delicious hot cocoa we would make with warm milk, weird cocoa powder and sugar. I miss that breakfast. Even though it was always the same, it was just a part of Ecuador and didn't really get old.
Church was just as great as last week; we sang as young women in Sacrament meeting, "I am a Child of God" and "A Child's Prayer" in a mix of Spanish and English. After church we took pictures again outside and talked with the young women. At the hotel we got. to. take. a. NAP! It was heavenly, I think our first real downtime all week. Then we went to OSSO to play with the kids for an afternoon--I got to swing with little Cristian and Eddie and color with Laura.
After dinner we all gathered in our meeting room with blankets and pillows around a laptop to watch the missionary broadcast with Elder Holland and it was so cool to see all hte missionaries in the choir and hear them talking about the new changes. We talked a lot about serving missions and our future plans.

Day 12: Bubble Bliss
Today was my day to go off-site--each of the groups take turns visiting other orphanages/organizations at least once during the trip, and we went to a little daycare which was one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. We walk in and there are about 20 tiny dark children that are all EXACTLY the same size and I swear only went to my knee with the same huge black eyes staring up at us. My heart melted all over the ground and made a big mess and I about died on the spot. They were getting ready to eat and their lady started saying this Catholic prayer in Spanish and the kids would kind of repeat after her in a little chorus, mumbling and saying the ends of the phrases like "Padre" and "Espiritu" and crossing themselves. The ones with hats had them in their little hands and it was BEAUTIFUL. After they ate we played with blocks and I would quiz them on colors. It was so cute, one girl called all of them "azul" and I would teach her the right one and tickle her; some of the boys made blocks guns and they shot me dead until I cracked an eye open and then they'd rally and get me again. I was having so much fun. But it only got better when I cracked open the bubbles and their already-huge eyes turned into little saucers. I'd brought about 30 mini bubbles and we had so much fun passing them around and practicing blowing. And meanwhile there's just little babies swarming me shouting "otro! por favor!" and "ayuda!" and they never seemed to get tired of them. Bubbles have never been so magical as they were in that little dark room. I miss it already. You'll have to go on my facebook and look at these pictures. We had storytime and little Evelyn sat on my lap and we stomped like elefantes and and stretched our necks like girafes with the book. They all said "gracias" and took one candy politely when we passed them around and I thought it was so interesting to see the difference between these kids who had parents and family structure to go home to versus the orphans who always fought for attention and treats. They're all sweet kids but it made me realize how important it is to have a family.
Back at OSSO it was time for more scaffolding, ripping out nails from boards and painting in the new house. The four of us painting had fun singing again through pretty much every American song you can imagine. The hotel made us legitimate Ecuadorian food that day and it was AMAZING. Their tipico Locros de Papas (potato soup with avocados) and delicious fish (I know! It exists!) and banana cakes and buttered vegetables...
FHE this week got mixed up again and we ended up combining two groups/families in one little house the family had built themselves. It looked a lot like the house we were building but much smaller. Made of cement, it was more of a shed than a house with couches and tv's that looked out of place in the main room. We all squeezed in and talked about conversion stories and it was extremely strengthening to listen to their strong testimonies in such a small house. We played 'fruitbasket' and all shuffled around the little room, grandma, grandpa, kids, relatives, and nealry 10 girls. One of the most beautiful family home evenings I've ever had.
**Look on facebook for these pictures! Cutest kids.

Day 13: Hard Wark
Probably the most draining and strenuous work day. I shoveled cement and rocks and mixed it with water for almost two hours, then hauled it to nice Manuel to put in the sidewalk. It felt really good to work hard and really go for it. During lunch we played games and afterwards we moved scaffolding and wood around and did more bricks bricks bricks. We were beat by the time 5 rolled around and we got to the bus. Hour and a half for all five of us to shower which was nice, so we put on the movie in our room again while we got ready and then headed to mutual for our last night with the ward members. We ate pizza and Kimber and I talked to the bishop's wife about how Kimber was going to come back and live with them and I told them they didn't want to do that. It was funny cuz Kimber couldn't understand the Spanish, she just knew we were talking about her and laughing and she's like "Hey!" Then we found out one of the girls, Erica, also watches our secret obsession Korean soap opera that Kimber and I have watched all 25 hours of (Boys Over Flowers). Who knew! It was the craziest thing in the whole world, nobody in America even knows about it and hear halfway across the world is another avid fan. So funny. Only there it's called "Los Hombres Son Mejores que los Flores." Say it out loud. Much catchier.
Intense round of capture the flag using pizza boxes and it was wild! But so so fun. Even the bishop's wife got involved. Afterwards we said goodbye to our dear local Ecuadorian friends and it was so sad. Even though I didn't know them super well I still love them and talk to a few on facebook. I remember thinking I was going to die if I really had to leave Ecuador. America seemed like a dream, but this place was real.

Day 14 and 15: Lots of Lasts
Today was so hard for so many reasons.
Let's jump to the morning first. Last work day and it was hard. Rachel and I together pick-axed and dug and hauled an 8-inch deep huge hole, which doesn't sound like much, only it's CLAY. Pure, hard clay that did not want to budge or be nice and light for us. Then we followed instructions and did whatever nice-Manuel told us to do when I could understand him. We hauled rocks across the yard in wheelbarrows, huge ones, until we filled up the cement holes. Lunch was awesome, we were exhausted. They brought us Burger King and we all ate together with the workers IN the finished cement house. It was like, the first supper. Or something.
I had orphanage duty for the afternoon so I was done working forever. Bittersweet. Mostly sweet. The kids were so fun, I was in "Casa Alegria" with the little ones and got to play with sweet autistic Manuelito again, got him to come out of his shell and actually laugh a lot. We took another trip to the park and I pushed two of the little ones in the stroller and really enjoyed one of my last walks through the Ecuadorian village. At the park, I trailed around behind little Valeria, the cutest little 4-year-old orphan you'll ever meet, and we went down by the creek and up the slides, and I definitely took her to go to the bathroom in the woods...when you've gotta go, you've gotta go. 
I let her throw rocks in the creek but when I didn't let her go in and swim she got super mad at me. Haha.
We walked on back to OSSO and went to take pictures by our finished projects.
Oh no. Prepare yourself for this part. Actually I'm sure you'll be fine. It was time to go say our goodbyes to our beautiful children at the orphanage. In Casa Alegria everyone was taking turns getting hugs from Valeria, but she wasn't making it easy. She hugged Sophie then said no to everyone else. When I asked her she kicked my shin. Hahaha. I said "Ah! You're still mad at me!" and snatched her up anyway and she sort of started giggling and hugging me back and I said "Ciao honey! Ciao!" And she locked her legs around me and said "No ciao!" And soon we were both laughing while she dangled off of me. That cute thing. <3<3<3<3
I said goodbye to the rest of the kids but so many didn't understand, but that's okay. Sweet sweet Laura seemed to know just what everyone needed. As each one of us gave her a hug she would silently wrap her arm around out shoulders and stroke our face with her other hand to comfort us. WHAT A SWEETHEART. That's about where the tears started flowing for me. Many of the girls were sobbing and by the time we got ourselves to the bus we were all sort of wrecks. Except for Val who usually doesn't show emotion. She was silent in the back for a minute, finally saying "Anyone want some candy?" And then we were all laughing as we cried. YES we wanted candy.
Ecuadorian food restaurant again where we got the amazing coconut milk and beautiful steak again. Lots of laughing and the mood was great again. Bus breaking down but then pulling through again.

Rooftop slumber party in Cuenca

Comfy pants and writing notes to each other on papers before testimony meeting. It was a really beautiful meeting, we went around the circle; some were tearful, some brought lots of laughter (Val) and it was just a great mood. After we all hugged and packed up our stuff for the next morning, the plan was devised to sleep on the ROOF of the hotel and watch our last Cuenca sunrise. About 10 of us actually saw it through--we slept right on the concrete and watched the beautiful city lights and told stories. I'm not about to tell you it was comfortable. Or warm at all. Or restful. Or even that fun. BUT I'm glad we did it cuz it was COOL and it's something I'll always remember. I never would have remembered the preferable warm, dark sleep in my happy hotel bed. The sunrise was so cool. At least that's what I'm going to tell you, because in reality there was no sunrise. It was too cloudy and smoggy. I've never felt as tired as I did at breakfast the next day I don't think. It's like we were all run over by a train. But shopping we went, and got great deals in a hidden Ecuadorian market, and we had a great time walking through the streets and bakeries and flower shops and balconies for one last morning before a last lunch at one of our favorite restaurants and the hour of departure. Our sweet sweet hotel manager and his family gave us handmade ornaments in the Ecuadorian style and all these bags of popcorn for our trip. I LOVE THEM.

Predawn Cuenca

Most everyone fell asleep for a good part of the 4-hour trip to Guyaquil. BUT. Not when this whole hullaballoo started and woke everyone up to see what all the fuss was. And I'll tell you what it was.
WE WERE IN A CLOUD. You have no idea how AMAZING it was in there. The clouds in Ecuador hang low over the mountains, and we'd always seen that in the distance. As we actually drove through them, it was almost like being in an airplane, except you could see trees and mountains through the fog and at moments entire kingdoms of white white white clouds rolling over an entire canyon. We started sticking our heads out the window and taking pictures of ourselves in clouds, but not ONE picture captured the majesty and coolness of it in the slightest. I look through mine now and I feel a little disappointed that they don't match the memories. So. Try to imagine it without regard to the pictures. You are in a simple bus covered in condensation inside clouds of white rolling out in every direction and it feels a lot like what most imagine heaven to be. WOW.

 

 Guyaquil was nasty. We're driving through like, wait, is this the same country as what we just came from? It's like the difference between Virginia and the grosssections of LA. I was looking through Ashlan's camera viewfinder, snapping whenever a decent picture came around. Until. A gorgeous temple filled it. Snap.

It was like a beacon in this huge city of graffiti and pigeons. From the moment we saw it, we all said we felt like we were at home. I felt more at home than if I'd stepped off the bus into my own neighborhood. We stumbled off the bus to change and went into the temple; I'm pretty sure we were the saddest-looking group that ever walked in there. We were so beat and exhausted from three weeks of work, not sleeping the night before, and four hours on the bus and we mostly just stumbled around.  We ate in the cafeteria and then went in to do baptisms. It was one of the most BEAUTIFUL experiences of my entire life. The spirit was incredibly strong, especially after all the amazing experiences we'd had with the kids and members and each other; the temple just tied it all together and reminded us of something much bigger than the service we were doing here. That one day we would be reunited with all of them and so many more. Just incredible. I got to be confirmed by David and baptized by our trip-dad Jim who treated all of us like his own daughters. 

After the temple we had our last devotional and David bore his testimony to us, first in simple broken English (cuuute) and then in Spanish. He told us how amazing our work was and gave each of us cute little baskets with little miniature bricks in them. Ah! I think it was the best gift in the whole world. Oh bricks.

Day 16: A Journey Ending
And here is where we say goodbye. We woke up on the last day and walked a few blocks to David's friends' house for breakfast. They lived in this tiny little pink cement shack and they were the cutest people. They made us potato-tortilla-cream things and these big potato-sausage-starchy balls and I don't remember what either was called but they were GOOD. Good grief. The nicest people I've ever come across in my life. And they had a dog named Lester that wanted to come home with us. 

The plane rides were long and many once again. We watched movies and ate airplane-empanadas and talked to nice South American people all the way home. My mom and I sat by this sweet, sweet Guatemalan-American who was on her way home and I love her. We got to LA sometime the next day and those of us that didn't have flights home til the morning camped out in the international waiting area all night. We ate McDonalds and laid on the nasty ground in the airport and on each other in a circle of blankets and suitcases. 

And pretty soon, there I was, in the LA terminal at 5 am, ready to leave for Salt Lake City. Not a bad place to be really and looking back the past three weeks I'd planned on being a lot more heartbroken about going home. But there comes a point when you've been where you wanted to go and done what you were going to do and home doesn't sound bad at all. In fact, it sounded like the best place in the world. And while I waited I got to sit and watch planes, huge planes, chug along in circles and lines and get faster and faster until they took off through the fog and disappeared way up there. It's a pretty cool thing really. Made me think that for the past 18 years I'd just been chugging in circles and lines, really great ones that are good and fun and prepare you for takeoff, but eventually it's time to go or none of it means anything. This trip was an amazing preparation, a last minute burst of speed to help carry me into the air as I leave for college and soon a mission and start my life, and I"ll always be grateful for that.

But first, I just needed to lie down.



Thank You!!!
I want to thank everyone who both encouraged me and supported me financially to help me have this experience. For the rest of my life it will be something I can look back on and I will never forget it! I learned so much, some of which can't be put into words, and I'm so thankful to have such an amazing support system! I'd also like to apologize for the length of this thing and if you read every word, I'm sorry. All I can say is, mission blog is coming up next on the schedule so prepare yourselves! ;)

Thank you!