Photos of the Kids

Ok, here is the real reson we made a blog in the first place: to show photos of the kids we are working with in Ecuador. We are going to Markets and playing with kids who would otherwise be of working (mind you, they are only 2-12 years old). Here are some pictures of the kids. Only the younger kids are featured in these photos, though, because the older ones started school this week.

Every day starts with hand washing and face washing. Kids get alittle to excited about this, and everyone is pretty much drenched in water for the rest of our time with them. This is annoying, since everyone also wants to sit in your lap.

As I said, there is a certain fasiation about the face washing materials. Here are some kids playing with the towel.

Here is one of the UBECI staff attemting to teach the kids the memory game. While they understand the idea of finding pairs, they don´t quite get that it is not ok to cheat and look when it is not your turn.

Drawing is the aparent highlite of the day. This girl just got here ration of paper...

More dilagent drawing.

A girl being entertained by José (Joe), who is singing.
And here is a girl. And a wall.

Towards the end of the session, everyone sings together, or rather, everyone shouts together to some sybalence of a tune, with the goal being to make as much noise as possible.

Normaly, at the end of our session, the kids just get a mandarine. Today, though, they got "pancitos (it translates to "little bread", but is basicly just a sweet roll) and yogurt. This was actual a very good thing, since one of the kids (not in this picture) was complaining of severe stomach pain, which turned out to be from hunger.

Hanne and the Hospital

On our ecuador agenda, one of the things we were not planning to do was visit the hospital. That was however, before Hanne developed a fever, a nasty soar throat, and (of all things) pain (remeber how she was to sick to go to Mindo?, well, it only go worse). After trying to treat it our selves (Did you know that they sell antibiotics over the counter here? I had an exciting trip to a pharmacy to explain, in spanish, why we needed them) and having no sucsess, Wensday´s activity became a trip to the ER.

While I have no more medical training then the next person, I concluded that Hanne had strep throat. This caused our host family to do a number of things including: boiling all the silverware Hanne might have used in the last week, start avoiding Hanne, start trying to convince me that Hanne got sick because she a) wasn´t taking enough vitamins (our host mom is a vitamin sales-women) and b) doesn´t wear shoes in the house, which everyone here aparently does. This ment more explaining, in spanish, that Strep was air born but they probably wouldn´t get it, and that cooking the silverware wouldn´t help (we didn´t tell them that if they were going to get infected, they already were: we just told them they wouldn´t...)

A call to the travelers insurance told us to go to the Hospital Metropolitano, Quito´s main hospital. We took a cap there. In truth, it was no differant from any other ER I have been in (not that I have ever seen more then one), except that everone here spoke Spanish. After using the translator to get through the paperwork, we were shown to a room, were they did a number of tests, gave Hanne some medicine (which is aparently working, as she is starting to feel better), and sent us on our way, telling us to come back Friday to get the results of one of the tests. We were lucky enough to get a docter who spoke english (even if none of the nurses did), and, well, I guess that is all there is to tell.

Yoni goes to Mindo

OK- here is the regretful but honest truth: Quito, especialy south Quito, overcrowded, smoggy, lacks greenery, and is, altogether, a kind of gross place. So this weekend, Yoni, Hanne, and the other volunteers desided to go to Mindo, a nice town in a beutiful tropical forest about a 2 hour bus ride from quito. In truth Mindo is a total tourist trap (main street=resturaunts and travel agencies), but it was nice, anyway.

While the origional plan was for Yoni to go up saturday and Hanne to come sunday (she had somthing to do on Sat.), Hanne got sick and never came (this is forshadowing for posts to come...).

Mindo

The first day in Mindo, I (Yoni) when zip linning. For those who don´t know, this is were they strap you to a weel-y-thing and send you on a cable streched between to sides of a vally, so that you are hanging 300ft in the air admiring the veiw. It is amazingly fun. There are pictures, but I need to get them from the others volunteers.

The "Other Volunteers" go as follows: Katie, a 22 year old resent UW grad (what a coincidence); Daniel, a 29 year old Brittish Woman; and Joe, a 62 year old Irish man. Katie and Joe are featured in the picure below.

That night, Mindo was apparently having their anual party, and so the whole town got a little drunk and had a very large dance party. After tasting a beer, I desided that drinking was not for me (Daniel has a picture of the discusted look on my face), and so the party passed for me as a bit borring.

Sunday, Katie and I went intertubing in the morning, and in the afternoon, I when mountain biking to a waterfall while everyone else tried to go horse back riding, only to find out there were no horses.

Internet in Ecuador

When we first invisioned making this blog, we saw ourselves sitting in internet cafe´s, typeing away. But then we found out that our family had internet, and got lazy: we don´t even want to go out of the house to get internet. Consaquently, we haven´t posted much for a while: the internet was down. Now, as I have a free afternoon, you will soon get to read more then you ever wanted about ecuador...

Incorrect Assumptions

Electronics
Before we got here, we didn´t really expect anything special from our host family electronics wise. I think we were hoping that they would have a washing machine and in best best case senario we would have a computer with slow dial up internet. In reality, there are two computers here with I think is wireless internet that (when it works) seems pretty fast. Everyone seems to basically have the common luxuries that we American´s are use to. Everyone has cell phones and home computer or personal laptops. I shouldn´t have been so afraid to bring my own cell phone or Yoni´s older laptop that we could have at the very least left in our rooms and used when we were home.

Security
Security is high, there are gates everywhere, with keys or codes, there are high brick walls or fences everywhere, and not like the dinky chain link fenses that we use to keep dogs in, but like exterior walls, made of cememnt with crushed beer bottles (with the sharp end up) cememted into the top of the walls. There are locks on all bedroom doors in our house, and it feels very safe to keep valuables in my room, no problem. The family can be trusted and the house is very safe becuase of the security precautions.

Prices
Things are super super expensive here. We were told things would be very cheap here, but in reality because of import tax clothing and most others items are priced similarily or more expensive than the USA. Shoes are particularily expensive, because how I understand it, the was a bill passed that would encourage production of Ecuadorian shoes, and that all imports would be very very highly taxed, but since there are not enough resources here to produced lots of Ecuadorian made shoes, most of the shoes are from the United States (through sweat shops in Asia of course) and cost a ridiculously high amount.

On Gaurd
My assumption had been that I would always have to wear my geaky traveler money belt under my shirt where ever I went, and that I would have no choice but to keep things under my cloths opposed to in a purse or pocket. I carry a hand bag almost every where I go, there isn´t a big issue, Yoni carries his wallet in his pocket. I have never been a pick pocket attempt and have never seen anything like it happen. I assume that it does probably late at night when it´s more dangerous to be out or on crowded busses etc. But if you use common sense then most things work out. Our host family lives in the poorer and more dangerous South Quito, but if you are smart about what you do, you don´t have to be over cautious with your money or other personal items.

There are probably some other assumptions that I left out, but for now hopefully this will give you some advice when traveling to developing countries. Be smart, but there really is not that same need to be OVER cautious.