Hanne is here TOO!

Yay, I finally made it.

After an initial two hour delay at SEA-TAC (my flight was suppose to leave at 11:45PM and ended up leaving just after 1:00AM), I was on my way to Dalles without any problems, I landed and had a shorter wait time between my next flight, which was preferable, and I headed towards Miami in a very lightly populated plane meaning I got a whole row to myself and was able to stretch out my legs. When we landed in Miami the plane to Quito was scheduled to be on time, but due to some mechanical problems the flight people said that the plane was mpt suitable for the journey and that we would have to find a better one. The original flight was to leave at 3:25PM and it was already 4. So we waited around for a while and finally the flight people decided that there were no more good flights in Miami and we would have to wait for one to land that we could recycle. Around 6PM we finally boarded.

Now I am here. I was picked up and it was all handled very smoothly.

I start my orientation tomorrow I think. The family is really nice and we showed them pictres of our families which they seemed to enjoy.

Status update: Yoni can no longer think in English or speak in Spanish, rendering him mute.

All is well.

Yoni is here!

Hello world- I made it. After a long flight and a delay that almost made me miss my plane (if I hadn´t been running I wouldn´t have made it), I was picked up at the airport with no problems, and am now staying with my host family in the south part of quito (I think), who have internet, but no means of making an international phone call. I am, however typing very slowly, because they have an english keyboard set to spanish mode and I can´t figure out what some of the buttons do. Hopefully my spanish gets better soon, or I will be spending this trip speaking in fragmented sentences.

Au revoir... errrmmm.... ¡Adios!

We count down to our final hours. We are saying our good byes; to iPhones and laptops, to fancy watches and daily showers. Bags are being repacked, shampoo bottles pressed into the small spaces remaining in the only checked luggage. All seems to be going as planned.

Yoni will be leaving tomorrow morning at approximatly 6:00am and I will be heading out on Tuesday night around midnight, joining Yoni in Ecuador approximatly 40 hours later. We still plan to volunteer for about the same amount of time, and continue to keep our itintary involving our mini beach excursion.

Our next post will most likely come from ECUADOR!!! We hope you stay tuned to our series and enjoy reading about our adventures.

Seven Days!

I know it's cliche to write about "how fast time seems to go" or "how it seems like only yesterday we were graduating and still had MONTHS left before our trip", but here we are only a week out. Wow.

I've picked up all my ridiculously expensive meds for malaria, altitude sickness and typhoid and started packing my single carry on. We still have [ Yoni's birthday/orphanage fundrasier/bon voyage for college ] party next Saturday (EVERYONE IS INVITED, it's at Yoni's house at 6:30PM) to plan for. AS WELL AS my employer. The Hands On Children's Museum is hosting "Sand in the City" giving me a 30+ hour work week with. Although I have been looking forward to all of these events individually, this will be quite a week!

So now the real countdown begins; we need to make sure we've packed the right shoes and adequate underwear, that we have all the donations for the orphanage neatly organized and ready to travel and that we have all the correct paperwork. It's impossible to describe how excited I am and I want to thank everyone for the support you've given Yoni and I!

Donations for the orpahange

In our volunteer handbook, there is a section depicting items that can be brought and given to the orphanage to benefit the children. Yoni and I had been planning to maybe hold a dessert auction to earn money for this or take donation of used children clothing from our friend and family to bring with us. My mother also offered that she was planning on holding a garage sale and we could do our dessert auction in the same time and place to attract more people to both. We still aren't sure how much stuff we are willing to bring with us, since there are extra costs for extra baggage on the flights, but we would like to raise some money regardless to help buy new socks and underwear once we arrive.

If you have any ideas of suggestions for what we should do please contact us!

Below is the statement of appropriate items that IVHQ thinks we could bring:


Volunteer Supplies
For all programs, it is imperative to remember that any money raised to help your project when you arrive in Ecuador will be very well received. Often it is hard for volunteers to take too many supplies due to limitations on baggage weight but remember that Ecuador has some very developed shopping centers where supplies can be bought once you have arrived in the country. This is our recommended and preferred way to contribute to the program. Not only does it mean you do not have to cart the
supplies on the plane with you, it means any money you spend will be invested back into the Ecuador economy. Below we have listed some supplies that are very helpful on the teaching and street children programs.

• Vitamins/Calcium tablets
• Antibiotics, antiseptics
• Medical family guides
• Any books and/or research on health care relevant to Africa
• First aid materials
• Hankies

• Children’s clothing

• Balloons
• Bubble Solution
• Face Paint
• Music player and some children's music
• Musical instruments
• Stickers, stamps and certificates
• Group games such as bingo, snakes and ladders, twister etc.
• Colored drawing paper
• Pencils/Pens/Markers/Crayons
• Books (any type)
• Posters
• Colored pavement chalk
• Chalk

I just friended Daniel Radcliffe on Facebook

The executive director of our volunteer program (International Volunteer HQ) is named Daniel Radcliffe. We discovered this fact early on in our research back in May/June when planning our trip didn't necessarily constitute anything. When Yoni and I first found this out we spent a good fifteen minutes googling him to find out if he wasn't Harry Potter. He is not. Disappointed, we still continued with the program and advanced our plans to go to Ecuador.

Now just a few days ago I found out Volunteer HQ has a facebook group!

LINK

After joining the group I found out that the executive director had his own facebook page and I quickly friended him (as well as the program coordinator Blanche).

Now I am friends with Dan Rad.

Timezones

My mother just pointed out that the countdown is wrong, which made me realize that I think Yoni changed this blog to be on Ecuador time meaning the timer is incorrect to us. Even if this doesn't make much sense now, since we are not leaving at 6:05PM in Ecuador but in the Pacific time zone instead, I think we should leave it because then everyone can get use to calculating the time change. Woo, timezones.

Countdown

I have just mastered one of the greatest feats of all time. I have added a countdown to this blog. One would not think this would be such a difficult conquest, but lo and behold the task was MUCH more difficult and problematic than originally anticipated.

I would like to draw your attention therefore to the stunningly troublesome countdown that has been created. It is located just right of this post, under the "About us:" section.

Enjoy!

"Before"

Our "before" picture. This picture was taken of Yoni and I at our high school graduation in mid-June. We plan on posting many pictures from our Ecuadorian adventures during our vacationing weeks, so this will just be the first of many.

One month to go!

Here we are -- Yoni and I sitting on our new Toshiba laptops planning out various details for our upcoming trip. So far I will try to update you readers on what we have decided;

the Ecuador airport in Quito is called: Quito Mariscal Sucre (UIO)

We will be leaving August 24, 2009 from Seatac International Airport at 6:05AM heading to Chicago O'Hara (ORD) which will land at approximately 11:55AM (central standard time). Then after a short one hour layover we head from Chicago at 12:55PM to Miami (MIA), with an approximate arrival time of 5:08PM (eastern standard time). Then after another fun layover in Miami we head to QUITO ECUADOR (UIO) at 5:55 PM (eastern standard time) and arrive in South America at 8:55 PM (equator time).

We have now paid our program fees for the volunteer program (IE: living situations, meals etc.) and are looking at purchasing travelers insurance. The volunteer agency is based in New Zealand and is run by Daniel Radcliffe (not Harry Potter). They place place over 1500 people into a wide range of volunteer travel opportunities in Kenya, Kenya-Maasai, Tanzania, Ghana, India, Nepal, Vietnam, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Peru - Cusco, Peru - Lima and Thailand and starting 2009-2010 plans to open new programs in Bolivia, Mexico, Philippines, China and South Africa.

http://www.volunteerhq.org/

In Quito we will be living with a host family and volunteering at an orphanage on the weekdays. Here we will be teaching English to the students. We start our work on August 27 and volunteer for three weeks until September 17. On September 18-20 we plan to go to the beach (Bahia de Caraquez) for some nice hot weather and relaxation before we return to the US on September 21.

Here is the description of our volunteer work:

Similarly to other Latin American nations, Spanish is the official language of Ecuador, however in recent times with the onset of globalisation and increasing tourism in a country such as Ecuador, there has been an increased demand from local people to be taught English by fluent foreigners. Work is mainly at schools and directed towards children but there is also a lot of demand from community groups and adult groups we work with. Volunteers are placed in community schools, public schools or orphanage schools. Many of the people volunteers teach have only very basic English, therefore it is a requirement for volunteers to have at least a beginner-basic level of Spanish to teach on this program. Naturally a volunteer's Spanish will improve over the course of their volunteering but it is highly recommended that the volunteer take advantage of the Spanish lessons offered by our program staff in Ecuador. N.B. Volunteers DO NOT need to be a qualified or experienced teacher.

The journey home:
We venture back to the Northern Hemisphere on September 21st starting at 9:00AM (equator time) and arriving in Miami at 2:05PM (eastern standard time). Then from Miami we head to Chicago at 6:05PM and arrive at 8:25 (central standard time). We leave Chicago at 9:20PM and arrive back in Seattle at 11:40PM!!

That's it for now! We are planning a dessert auction before we leave (probably sometime around Yoni's birthday on August 21st) to help raise money for new clothes for the children at the orphanage that we will be volunteering at in Quito.

¡Hasta pronto!

--Hanne