Hello everyone. I am sorry for not posting in a while. Things here have been a little crazy with retreat groups. In March I have 5 groups which means that I am pretty much constantly working. Working with groups has been a lot of fun. They bring tons of energy and always remind me of why I came here. A few weeks ago you all missed out on what might be my new favorite holiday, Carnival. A few days before Ash Wednesday Carnival begins, turning Ecuador in to a war zone of sorts. Throughout the four days every where I went there were people getting into water and paint fights. I think that every day I came home a different color of the rainbow. There are a lot of people that play Carnival a little bit dertier than others. Gabriel, the bread man, somehow managed tho throw such things as flour, eggs, and molasses on me.(which is not too fun to clean) Our guard, Edwardo was using this purple liquid that is designed to dye clothing. Because of this, Brendan´s glasses are now permanantly tinted purple and Jessie still can´t get it out of her hair.
In other news, the family that sells chickens will soon be teaching us how to prepare a chicken. So I will be learning how to kill, gut, and feather a bird. I will try to get some video or photos for everyone.

¡AFORMARSEBIEN!

So, we have officially begun rainy season here in the Guayas province of Ecuador and that means a few things. First, and most obvious to you outsiders, these streets are horrible. The mud on the roads outside our house makes it so we have to go around a extra few blocks to get to Semillas. Also, Jon, Christina, and Caitlin went out and bought rain boots to get through the mud. Also, the rain and heat have brought mosquitos out in record numbers. My house has bug bites all over our arms and legs and even on the bottoms of our feet.
Also, the rainy season means that it is vacation and all of the schools are out. Schools here get off from the end of January to April for vacation instead of the summer time due to the rainy season. Also, the schools here work in two or three shifts per day depending on the school. There is usually a morning and afternoon shift and often an evening shift. Semillas takes place in the afternoon and without school for every kid in Arbolito there have been crazy numbers. Before about a week or two ago we were averaging at about 45 kids every day at program. Now that school is out we are getting about 100 every day and up to 130 on Fridays. yesterday we had 42 little kids and 65 big kids. I think that we might add a ´medianos´ group to split up the big kids and make everything more managable. It has been getting really hard to plan activities for groups of kids this big. (if you have any ideas be sure to send them our way) Things more than ever have turned into a very fine art of controlled chaos. It has been alot of fun with this many kids too. Every day there is someone I havn´t met and it makes it nearly impossible to keep names straight. I´m out of time. Gotta go plan a little kids activity!

Christmas Break

For Christmas break we all headed down south to Loja and Vilcabamba. These are two small towns nestled in the Andes Mountains not too far from Peru. We were only in Loja for one night and there is not much to say about it. It is a very business oriented town so there is not much to do there. However, just outside of Loja is Parque Nacional Podocarpus(that´s Podocarpus National Park for all you non Spanish speakers) We went out on a hike and climbed trough a trail that brought us up a mountain of cloud forests. The cloud forest is a narrow valley that is isolated and changes through about 4 eco systems in a distance of a mile or so. So we climbed through rainforests and mountains and saw plants and animals that only exist in this small valley. (Ileen, you would have been drooling over the bird watching)














































The Next day we went to Vilcabamba. Vilcabamba is a strange town that seems to have attracted tons of people from other countries. There are alot of retired people for the Us and Europe living there making a haven for some new form of neocolonialism. There was also a large population of hippie/flower children there that have left the Us in an attempt to run away from their problems and force their lifestyle on another culture and refuse to learn the native language(I dont think that I need to say too much more about my opinion of them, it´s not too high)

The first day we went for a hike up the side of a mountains where we played wit some cows and then went down to a waterfall that was 50 feet high and went for a small dip.




















The next day we rented some mountain bikes and went for a ride up to a small town named San Pedro where we biked along a river and had lunch sitting on the rocks.
On our final full day we went for a horseback ride up into the mountains. Our guide took us to his parents house where they live on the mountain and run a farm where grow everything that they eat. They brewed us some home home grown coffee and gave us some bananas and showed us around the farm.


Hugo looking over his farm on the mountain:



















That night we went out to eat at a restaraunt that served us Cui , which is Quechua for Guinea Pig. It tasted like a combination of pork, fish, and corned beef.

This is me eating the head:















New years was tons of fun. It is tradition in Ecuador to make a paper maché effigy, soak it in gasoline, stuff it with fireworks, and light it on fire. So, my house made a 5 foot long mouse. Here are a few pictures of the before and after:



















We also got a new dog! He is 8 months old and we named him Wookie!(we are big Star Wars fans in our house)

Starfish and Santa, Wise Men and Italian

The last few weeks here have been really busy. First Allison cme to visit for a week and we went to Puerto Lopez, a small beach/fishing town that it a couple hour bus ride away from Guayaquil. We stayed at a place that was run by an extremely eccentric Italian/Swill couple. Our room was ´´beautifully nestled in private botanical gardens´´(insert crazy man with Italian accent) and was right on the beach. We went out into the water one afternoon and we kept stepping on rocks everywhere. So, I decided to pick one up and to my suprise it wasn´t a rock at all. We had been walking on a bed of star fish! It was a wonderful get away and I suggest going if you ever get a chance.
When we got back, our after school programs had our christmas party. We invited kids from all three progams to the retreat house in Arbolito. My personal favorite activity was out decorating of Christmas cookies. Jair, a 5 year old, dumped handfull after handfull of sprinkles all over his cookie and had no idea how to eat it because the pile on top of it was so big. Then we cut out snowflakes and played soccer and gave out small presents to all of the kids. It was really fun!
On Christmas eve me and my housemates were in the Christmas play during the mass at our church. I was one of the three wise men. Everyone that was to be playing a boy in the play had to have beards drawn on to their faces with permanant markers (for some reason Ecuadorians love chin straps) meaning that all the girls from my house were walking around with beards on. On Christmas day we had a relaxing morning and then we all went to Damien house, a hospital for people with Hansen´s disease(aka Leaporsy) and we sang song. Afterwards, Sr. Annie invited us over for dinner where we had a much needed break from Ecuadorian foods. She cooked us a big Italian dinner and we sang songs all night long.

The next morning we left for our Christmas break vacation...