I have now been living with my host family for almost three weeks, and today marks one month exactly of being in Ecuador! I do not even know where to begin with this update. There is so much to say and so many stories to tell. First I´ll just tell you about the community where I live.  I live in a very rural town called Cariacu.  Everyone who lives here is indigenous and lives either on a farm, or next to farm land.  The closest town is about a fifteen minute drive on the bumpiest road ever, and every time we drive it I feel like I am on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. I actually love it. In every direction I look from my house I see endless green hills, small cement houses, and huge mountains.  On clear days I can see the Cayambe volcano that it just beyond some of the hills and it is so beautiful and covered in snow! I always wish John Steinbeck were with me so he could describe the beauty since the only way I know how to describe things is "it´s sooooo pretty" or "it´s soooooo cool." When I walk down the dirt roads in my community I pass herds of cows chillin in the middle of the street, dogs, goats, horses, llamas, and other animals.  Everyone in the community is indigenous and really value their indigenous heritage. Being here makes me realize more and more each day how much I love learning about cultures that are different than my own. It is such a unique experience living in one place for a long period of time rather than just hopping from city to city. I am experiencing the culture in such a different way and really adapting to it and trying my best to become a part of it, even though I could never fully be a part of the culture no matter how long I lived here. I am learning so much about living with the poor and about Jesus´ heart for the poor. While I miss home a lot sometimes and sometimes feel so weak because of how challenging it is to be here, I am loving it all and am so thankful that I am able to do this. I am thankful for the challenges because they are bringing growth, new understanding, and new strength. 

Some highlights from living with my family:

Witnessing the slaughtering of a goat in the middle of our kitchen because it died from getting attacked by bees ... and then eating the goat throughout the next two weeks.

Plucking feathers off of dead chickens every single day.

Building things. Lots of things. I´m so tough now.

Participating in a spiritual ceremony where I did not understand one word and people were throwing up around me. i started crying in the middle of it, but it was explained more to me the next day and then i didn´t feel as weird about it. It was some sort of cleansing ritual.

Getting my cell phone service shut off because my bill was so high ... that´s what happens when you give me an international plan when my boyfriend lives in another country!

Peeling the hair off of guinea pigs and then BBQ-ing them for dinner.

Eating chicken for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Going to the biggest celebration for the community of Cariacu where I had to dress from head to toe in all traditional indigenous clothes and dance from my house to the center of town, and then not stop dancing for hours into the night.

Hanging out with nuns from Ecuador and Belgium and wishing they were my best friends.

Living with an amazing, hard working, beautiful family who never stops laughing together.

(End of highlights)

This is the craziest experience I have ever had. It is so challenging, fun, and amazing. I am really learning what it means to persevere and truly rely on God. I feel like I could write for days about all that I am learning and the ways I am growing. But I am going to have to save that for another post when I have more time. I love you all and would love your prayers!

scenes from the farm

my daily life may consist of feeding chickens, collecting chicken eggs, milking a cow, waking up at sunrise to get the cow's milk from the stables, planting vegetables, harvesting those vegetables, riding in the back of a beat up ford pickup truck surrounded by crates of vegetables, a dead chicken and a live chicken in a cage all to sell to local customers, working in the tree nursery, chasing a pig back into its pen (oops, it might have been me and ali's fault that it got loose?) and cooking meals with vegetables from the garden. it's so crazy that this is my life right now!

feeding time ...

guinea pigs = dinner.

pig on the loose... ohhh shooooot

ok so i know i went totally blog crazy tonight, but i just don't know when i will be able to post again! so read these all slowly and savor them for the next week or several weeks. i love you all!

Otovalo Market

This is one of the most amazing markets in the world. It's true, a proven fact actually. Even the encyclopedia says so. And Albert Einstein.

and the animal market was interesting. it smelled and sounded crazy. oh and ali is getting a $5 puppy in october.

then we hiked to a beautiful waterfall and had to climb through a tiny closterphobic tunnel, but it was so worth it!

two blogs in one sitting, so what!

I decided that I should just post another right now since it is very rare that I have internet, and even more rare that I have enough time on the internet to write a whole post. It's usually just an email and facebook check and then I have to leave.

It might seem like I am just having the best time ever here, which is somewhat true, but I would be lying to you all if I said it hasn't been hard. The truth is, I have had some very hard days here. Like I said in my last post I had a near melt down on my first day at the farm. I had just gotten used to life in Quito when we moved up to the farm. I was so excited about the opportunity to learn and work on the farm but at the same time I was so overwhelmed by how isolated we are and about how no one speaks English except for two people. For some reason I also felt somewhat unsafe there and very vulnerable, because we heard of some things getting stolen but thankfully our stuff has been fine. (And i keep reminding myself that it is just material possessions!) I was sooo homesick. Also, it really set in how long I am going to be away from all the people I love back home. Thinking about four months away from Nich completely devastated me, and I couldn't stop thinking about him and about home. I talked to my dad on the phone one of my first nights there and while I was holding back tears the whole time because I just missed him so much, it was also so encouraging and wonderful to talk to him. I talked to my mom and Nich the next night, and both of those conversations helped me so much as well. They were both so encouraging with their love and support. I had to wake up an hour before everyone the next morning to go get the milk from the stables for breakfast, and while I was sitting in the kitchen waiting for it to boil I just read my bible, journaled, and prayed. I was filled with so much peace from that time with the Lord. If there is anything that has been the most significant for me throughout my relationship with God, it is the peace He gives me. Or at least it has been very significant in my prayer life. God's peace truly does transcend all understanding and I could not live a day here without that peace. The rest of the day I felt so much better about being there, and felt more joy than I have felt here yet. I am so thankful for how faithful the Lord has been throughout this entire process and I am beyond glad that I live for a Savior that loves me and shows me that love each day. I can't believe I ever have phases in my life when I neglect prayer and time with Him, because there is truly nothing like it! Life is so empty without acknowledgement of His presence and His love.

A couple days after I had this turn around, the other volunteers and I went into town to get a couple things and use the internet. I got an email from Nich that seriously just made my whole day, week, life! :) He basically just went off about how proud he is of me, how amazing he thinks I am for doing all of this, and how he loves the person that I am. It means so much that the person who has seen some of the worst sides of me still loves me and is amazed by who I am. Even though I already knew how he felt about me, his words came at the perfect time and in the perfect way on this day. It made me even more motivated to keep doing what I am doing and to do it well. It means so much to me to have a boyfriend who loves me for exactly who I am. He encourages me to be the best that I possibly can and allows me to follow my dreams, even if it means being on an entirely different continent than him for four months. He is so intentional in asking how I am doing and what I need prayer for, and tells me exactly what he has been praying for me. Being here has made me love and appreciate him even more.

Tonight Ali and I decided to stay in Quito since our Visa registration process was so crazy and difficult and didn't get done until this evening, and we didn't want to take a bus all the way back to the hacienda at night. It is so nice here. We feel at home since this is where we stayed our first week and we have become friends with some of the staff. They washed re-washed our clothes for us, gave us free beer and wine (i'm legal here!), and we are actually able to sit in our beds and not feel like we are going to get hypothermia from the below freezing temperatures. The hacienda is sooo cold! I am really enjoying this night, and I'm hoping the people at the hacienda aren't freaking out about how we never came back.. ha.

Thank you to those of you who have sent me emails and words of encouragement, it means more than you know! I feel so loved and supported every time I receive emails or comments from you and it makes me so thankful for having you all in my life. luvzzz youuzz

It has been a week since my last post which is a long time, i know. I have so much to say but I am not sure how to fit it all into one post. I will try to organize all of my thoughts and ramblings for you ...

First of all, I have been living on a farm for the past week. It is called Hacienda Picalqui and it is up in the mountains near a town called Tabacundo ... if you feel like googling that. Life is so different here. I definitely had a near melt down the first day because I was so overwhelmed, but I have settled in and have been having so much fun.  I live in the volunteer house for now with Ali, a girl from California, and a guy from Italy. Ali and I have gotten to know the other two volunteers pretty well this past week and I love them! I have so much fun with them and we are always laughing together, I love it.  We are actually planning on going to the Amazon with them next week, to a place called Cuyabema. I don't really know anything about what we are going to do there but I'm totally fine with that! I just want to see the river dolphins and all the beauty!

I have been taking Spanish classes the past week and I still feel like I am awful at it. I can understand people pretty well but I am an awful Spanish speaker. At this point the whole language is just a confusing mess in my brain! Hopefully that will change soon. And almost no one speaks English on the farm so I really need to learn. It has been a big struggle for me to not be able to communicate with people in Spanish and has made me really discouraged, but I will keep working on it!

I realized that a lot of you don't really know what the heck I am even doing in Ecuador, so to help you out here is my basic plan: (yeah, that's right, I actually made somewhat of a plan for once in my life!)

One week at the Hacienda learning Spanish and the basics of agriculture and farming.
One and a half months living with a family outside the town of Cayambe. They do agroecology (don't worry I don't really know what that is either) and traditional Andean medicine. The mother is indigenous and speaks the indigenous language of Quechua (I hope I spelled that right?!).
One and a half months living with a different family in the community of Intag, which I know absolutely nothing about except for that it is a bit more tropical (yay malaria) and a lot more rural (how is that possible?! I feel like I'm already in the middle of nowhere!).
One month of traveling aimlessly with Ali ... maybe Galapagos islands, Cotopaxi volcano, travel along the coast, maybe the amazon again, rent motorcycles, swim, hike, anything we want and can afford really!
And then for the grand finale ... NICH COMES TO VISIT!!! He gets here at the very end of October and then will travel with us to Peru for a week where we'll go to Machu Piccu, and then flies home with me on November 8th. He got a seat next to me on the plane and everything. awwww yeeeeeahhhh!!! I can't even wait. And hopefully Alison will be coming to Peru with us too!! It will just all be amazing.

Ali and I are in Quito right now pretending to be staying at this hostel so that we can get our laundry done here, eat their yummy food, and use their internet. About the laundry thing, we attempted to wash our clothes for the first time yesterday in the cement buckets that everyone uses here. However, it went horribly and our clothes were still disgustingly dirty. No one has washers or dryers up where we're living so we have to wash our clothes by hand and hang dry them, which is a lot cooler sounding then it really is. We'll get used to it I'm sure! We hung our clothes on the line last night and then of course the hugest rainstorm hit as soon as we went to bed so they are even more soaked then before! It was pretty funny. The thing that I like about being here with Ali is that she also likes to laugh about unfortunate situations instead of getting angry or upset. Not that this was even CLOSE to our most unfortunate situation here so far, but in every bad or weird circumstance, we always just end up laughing about it.

That's all for now, I will try to post more soon!

The Basilica

Today we spent all morning reading. We each had to bring about 73 books with us (do i need to keep telling you when i am exaggerating or are you catching on to the way i talk?) so we are trying to read them all as fast as possible so that we can get rid of them. there is a book shelf in the hostel that we are going to leave the books we finish in, and then if we really need them in four months we will come back and get them. we both finished a book today! except mine was only about 120 pages and ali's was like 200-300. So my accomplishment is not as exciting. I get too easily distracted i think?

We decided to take a break from being so cool and reading all the time, and walk to the Basilica which is a HUGE church that we can see from our hostel. You can climb all the way to the top of the highest towers, and when you get to a certain point the stairs get more and more sketchy until you are literally just climbing a ladder. It was beautiful and we could see the whole city. After we explored everywhere that we could and Ali had successfully climbed down a really scary ladder on the side of one of the roofs, we left. There was a big church group there on a mission trip and Ali really wanted to just hop on their bus and go with them. At first I thought she was joking, but then I remembered this is Ali I was dealing with. She was totally serious. We thought about it for a second and just walked in the middle of the group as if we were with them but then decided it would probably not end well for us, so we walked home.

Sorry these pictures are overly bright. I wasn't paying attention to the setting on the camera so those of you out there who are picky about photography, I'm going to kindly ask you to get over it.

Ali doing something sketchy...

I really miss you all! Tomorrow I go to the farm so internet will be very hard to get, so I apologize if my posts become few and far between. Know that I love you and am thinking about you.

mitad del mundo= NOT telemundo

yesterday we went to the equator! everyone this past week has been asking us if we have been to the "mitad del mundo" and i kept thinking they were asking us if we watched "telemundo" so i was really confused. then i saw the words "mitad del mundo" printed across the front of the bus and i realized this meant the "middle of the world" .. the equator! it all makes sense to me now. we took two buses there which took an hour, but it was fun because we got to see a lot of towns we had never seen before.

basically there is a huge orange line painted on the ground that you have to pay $2 to get to and then a really tall tower that you can pay $3 to climb to the top of. we did not climb the tower, and the line was totally boring. we took our "creative" pictures at the line, walked past a bunch of really touristy shops and restaurants, and then left. this "official equator" is not actually the real equator though, it's about 200 meters off. the real equator line is at a museum right next to this place called the museum of the sun.. or something like that. we walked over there and immediately knew that this place was way better! you pay a couple dollars for a tour where they tell you all about the indigenous people of south america (i don't actually know what they said about them or why it was relevant because our tour was in spanish so i couldn't understand it, i just nodded and smiled and acted really amazed the whole time). we also saw how on the north side of the equator water spins in one direction, and on the south side of the equator the water spins the other way! it's true we saw it. and we got to try to balance an egg on the head of a nail, and if you were successful you got a certificate. i was the first one in our group to be able to do it! there were other really interesting things about the equator, but we all know i don't remember anything so of course i've already forgotten.

then last night we went to La Mariscal, aka "gringo-landia", and i had an espresso martini. it was actually pretty good. but then i freaked out after i finished it because i realized it had some ice in it and i was probably going to get a parasite and die. or at least have a rough night. but i was fine. it was Ecuador's national gay pride day so there were tons of drag queens walking around and performing Cristina Aguilera songs on a big stage in the middle of the main square. it was really entertaining.

i don't have any pictures from yesterday so just use your imagination! :)

Teleferico

Well humans, the past two days have been really fun. Yesterday Ali and I decided to be brave and take a taxi to the teleferico (a gondola) up to the top of a mountain under the volcano Pichincha. Our new English friends that we met and hung out with the night before told us about it and it sounded fun so we went for it! We successfully took our first taxi alone, but once we got out of the taxi we realized that we didn't know the address of our hostel so we weren't sure how to get home. WOW are we smart. and the teleferico is up a big hill where taxis do not usually go unless they are dropping someone off. I immediately panicked, but then realized it was pointless to panic so I just prayed that we would find a taxi and find our way back.

As we were taking the gondola up we could see all of Quito and it was beautiful! Underneath us were hills, mountains, farms, trees, obese cows, and just lush green everywhere. I loved it. It made me so excited to be on the farm soon. Once we got to the very top the view was absolutely breathtaking. Ecuador is seriously beautiful. The city weaves in and out of the mountains and tiny colored houses sit all the way up on the sides of the hills, mixing the artificial concrete with the natural green. Also, the clouds here are always amazing. For my Santa Cruzians reading, you know that certain days or weeks where the clouds in Santa Cruz are so much bigger and fluffier and whiter that it makes everything you're looking at beneath them just that much more beautiful? That is how the clouds in Ecuador are all the time. (All the time, meaning the five days I've lived here. So obviously I know what I'm talking about.)

When you get to the top of the teleferico you can either hike about three hours to the top of the volcano, or you can just hike around wherever you want. The altitude here is SO high that after a few steps I was soo out of breath. I mean, I know I'm not the most athletic person but I'm not that out of shape!! I felt like a grandma who just sat in a chair for 25 years and decided to try and walk again for the first time! So I was not into the idea of hiking all the way to the volcano. Trust me, you wouldn't have wanted to either.

As we were hiking around we saw a sign that said something about riding horses. It was the most beat up sign I've ever seen (exaggeration) so we were like, "uhh that's not real." But then we kept going and came across all these horses chillin inside a circular fence! (I know there's a name for that but all I can think of is "harem" and I don't think that's right). Then we saw people in ponchos and we said to eachother, "maan, all I want is to be wearing that poncho and riding those horses around these mountains." And then the lady walked up to us and was like, "Do you want to wear one of our ponchos and ride one of these horses around these mountains?" I'm serious! And she didn't even hear us say that we wanted that exact thing! So obviously we said yes. It was soo fun!! Horses kinda freak me out, but after a minute I got used to it and was loving it. We looked just like what you see in pictures of South America .. except we are white. We were livin the dream!

We were able to find a taxi back, not get ripped off too badly with the price, and were able to communicate the general area where our hostel is located. I was so proud of us. Then we got some pan dulce (duh) and went and ate it on the terrace with some tea and read our books.

[all photos from ali's camera. i haven't been taking mine anywhere yet.]

sorry if these are blurry! but you can pretend they're not :)

i love you all SO SO MUCH!! it's true. if you are reading this, i love you and wanted to include you in this adventure with me. thank you for being in my life!

pictures from the terrace

sorry these are so small! i wish i could make them bigger but i do not know how. and it took about 8 hours for these to load ... or something like that. (** update: i made them bigger)

i love you all! and miss you!