This entry is coming to you from Guayaquil, Ecuador. Jana and I made it here in one peice, but with some dents here and there. Currently, my feet are swollen (that's right, 1+ pitting edema KANKLES!), I can't breath out of my nose, and my bowls are still regretting the Chifa I ate on the bus. Have I told you about Chifa? It's the South American version of chinese food. Our first experience with it was in Lima, at an actual restaurant. I'm not sure what it was I actually ate, rice, of course, chicken surprise, and a lot of random "vegetables." This was a decent, not necessarily a regretable decision, but one we would probably not make again. So to our delight, Chifa was the first meal we ate to begin our 28 bus ride from Lima. The bus itself was pretty nice, much nicer than I was expecting. Seats that reclined pretty far back, TVs, and a working bathroom. The bathroom was a somewhat traumatic experience on my first attempt. We we on the top "story" of the double decker bus, which motion wise was like being on a small row boat in the middle of the ocean. The door to the bathroom was seemingly vaccum sealed shut, making it very difficult to open, especially when you're already struggling to stand up (I'm getting a little motion sick just writing this). So once I finally made it in there and slammed the door shut, the real challange began. I'm sure you can envision the struggle. Standing on a ocean rowboat, trying to do the things one needs to do to accomplish using the potty. Not to mention the spring-loaded toilet seat mechanism, with which i am now saavy. So other than that, we watched a ton of movies in spanish with english subtitles (it's interesting seeing russel crowe speak in a high pitched spanish voice). I also had a mild panic attack during the night because the people infront of me had their seats so far back I couldn't move my legs. I was relieved after I moved seats and took two dramamine.
So Thursday and Friday. Thursday was kind of a bust. We were supposed to be back at the school doing more measuring and lice-checking. But we got there late, the kids got out of school early that day, and we had no place to work. So we only saw about 90 kids, and spent the rest of the day running errands with Javier. Kinda frusterating, but that'll happen in third-world countries. Friday was a much better day. We had our work space back and saw a lot of kids. The assistant director of the school was helping us as well, which made things run a lot more smoothly. We never figured out an exact percentage, but roughly20-30% of the kids we saw had lice. Some of the infestations were so bad we didn't even have to touch their hair to see them. There were just little bugs scampering all around their heads. You'd think you would notice something like that, but I guess not. We did not actually de-lice any of the school kids, there were way too many. We recorded their names and they will hand out intruction sheets we made on how to treat it to the kids parents soon.
Friday night we went out for the first time. I got my first experience of Latin American clubs. Very loud music, lots of flashing lights, lots of people, and lots of dancing. It was fun, but I would really just rather sit at a bar and talk to my friends, or not go out at all. It was a good expereince though.
Saturday was my favorite day of all. We took ten kids from the orphage to the beach. The beach is not a cheap place, so in order to be able to pay for it all, we bought two loaves of bread, half a kilo of ham (not a whole kilo, because 1kg=2.2 pounds, which we realized we had gotten backwards when we saw the deli man heaping ham onto the scale in massive amounts), oreos that were on sale, and bananas/water from the local market because it's cheaper than the grocery store. So Saturday morning, Jana, Mayra, and I took the bus to San Genaro and picked up the 10 kids. We got cabs (because there were so many of us and the beach is about 30 minutes away) and went on our way. They were so cute and excited with their little backpacks and flip flops and singing excited little faces. The beach itself was great. The waves were ginormo. The biggest I have ever seen. You couldn't get within 100 feet of where they were breaking they were so big. But the kids had fun going out as far as they could and then riding them in. The twin boys that are always crazy and all over everything at the orphanage were hilarious. They were terrified of the waves. They would never stand with their back to the ocean and they would barely let the water go above their ankles. It was pretty cute. So we played with them, fed them, played some more and had them home after about 5 hours. They were exhausted and happy. Good day. And we did the whole thing for about $40. Not too shabby.
Saturday night and sunday we spent typing up all the information we had gathered over the past 3 days. This took forever and we barely finished in time to pack and catch the bus. But we did it, thankfully. So now, I am relaxing and enjoying the beauty of this new place. We are going to look at a couple houses tomorrow, and hopefully pick a place to stay by this weekend. Wish us luck...
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