Bienvenido a Ecuador!!

Buenos tardes! We have offically arrived, as of 1:00 a.m. Saturday morning. We have had an amazing time already! The flights got a little long and our first night was spent in a hotel right off a busy street where cars and trucks honked all night, but really, it´s been good. :-) Guayaquil, the city we flew into, is very humid and hot, but Cuenca is absolutely lovely! We are in the very center of mountains, in a big bowl, and still manage to be 8500 feet up! The drive yesterday took 4 hours. Diving through the mountains was very fun and very bumpy! Good thing for four wheel drive! Ruth´s family is so sweet and welcoming! We are very thankful that Jessica is here with us to translate. Our Spanish isn´t as good as we had hoped, and Ruth´s family doesn´t speak English. Ruth flies in tonight and will get here tomorrow evening. We can´t wait to see her and welcome her home! This morning we went with one of the classes from the Bilingue Colegio to the mall to help them practice their English. We had 39 11 year olds and five adults...we each took about 8 of the kids and walked around the mall for an hour! Very fun! The mall was very Americanized though...complete with a KFC, Burger King, and Payless Shoes! This afternoon Jessica, Laura, and I went to the downtown area and spent time in the market, which was much more Ecuadorian. We had a blast! We bought 2 dozen roses for 3 dollars...pretty good deal, huh?

The food here has been muy rico...very very very good! We´ve had rice for every meal except for breakfast this morning, but that´s fine with us! Fresh fruit accompanies everything. So far we feel great. Hopefully it´ll stay that way! The altitude hasn´t seemed to effect Laura at all, but Í´ve had a few headaches. Not bad though. We tried to play basketball with Ruth´s brother and sister, and we really felt the altitude then...more than just the fact that we´re out of shape. :-)

Our schedule looks like Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday teaching English at the Bilingue Colegio and doing some traveling the other days. We´re going to make it the jungle, but we´re not sure when. Very excited about that! The school is very big. 700 Elementary students and 800 high school students. The school compound is very nice and very close to the house...a 20 minute walk or so.

We´ve gotten some attention for our blondeness (both Jessican and I are very blonde), but it hasn´t been too bad actually! I only looked once when someone whistled, and that was the very first time so I wasn´t used to it yet. Someone told us that we were ¨linda, linda, linda¨as we walked past. Translation: beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. But no one has followed us yet, so that´s good. I feel very safe, especially having Jessica here who knows the city and can talk to people in Spanish. It´s going to be sad when she leaves in two weeks!

We are staying in the top story of the Ulloa´s house, which they made into an apartment with it´s own enterence, kitchen, and bathroom! Yep, we´re pretty spoiled! Our bedroom window looks out over one of the four rivers in town and we can hear the river rushing past. There´s another staircase inside our apartment that leads to a terrace. The mountains are viewable from nearly anywhere. Last night we all drove up the the top of one of them and had a view of the whole city! Í´m prtty sure that it´s the third largest in Ecuador! Jessica warned us that we would need more sleep here, and we´ve found her correct so far. We slept for ten hours last night without waking. It´s only 6:40, and I´m feeling rather tired. I´m sure some of it has to do with traveling for the past two days as well. We´ve taken pictures, but I don´t have my USB chord, so I can´t put any on right now. Hopefully before too long we´ll get some up. I best be going. Buenos noches!

In Christ,
Kari