Lindsey: Today started with a breakfast of fresh squeezed raspberry juice, toast & hot chocolate. Our first meal shows great promise! We had a quick team meeting to discuss the game plan, then loaded into a few buses and headed up to La Hoya clinic, where the doctors, dentists and eye clinic would be located.
It was great to see the clinic and get organized. The only real contribution we had to make while everyone got familiar with their new setting was pumping up a few soccer balls for the kids...it's a lot harder that you think!
Besides that, we just "held down the fort" by wandering the area. At 1pm, we all headed back to the hotel and had an amazing lunch of popcorn...yes, popcorn, soup, fresh squeezed fruit juice, rice & chicken. Then desert. This was a typical lunch & dinner set up and the same items remained over the whole 2 weeks, just varying the flavors of the soup and juice, and the type of meat and desert. It was so delicious! After lunch we went back to the clinic for a bit then headed out to our construction site to see where we were going to be working. We were going to be working on a day care center called Las Abejitos and an elementary school called Deloris Del (something) it was named after a woman who died and donated her land to the school.
We just scoped out the site and when it started to rain, we headed out to Cotacachi which is a local community that specialized in leather goods. After a little shopping, we headed back to the hotel for another amazing meal and then played card games with some friends. I won :) woo woo! Went to bed at 9:30pm to gear up for the first long work day of the trip!
Oddly enough, we ran into Troy, Jeff & Scott from work who were on their way to visit Kaplan - they were on our exact flight to Atlanta! We just thought they were stalking us in hopes of stowing away and hitching a flight to Ecuador, but I guess a client visit is a good excuse. We had a 2 hour layover in "Hotlanta" then took off for the rest of the 5 hours to Quito, Ecuador. I've grown a new appreciation for my video Ipod, since the cheapskates at Delta made you pay for movies on an international flight! We landed at about 9:30pm, made it through customs (whew!) & immigration and gathered all our luggage. We only had 1 casualty out of all the luggage we brought...unfortunately it was someones carry on that had all their clothes, personal items & money for the whole trip. Last minute, he decided to check it...bad move. 
We exited the airport and were told to throw our luggage into a giant yellow dump truck for the trip to Otavalo. Don't worry, the truck was protected by 
We got dropped off on a street somewhere at 2am, unloaded our bus and walked several blocks, luggage in tow, to the main hotel. Everyone was in chaos trying to figure out their rooms. Just a premonition of the many situations where no communication or direction was given. We made the best of it, though. Ellie & I were actually not assigned a room for some reason, so we stole someone else's, as they hadn't arrived that night and weren't coming until the next day. It was a "matrimony" room...that's right...one full sized bed and a pillow to share! 
Very romantic...or something... Bonus was we had our own TV and bathroom, so we didn't complain. The adventure has already begun and we just got here!
We were in Otavalo for 10 days and Quito for 2, and had an amazing time serving the Ecuatorians. Remember: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead
