Saturday, July 26, 2008

Day 1

Lindsey: Day 1 was dedicated to traveling...all 12 hours of it! We got to the airport at 6:45am and met with the rest of the 60+ volunteers in our group. This is our "before Ecuador" shot. I'm assuming the "after" will look the same, only we'll probably be dirtier and with a sunburn :)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 Che Guevara!2 hours, a bag of Starbursts, and a few broken seat belts later, we arrived in Otavalo. 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!

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