Guayaquil and Internet



We're in Guayaquil now in a very nice hotel.  With internet!!  This will make it a lot easier to do my blog.

Alright, everyone, it’s the time you have all been waiting for: PICTURES!!

First off, look at all this luggage.  Everyone had to bring medical supplies on top of their own luggage, which totaled in many people having two or more suitcases.  Seriously, so much luggage.  It drives me crazy, and if you’ve read my previous posts, you know why.  Less luggage = more freedom!  But it was very needed.  We brought a lot of extra supplies as well because of the earthquake.  I, for instance, brought a ton of bug spray, thanks to the generous donations of other people.  The LDS missionaries here are fighting with mosquitos all the time, but don’t have access to good insect repellant, so we bring some for them.



 

While in the Amazon, it rained so much!  It became pretty normal to have rain in the morning, sun in the afternoon, and rain again at night.  Even though that was normal, I kept forgetting and wouldn’t put on sunscreen to protect me in the afternoon.  I was reminded the hard way that doxycycline (an anti-malaria med that I am taking) makes you more susceptible to being burned.  As I already burn easily, this made things much worse.  Like, not a joke, I was in the shade all day except for maybe 5 minutes, and I burned like I had fallen asleep in the dessert.  It was not comfortable, and I haven’t forgotten sunscreen since.



 

This is one of our monkey friends.  He actually looked when I took the picture!

The monkeys were very used to humans, as proved by the fact that this monkey walked up to Kim and tried to pick her pocket.

 
Every morning we have to travel in the bus for a while to get to the schools where we were teaching/doing health stuff.  It can get boring on the bus, but we discovered a microphone on the bus.  What do you do when you find a microphone when bored? Karaoke, of course!  We’re not he most talented, but we had plenty of fun!  This is Kim and Alyssa. 

This is a typical scene for us working at the schools.

 
We visited this cool little village.  I wish I could remember the name of it.  It is a cool little community where it is basically run by women.  They work together to support the community.  The reason that they started this community was to get away from the current thought process of men being the boss all the time.  There is a problem in many countries where women are treated poorly, and this community is fighting it.  It was a pleasure to meet them.  This is a picture of the village.

This is the view from the top of a sacred rock (which, apparently, we are allowed to climb and then slide down).  I slid down it, and then was informed that the legend is that if you slide down the rock you are more fertile!

The kids there really wanted to do facepainting, so I let them.

This is me conquering a fear of mine.  I held a large snake.  I honestly loathe how snakes move.  Having this snake on me was freaky.  They put tape around the snake’s mouth to keep it from doing anyrhing crazy, but you could still tell when it was hissing. The hissing made it so much more freaky, but I am proud to say that I held that snake for about 2 minutes.  I’m not dying to do it again, but I can say that I did it!

This is a river that we visited!  One of my regrets for this trip was that I didn’t wear my swimsuit when we came.  It looked so nice to swim in!