Update time

Well, I figured it was about time that I added an update so that the first thing you saw on my blog wouldnt be the title of my last entry about hating ants :)
Overall things have been going pretty well here. Things have been difficult lately because I have really wanted to be with family-my great aunt Lorraine passed away this past monday and I really wish I could be there for my family and to mourne her death with others who loved her so deeply. Please keep the family in your prayers- especially my great uncle Ed and my grandma.
This past week was a big week at work because at the clinic Tracy and I were asked to do a presentation on HIV for kids at the school right next to the clinic. So we worked hard all week to put together an interesting and interactive presentation on HIV and living healthy lives. The day of our presentation was thursday and we were super excited because we put together this really sweet game where we had a bunch o f cards with myths and facts on them-the kids had to decide as a group whether something was a myth or a fact and then put the card under the correct area on the board. The other super cool thing we put together was a demonstratin of the progression of HIV in the body... we had sweet props to stick onto a person that represented white blood cells, bacteria and HIV. When we practiced the presentation for the director of the school she said we should be teachers because it was really creative (but we couldnt take all the credit for that because we got the ideas for the activities from resources that our incountry director Megan had-Gracias Megan!)
So the big day came and we even got candies for the kids that helped during the presentation. We found out thursday morning taht we were going to do 2 presentations instead of one which we were just fine with. The difficult part came when we saw the age of the kids that entered the room for this added presentation. They were kids in 2nd-4th grade and we had planned our presentation for kids in7-10th grade. Before starting the presentation tracy and i cut some stuff out that just wouldnt be undersdtood by this group... and after starting we had new difficulties added to the list... first, all of the teachers of these kids left the room...yikes! 40 kids without the people they see as authority figures! Then groups of kids had to leave to go present their projects for the values fair that was going on. Well, when this group got up and left so did other kids and then the mass chaos started. kids were running in and out of the room talking and a whole lot of chaos filled the room. Tracy and I ended the presentation early with the group and took a breather before the next one came
We were SUPER DUPER grateful to see that the next group was actually the correct age group and things went much better the second time around.
Heres the other funny part of this whole ordeal. So there are three ways HIV can be transmitted. By blood, by sexual relations, and from mother to child. Well the school director told us during our practice that we couldnt say sexual relations and that instead we needed to say ¨lack of chastity¨tracy and I tried to explain our point that the kids at this age would be able to hear those words an that the new wording may lead to some confusting .... but our words didnt convince her. So just as we had predicted, during the presentation someone raises their hand and asks... well what is chastity? Tracy and i took a quick second to laugh inside ... a bit of a ¨see we told you¨. Luckily the teacher had told us that if necesary we could say HIV can be transmitted by ¨being¨with someone ... so we pulled out this new wording and after repeating it about 4 times and moving our fingers to emphasis the quotations around ¨being¨I think the kid understood that lack of chastity or being with someone is related to sexual relations....oh boy.
So after a draining experience with the presentations we went home and just said.... ¨welcome to Ecuador¨.
Overall it was super awesome though and we are excited to do other presentations... we just learned that we will have to adapt

I do NOT love ANTS!!!!

So! I said that I had another lil something to talk about...
well in my previous entry I intentionally left out a detail.
I woke up this morning on the floor of our living room....well on my mattress on the floor.
Why did my bed get put out there??? Well...!ª!!!
Two nights ago I came home SUPER tierd after a long community meeting and it was late ... 11:30 pm so I was more than ready to jump into bed. Well, just as I was getting into bed I looked down and noticed that my pillow and parts of my sheets were SWARMING ... I mean SWARMING with ants!!!!!! AGH!!! So after splurting out not pretty things I wrapped up my sheets and put them in the washer and put new sheets on my bed. I slept that night always worried that I felt an ant on me.
The next night I come into my room, again, very tierd and ready to escape into my Nicholas Sparks book. I learned the night before to look down before getting in... and upon doing so I noticed that my sheets were SUPER SWARMING with one area of ants and another of baby spiders... I have NO idea where the spiders came from ... but I followed the trail of the ants and found that they were coming out of one of my electrical outlets!!!!!! My sheets from the night before werent even dry yet!!!! luckily we had extra sheets.
I decided that there was NO WAY i was sleeping in my room taht night and I proceeded to take my bed out and move it into the living room. I have slept there for 2 nights now as I am spraying ant killer ALL OVER my room in hopes of putting off their next attack.
So...
That´s my ant excitement.
I am now going to head home to spray some more RAID Gold!
Belssings to all of you.

Great Day!

Hola a todos!
I had such a great day today that I had to share it with everyone. Really have been doing really well here in Ecuador and often find myself walking down the street with a big smile on my face thinking about how thankful I am to have been blessed with this opportunity.
So... I feel like I have SOOO much to share with everyone that I just dont know where to begin... I have a list but I am going to start with today and will come back another day to add things that are on my list.
So... today I woke up and ate some leftover bread pudding (I think that´s what it´s called... mom-is that right??) It was very tasty. When we have leftover bread we have been saving it in the fridge after it gets stale and when we have enought we tear it up and put it in a pan with a simple egg milk and yummy stuff mixture and after some time in the oven.... tadaaaaa ... we have a yummy treat!
So it was great to start off the day with the yummy bread and also to be very well rested... our WHOLE House was sound asleep by 10:00 last night! You know when people in their 20s are really tierd when they are ready for bed by 9:30 pm!!! It felt soo good to get some rest though... we were all shot! So much so that last night we decided not to talk in Spanish during supper like we usually do on Wednesdays.
I left the house this morning well nourished and excited for the day. I was even more excited after our new guard gave me a wonderful heart felt greeting too.
Once I got to work I was met with surprise... I got to help the nurses today!! So I spent the day helping the nurses take temperature, weight, height, and head circumference of babies and then I got to meet the pediatritian. Then I got to watch some ultrasound tests. In the middle of all of this excitement one of the nurses asked if i would do her a favor. She introduced me to a nice, frail, old woman and asked me to walk her up the hill to get some food. Our clinic is located at the foot of this HUGE hill and right behind the clinic there is a church and a school. It turns out that this lady, Piedad, comes weekly to receive food from the school kitchen. I assisted her in walking up the steps of the school (telling here that this was just like I help my own grandma). On the way there she explained to me how her and her husband live all alone and dont have any kids to care for them. They are very very poor and dont have enough money for food and medicine so the clinic helps them out by giving them food every 8 days. It was so nice to get to walk with her and talk with her and at the top of the hill she introduced me to the kitchen staff.
The staff there was very nice and they were excited to show me the really nice garden they had just planted in plant beds. I was incredibly excited because they had Zucchini !!!!! They dont have this normally in ecuador but they said that someone had brought it over from Europe. I was so excited to see it and told them that I would for surely come back and bring them some great recipes! I am so excited to do this!
After work I went straight over to the soup kitchen where i have been helping out everyday after work. I absolutely love helping out there. The ladies are so nice and are very happy to teach me about the food and how to cook different dishes. They were excited to hear about how my attempt at making Sango de Atun went the night before... and I was excited to tell them that it went well and everybody enjoyed it. They were kind enought to offer me my daily glass of colada ( a drink that reminds me of malt-o-meal that they make by cooking ground up oatmeal with a bunch of water and juice and then sifting out the oatmeal). It has become part of a tradition that they set aside a glass of this for me each day. Today I also enjoyed a plate of rice with menestra ... a mix of vegetables and lentils. It was great.
As I said earlier, I really love helping out at the soup kitchen. Several of the kids that come to the Valdivia afterschool program that I work at are there each day and it is nice to interact with them more. We have been praying the rosary each day before we eat and I have been bringing the 3 rosaries that we have in the house with me so that the kids can follow along. I have taught the other kids to follow along with their fingers. This is still super hard for some of the kids to sit through but i think they are improving. Overall I just cant begin to describe how the time I spend working there fills me.
This afternoon at the Valdivia afterschool program we made prayer books with all of the kids and then took them in small groups into the chapel of the chruch for adoration. (valdivia takes place in the church yard where we use the soup kitchen space, the library, and the basketball-soccer court)
It was really great to see the kids take time and pray before the blessed sacrament. It was especially great to see how happy it made some of the elders of the church to have the children there. One of the older men told me that we should bring the kids there each week (adoration is every Thursday). After having such a great experience with it today, we decided that we would like to do that. It has been such a blessing to work witht the kids and get to know them so well through this after school program, Valdivia. I love them all so much!
Okay I think that is enough for todays write up... now i am going to write a lil about the opposite of love that I have for something here in Ecuador.

But before I close this one off....
A note about Valdivia... If you have any ideas for some neat activities to do with kids PLEASE email them to me!!!! We are always looking for educational activites! the kids range in age from 6-14 :)
Gracias!!!