So I´ve heard we are already in the second week of June!!!
I really can’t believe it and feel as though time is FLYING just as fast as all of the awesome airplanes that I get to see take off from Guayaquil. (For all those back home who don’t know this.... I have a lil hobby here in Ecuador.... every time I go from my home in Duran to the city Guayaquil I keep my eyes peeled for the next plane taking off from the airport.... I LOVE it!)
Anyways....
Like I´ve said before, please forgive me for my lack of communication. I get a bit overwhelmed when I think about how to share all of these amazing blessings that I encounter everyday here.
I will start with talking about:

My Last Retreat Group....Scranton University
So, today I dropped my last retreat group off at the airport. Despite being super tired from the lil more than a week of action we shared, when I got home from the airport I just couldn’t sleep. I had a great time with my Scranton group and our experience was filled with reminders of what a blessing this year has been and that it is coming to a close. Our time together and nightly reflections have left me with many beautiful things to think about and continue to reflect on. This week we had some great visits in the homes of neighbors sharing laughter and even tears. Many neighbors weren’t home for the group to visit so we visited a few people a second time and found our time shared to be very fruitful. I loved hearing my group talk about how great it was to get to go back and truly feel at home and comfortable as they talked with their new friends. We played memory with Victor and Jon at Pastoras while I worked on making my purse. (Yes, I am making a purse!!!!! Crochet??? I never thought there was any hope for me to learn such a thing, but Pastora is full of patience, so I have learned and actually LOVE doing it). We also had a great time talking with Soraya, about her experience of supporting her husband Wellington through his struggles with Hanson’s Disease. Hearing her explain how she wasn’t scared at all and saw this sickness as any other sickness and the way she reassured Wellington of her love for him during his difficulties helped me to better understand the love Wellington has for Soraya today. Later in the week I brought my group back over to their house to do a Zumba dance workout with Soraya. We all had a lot of fun. The week ended on a great note too. Our last afternoon together we witnessed Ecuador winning Argentina 2-0 in a qualifying game for the world cup. It was super Exciting!!!
Ok.... so I know that was a jumble of randomness but I guess I just hope that it helps to explain what a great experience I had with my last retreat group - Scranton. Thanks guys!!!

Yay for Vitamins!!!
Thanks to generous donations of people in the US we have been able to give vitamins out at our after school programs. We have been giving out vitamins for a bit over two months now and it has been super exciting for all of us. The kids LOVE getting vitamins and many of our kids at Valdivia have found a favorite flavor :) I remember mine were red and purple when I was lil!
Some of the vitamins are even extra special in that they come in the form of gummies. We give these out on the special days. So Thanks to everyone who so generously donated vitamins! It has been greatly appreciated!

Morning Walks and Talks
So for about three weeks now I have been getting up extra early and going on morning walks with Soraya. Soraya is one of my friends and neighbors who lives across the street and has three kids Kevin, Keiko and Natalia. Her husband Wellington is a guard at our house and is also a good friend of mine. (Wellington taught me how to make hammocks....don’t know if I mentioned that before) Soraya and I have been talking for quite some time about going out and walking for some exercise and I must say that it is exciting to finally have followed through with our plans! We try to make sure we go out at least 3 days a week but love it when we can get in more. I wake up at 6 and we head out at 615 and walk for about 1 hour. Then I come home and get ready for a day at work. This week with my retreat group being here I didn’t have to run off to catch a bus to go to work so I had more down time. I really enjoyed this because I made yummy fruit and milk shakes post walk. With all of the fun fruits and veggies here I love doing this....but it takes time so most mornings I don’t have time and just get a piece of bread from the bread store before I catch the bus.
So yay for walking!!!! And talking!

March update

Thank goodness it is still March so that I can say that I have been at least leaving a monthly update! I have been finding it to be so hard to find the time to get to the cyber so please forgive me for my lack of communication.
March has been a great month.
It started off great with:

A visit from my Mom, Aunt MaryBeth and fiance Dan
March 5th-14 I was overjoyed to have the opportunity to share my experience here in Duran with some of my family. While they were here I had an great time introducing them to my amazing neighbors, co workers, and students from Valdivia. They were able to witness the incredible hospitality and generosity of the people of Duran through tummies that were filled to the max for eight days. They were able to try a variety of traditional foods prepared by neighbors and my mom also was able to learn how to prepare a few, which was a lot of fun! (Ask my mom to make you something!!!) While my mom tried the foods prepared by our friends here in Duran, they were able to try here amazing Special-K bars which I was SUPER EXCITED to be able to eat while she was here. Everybody here LOVED them!!! (No surprise).
They were especially lucky because they were here for a very special after school program event:

After School Program OLIMPICS 2009!!!!!!!
Wooooohoooooo!!!!! Go Valdivia!!!
So on my family´s last day here in Duran, they were able to witness the fruit of a good month of hard work. In the first week of February we announced to our kids in the asp programs that we would be working extra hard to prepare for the Olimpiadas in March. Our kids worked hard on getting in line in order of height and age (the first race at the olimpics). THey also worked hard on practicing their math, Ecuadorian geography, memory, language, skits and relays.
The week before we elected 20 kids that had behaved well and hadnt missed many days and thus formed TEAM VALDIVIA.
Our kids did great the day of the olimpics and it was a big help to have my mom, MB, and Dan there to help out. The kids also loved having more people there to cheer them on. We started the event off with a nice parade around the soccer court and then the kids split off according to the events they were participating in.... it reminded me SOO much of Play Day back in grade school. Now I have a whole new form of appreciation for all of the hard work those teachers must have done to have Play Day run so smoothly!
The day went great and the kids had a lot of fun, coming in second place.
We were SOOO proud of our kids!
The following Monday we celebrated with all of the kids from Valdivia sharing a day of soccer, a nice popsicle break, and ¨special¨bread to go with the usual banana.


Alrighty
So I am cutting this short.... there is much more that happened in March, and more to say, but I think it is better that I wrote something than nothing at all.
I am now off to Omar and Elizabeths house where Omar´s mom is hosting a bingo to raise money for the church. Wish me luck!!! :)
May God bless you all back home and please keep the people of Duran in your prayers.... it is so greatly appreciated!!

Saludos
Melissa

Feb Update

Hello to everyone back home!
I appologize that it has been such a long time since I last updated my blog.
Things have been going very well here in Duran and time has been flying!
Since I am having such a hard time finding time to use the internet and update my blog I am going to try to update it a bit more frequently with short lil blurbs.
We´ll see how it goes.
Valdivia has been going very well. The kids are on break now so we have a good number of new kids. We are currently trying to prepare for the after school program Olympics where we will compete against the other programs in activities like relays, math and language activities, memory competitions, and other races. The kids are super excited for this so its a great incentive for them to behave well and have regular attendance. We got a donation of dodge balls and the kids absolutely love playing dodge ball. We also got a donation of a few puzzles and a memory game which has been great because we are now in the rainy season here in Duran and so we have to be creative in looking for activities for kids on the rainy days. One week our soccer court flooded so that it actually turned into a pool!! It was hillarious and comletely unexpected. Andrew and I showed up to work and found a handful of our kids with their shirts off, swimming in about 1.5-2 feet of super dirty water. So we had to send everybody home to get dry clothes. before starting the day. The following day we made newspaer sailboats and set them asail.... it was a great day and we all had a lot of fun!!!!
Alrighty well I think that is all that I am going to update for now... the sun is out again and the rain has stopped so I am going to head home and go eat. Then I am going over to one neighbors house and paint our nails and then over to Elizabeth´s where I am going to learn to make an Ecuadorian appetizer.
Enjoy the cool of winter!!!!
With warm blessings from Ecuador,
Melissa