Thursday

I am so sorry about not posting this last night!!! Once again, I fell asleep while I was writing it!


This morning, about half of the group woke up early to work on the well in the jungle. Unfortunately, they encountered a few problems again, and they ended up leaving a little later than planned. They were planning to install the second well today, but when the natives started digging it, they couldn't get any water. So, we ended up just working on the well we started last time.

First, it needed more rocks, which meant dismantling more of one of the native's kitchen floors. After that, they mixed concrete and then poured it on top of the rocks. Then they put the pump on, and it was finished! The natives did do a lot of the work. We tried many times to offer help though, but they seemed to want to do it themselves.

Whenever the well was finished, the native man whose kitchen floor we used asked to give a speech. He thanked us many times for installing the well, and he said how much this means to him and how generous of us it was. He also thanked us on behalf of the community because of how much of a help this would be. The natives also made tilapia soup (with the bones still in it and part of the fish tail in it too) as a way to say thanks. My dad said it was very good and tasted really fresh! It's really nice to know they are so grateful of us helping them. :)

While they were in the jungle, the rest of us stayed back at the orphanage. Martin, Olivia, Mrs. Dickinson, Mrs. Lundy, and I helped the kids make arts and crafts. Normally only one orphan is there, but the three kids from the jungle were there, so we did something to entertain everyone. They seemed to really enjoy it! Plus, it kept them busy for a pretty long time! Mrs. Witges stayed back for a little while at the hotel, but she came up a little later. Mr. Kuester cleaned up a little outside the orphanage while we were inside.

After doing crafts, we played a few games with the kids, including jacks, tic tac toe, puzzles, and we colored. They actually caught on to the games pretty well, and one kid even knew how to play tic tac toe already. The children we have been serving are really some smart kids! It is amazing/surprising how much they know. Around 12:30 or 1, the rest of the group came back from the jungle and went up to the orphanage. After the kids came home from school and we served them lunch, the rest of us headed back to the hotel to eat lunch.

Mr. Kuester, Olivia, and I decided to walk around town to look for souvenirs, so we did that around 3, after it stopped raining. Towards then end of our shopping trip, we ran into Molly, Martin, and Jacob, who were also exploring around town. When we finished shopping, we took a taxi back to our hotel. We had planned to eat dinner at the orphanage, but the plans changed a little, so we decided to get pizza again from Bella Selva like we did the first night.

Mrs. Witges and Mrs. Dickinson left to get it, and all of a sudden, the power went out! It has gone out multiple times since we've been here, but this time it went out for most of the city. Apparently this is common, and it used to take days before they could get the power back on, but now it just takes about 15-30 minutes. The one thing that really stinks about the power going out is that the water also goes out! Luckily, we were able to use a match to get the burner working on the stove, because we wanted to make popcorn to take up to the orphanage as a little treat for our last night here. So, Mr. Hart helped me, and we were able to pop the kernels in a big pot like we wanted to!

The power came back on after about 20-30 minutes, and we headed up to the orphanage. The kids all really seemed to enjoy the popcorn. (: After we were finished with the popcorn, Bless An Orphan gave everyone cocoa mix and chocolate bars! The coolest part about the chocolate bars is that the cocoa beans that made the bars are actually grown here in the Amazon by the native Kichwa people. It was really thoughtful of them!

Next, we gave them the things we brought down here for them! We gave Karissa and Marshall their own t-shirts like the ones we made, 2 little tubes of essential oil headache relief for Karissa (I had seen her post on Facebook asking about natural cures for headaches, and someone recommend peppermint oil. I knew of this stuff called Mygrastick, which is for headaches, and it contained peppermint oil, so I thought it would be perfect!), and a fruit juicer (I also saw Karissa post on Facebook about how she wished they had a juicer because of all the fresh fruit down here, so I thought they would really like that too!)! Everyone was realllly excited about the juicer!! And we gave two of the volunteers, Kayla and Tanya, Kraft mac n' cheese, which they were really excited about too!

After we gave them their gifts, Alex read a bedtime story to all the kids (in Spanish!), which they thought was funny. We're not sure if the book was funny or if they were laughing at him reading it. :) Then, the kids were put to bed, and we ate our pizza. After we ate, we played 2 games of Bowl with our group and Kayla and Tanya. After that, we headed back to the hotel.

We did our last "word of the day" down here, but we did "how I've experienced God" this time. It was a nice way to end it! After that, some people went to bed. Kayla and Gary played cards with some of the kids until 1 in the morning. They both seemed to really enjoy playing cards with the kids.

Tomorrow is our last day, and the vans are supposed to pick us up about 3 in the afternoon. Originally, we were schedule to depart at 8 am, which would've meant we would have to wait in the Quito airport for about 12 hours!! Thankfully, Kayla was able to get the ride pushed back for us!!

-Kaitlyn