Tuesday

Since we were going to the jungle today, we each did our own thing for breakfast, and Mrs. Lundy made us all peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. We left a little after 7 and had to drop the kids off at school. This basically meant pulling over on the side of the street and letting the three kids hold hands and cross it on their own. This was a little freaky, because pedestrians definitely don't have the right of way here!! But that is pretty customary to let the kids go by themselves to school, and a lot of them even walk all the way from their houses to get there.

After we dropped them off, we went to meet Pastor Elvis, who is in charge of well drillings. We planned to meet him at the church at 7 am, but since we were running late, he decided to go ahead and leave for Ahuano, the city where we take our canoe rides. When we called him, he said he would pull over on the side of the road and wait for us to meet him. So we drove all the way to Ahuano, but we never saw him! We also were having trouble getting ahold of him. We finally did, and we found out he had actually gone back to his house to wait for us. Then, when he arrived to Ahuano, we found out that the rebar was ribbed, and we needed a smooth one. So, we ended up heading to the jungle, and Pastor Elvis's partner went back to get the right bar.

We were a little worried about hauling all of the supplies through the 30 minute walk through the jungle, but a few of the natives helped us, and they had a wheelbarrow to carry the four 50 kg (110 pounds) bags of concrete mix. The trek through the jungle really wasn't too horrible! There was a dirt path we walked on, and there were two small creeks we had to cross. One had loose rocks to walk on, and the other has two bamboo trunks to walk across.

We reached a clearing that looked like some sort of recreational area, which is where we installed the first well. It had two soccer "goals," a volleyball net, and a house-like structure. We passed a few houses on our way to this area, and most of the houses didn't really have walls, and if they did, they weren't on all parts of the house.

Whenever we planned to do the wells, we were told a hole would be dug for us, so we would really just have to install the well. The hole was dug, but there also has to be 3 feet of water, and they didn't know that. So, the majority of the day was spent digging deeper to get more water. Luckily none of us had to do this, because there were a few natives who did it.

While we waited for the hole to be dug, we gathered rocks, which serve as the filter for the water. Since there weren't any nearby, we ended up having to use the rocks that made up the kitchen floor of  the native family that was helping us. We formed an assembly line to hall the rocks; that seems to be a method we've mastered. :)

After that, some of the boys and men helped bring up buckets of mud as the native man shoveled it into them. This took a pretty long time, but when they finally reached the right depth, they stuck a large PVC pipe into the hole. The only problem was that the smaller pipe that goes inside the PVC pipe was the wrong size! So, Kayla had to go back to find a new one.

Once the pipe was in the right spot, we started piling in the rocks. Normally we would've poured concrete on top, but it took a lot longer than we had planned to do this well, so Pastor Elvis said he would be able to finish it another day. Luckily we got most of the harder work done that he wouldn't have been able to do on his own. It doesn't really seem like what they did would've taken much effort or time, but there was only one shovel, and it was suuuper muggy and hot, which just made it worse.

After we did as much as we could, we are lunch and headed back down to the river. We saw a bunch of cool exotic plants along the path! A lady who is in charge of a lot of the things with the jungle explained to us what a bunch of things were.  We ended up opening up a cacao fruit and eating it. There isn't very much meat to it; the part you eat is basically the little bit of fruit surrounding all of the cacao beans. It tasted a lot like a mango surprisingly. We also ate part of a medicinal plant that is supposed to help cure infections. It tasted kind of minty!

We got back into the canoe, and we rode to a nearby island where we bought some drinks to rehydrate ourselves. While we were there, we actually found out we weren't going to be doing the second well today since the other one took so long. Pastor Elvis said we could finish it on Thursday or that we didn't have to do the second one at all. We decided that about half of us were going to go back Thursday to install the other one. They assured us that this one would definitely be dug out, so this one shouldn't take as long!

After stopping to get drinks, we rode the canoe back to its little port. Once we got everything loaded onto the Bless An Orphan van, we headed back to Tena. We dropped off Pastor Elvis and his partner, and then we got dropped off at our hotel. Mr. Kuester and my dad went back to the orphanage to help finish up and clean up a few things. Molly, Olivia, and I took showers here, and then we went up to the orphanage with the boys to play with the kids and help with homework. They were verrry wild today (even more so than usual, which is hard to believe!), but we had fun.

Eventually we went back to the hotel, and a few people ran out to get some groceries we needed for dinner. We had leftovers from last night and the night we had spaghetti, and we made macaroni and cheese, because we knew Kayla would be coming over here tonight. After dinner, most of the kids played cards like usual. :)

A little later, Kayla made it over, and Jacob, Olivia, and Molly played cards with her. One of the things she really misses about home is not being able to see her friends or play cards and just hang out with them, so we thought we'd invite her over here to play with us! We also gave her a shirt tonight like the ones we made for the trip, and she seemed pretty excited!

The boys and Mr. Kuester went to play soccer somewhere with Gary (the husband of the hotel owner), but I don't know much about it, because I was napping when they left. Apparently they were late, so they didn't get to play! But they are back now, and they just started playing cards with Kayla too. My stomach has been pretty upset all day, so I've been in bed for a lot of the evening. It hurt a little bit yesterday, but it seems to be getting worse as time goes on. Whatever it is, I hope it's gone soon! Mr. Hart had an upset stomach today/last night too, so he stayed back at the hotel today. He seemed to be doing a lot better tonight, so that's good!

Tomorrow, we plan to go white water rafting, because this area is actually known to be one of the best places to white water raft in the world!! I hope I'm feeling up to it so that I can go tomorrow! And hopefully we get lucky and can avoid the rain!

¡Hasta la vista!
-Kaitlyn