503AM - I woke up from Mackenzie’s excessive snoring; the walls were very thin. I assumed it was keeping the others awake aswell so I walked in to the room and lightly tapped him on the shoulder to wake him up, repeating his name in a whisper. Mackenzie woke up so startled he jumped back, wide-eyed and threw his pillow at my face and went to throw the next one at me, but by then I was shouting Mackenzie! Mackenzie! Mackenzie! Stop! It’s just me! It’s Cass! He finally stopped and apologized but his heart and breathing was going a million miles a minute! Poor guy…. Kind of funny.
7AM - Steve and I woke up to go and feed the babies in the orphanage across the way. They were so good, very well behaved and for the most part, they each ate their whole bottle. They were all so cuddly and warm and so smiley! I think I left a piece of my heart in Quito with those little ones.
Later that morning we had a meeting to prepare for kids club today at 9AM, The babies also had a tight schedule to go swimming at 10AM, but too bad we were tied in to the meeting! And we also leave at 11AM to start our travels to the Kids Club in South Quito. I hope we can find another time to go swimming with them all!
Breakfast! – Yogurt and Granola <3 #nomnomnom after that we had another quick meeting and prepared some things for that days art attack – felt puppets (which was a complete success!). It was really sweet of the guys, they all helped cut up the pieces for the puppets and gluing them together; prepping them for the children to decorate and add faces to.
It’s only $100 to rent a bus for the whole day with a driver! When we were on the roads, Robbie told us a lot about the way people in Quito communicated while driving; letting people know when they wanted to turn, if they were mad at them, and when they were stopping; any guesses? …if you guessed honking – then you are correct! The people that honk the most are the taxi drivers, and because they honk so much, their horns are worn out, so sometimes amongst the symphony of horns and honks you would hear a small dwindled down, wound down, very poor and drown out, embarrassing honk. **MM.mmm...mm…..er………..pf.*
And you get cut off all the time! But they honk, so it’s okay.
It’s very frantic and frustrating. When you first arrive in Quito, you look around and experience the driving atmosphere and all that it has to offer and you think – ‘omigoodness, am I going to survive this car ride?!’
BUT if you think about it, everyone in Quito are exceptionally good drivers because they are so used to the crazy and the hectic lifestyles of Quito drivers that they survive, they know what certain honks me and know what to do when someone swerves in front of them in the middle of an intersection. None of the men on the trip would even DARE to attempt driving in Quito. All the bad drivers have most likely lost their cars to accidents or no longer a driver.
SN: It’s so crazy that I’m here, it is just SO beautiful here, all the brick stone houses have so much character and history behind each and every one, bright colors and greenery everywhere!
All the cars drive about one inch away from each other, bumper to bumper, quite literally when parking – they will bounce back and forth in-between cars until they fit in the spot.
I get stressed out just being a passenger.
SN: One of the girls at the orphanage got adopted! Hallelujah!
We all arrived safe and sound and with no broken bones. Before the children came in to the club, Robbie sat us down and asked us all what our names were going to be, like what the children would call us. I think ‘Juan-Daniel’ (JD) and ‘chino’ (pronounced ‘CHEE-NO’) were my favorites. I loved all their sweet little voices and accents when they said our names, they were all just so dear.
‘Cassâundrra’
‘MahhCKennzié’
‘Rrrrobbie’
‘Keith’
‘StePHvan’
As we went around the group, Robbie re-said our names in Spanish, I guess just to familiarize ourselves with how the children would be saying our names. Then we all decided that Keith’s name was the only one that was going to be ‘the original.’ Meaning that his name did not change when a Spanish accent was added. Haha!
This is Matteo, he's four years old and pretty stinkin' cute!
SN: When Robbie travels to the Kids Club it usually will take him around 2hours there and 2hours back, but today when we took our own personal travelling coach bus, it only took 50 minutes!
We ate our lunch at the club; that morning we had pre-made peanut butter and jam sandwiches; naturally. While we were eating Robbie told us about how almost all the houses in Quito were unfinished. As he told us this we all looked around and noticed that all the houses had these giant metal rods sticking out at the top of the house, which we learnt were either to:
A) Build upon in the future
or to
B) avoid house taxes because then there house would be looked at as unfinished and therefor should not be livable, but everyone does it!
Rules of the Kids Club (some of which would not be the same at a kids club back in Canada)
1) No running through the duranium bush (this is only one bush but you would think it was two from the amount of times children have jumped through it and separated the bush! Haha)
2) No standing on the roof
3) No picking/eating fruits in the yard
4) No touching/hanging from the flag pole
…Now to attempt to put up our target tarp that we made for all those soccer players in the group!
Today was crazy! First off, at the club we started with Homework, whichever children did not have homework could play outside. This often resulted in Robbie having to check their bags to see and make sure that they weren’t lying and that they in fact did not have homework – there definitely were certain children who loved to just play – but then again – what child doesn’t!
The homework time went on for about an hour, as those of us who knew Spanish, aided the children with math and English questions, others played outdoors and some of us (mainly me) manned the craft room.
The homework time went on for about an hour, as those of us who knew Spanish, aided the children with math and English questions, others played outdoors and some of us (mainly me) manned the craft room.
CRAFTS – crafts went so well! The kids all loved every second of it! All rushing and scrambling. They were so creative with all their faces they made for their puppets and their eyes and horns. I can’t wait to go back tomorrow!
After that we all gathered in the lesson/homework room and presented our first puppet show – The Parable. They loved it! It was such a hit. It was great.
We then went and had snack – Banana, Tortilla and Nutella, maybe I should have saved this snack for the last day, they were raving about it! Yummy!
While we were doing our bible lessons Robbie asked the children, ‘Who is in the bible? (Main people), The Father, The Son and…?’ Then one of the boys pipped up and said ‘His little brother!’ This was one of those moments when you can tell that he thought that he was so right and he had nailed it! Haha!
Later on Mackenzie was looking at a map that Robbie had put on the wall of the world and asked a few boys where Robbie lives and they answered with something in Spanish and started to laugh, Mackenzie translated for me and said ‘Bread&Butter’ which is the same as our saying in Canada ‘Piece of Cake.’ One boy, who was around 6 years old, pointed to Canada and said ‘CA-NAH-DAH’ and I said ‘Muy bien!’ and gave him a high five! Three more times after that the very same boy pointed to the map and said, ‘CAH-NAH-DAH’ and then automatically turned to me to receive a high5. Cute.
We just got back from kids club, it took us about 1 hour. Now for dinner! Steve made us all Chicken and Cheese quesadillas – one of Robbie’s delicacies in Quito. Later that night we decided that we wanted to have a fire so Robbie and Mackenzie went outside to go collect some firewood – they caught a tiny scorpion! It is now sitting in a peanut can in our living room – fantastic. I took a small video of it – ill see if I can find it!
So the orphanage group home we are staying in has a lot of historic Quito things, including rugs, pictures, paintings and a 10 foot blowdart! Robbie looked around and found some actual blow darts. So he started practicing with targeting at the rugs. Then Juan-Daniel asked if he could try, so he did once and aimed to hit a bird on a tapestry and nailed it! Then Robbie picked up this weird apple-melon fruit and held it out, ‘can I trust you?’ he asked, and Juan-Daniel replied, ‘I don’t even trust myself!’ Robbie stood there anyways and Juan-Daniel shot it and it hit the fruit! It was about half an inch away from Robbie’s finger! Unfortunately we did not catch this on video And the dart almost went through the fruit! Robbie was so shocked and scared and thankful that it didn’t hit his finger! He was jumping around with giddiness that it didn't! Haha!
I had a tough time sleeping last night, I woke up from the symphony of snoring and I didn’t want to put my ear plugs in because when I did I was starting to hear some weird banging – Weird. Then I was too hot from my heater and my onesie because I had my heater on to drown out the snoring of the boys. Then my flashlight was dyeing, but I didn’t have anymore batteries so I had to turn my lamp on, then it was bright, but I didn’t want to use my eye mask because I’m a scardy-cat and didn’t feel 100% safe enough to use my eye mask. I shared all of this with Robbie in the morning and he said that it could also be the change in altitude – he said that when some people have come to visit him, (I think this even happened to Ruth while her and Ian were there a while back), but he had said that some of his friends have gotten sick or felt ill while they were there because of the altitude and that could be why I was waking up.
That's all for now! Can't wait to write about all the new adventures tomorrow will bring!
