Wednesday, July 1st
(My apologies, but it is already very
late, and I am already very tired, so these highlights will be
brief.)
Wednesday was a day of travel. We
spent the morning visiting the Technical Institute alongside a group
from Alabama that's staying at El Hogar this week. This visit was a
major highlight for the girls, since it was their first and only
opportunity at WiFi for the entire wekk. The major difference in the
visit this year, though, was that the institute's soccer team was
ready for us. Someone had tipped them off that we had a ringer
(Maddie), and they were still burning from our beating them last
year, so this year they all skipped class early to go put on their
uniforms and get warmed up. And it was obvious from the way they
played that they had been practicing for the game and had come up
with a strategy to beat us. Still, we held strong until the very end
when they scored two goals in rapid succession to beat us 6-4.
Maddie and I each scored a couple sweet goals; the Alabama team took
photos and will hopefully find us on Facebook to share them.
After the soccer game and lunch, we had
an opportunity to get to know four of the institute's students. Two
of them were very shy, but the other two told us a lot about their
lives. One was ready to graduate and move on because all his friends
had already graduated, and the other was hoping to go to the United
States after graduating from high school to be able to see his
parents, who he hasn't seen in twelve years.
We spent the afternoon traveling to
Valle de Angeles, doing the arbitrary touristy shopping thing, and
then traveling back to the Agricultural School on bumpy dirt back
roads.
Personal highlight of the day: finding
a soccer ball with “Recommended for Ecuavolley” written on it.
Thursday, July 2nd
Today being our last full day on the
farm, the grils spent most of the day painting our Cathedral mural in
the dining hall. It's not as big as Canada's mural, but then again,
nothing in good taste could be (we'll post pictures as soon as
possible). I spent the morning shoveling rocks for the chicken coops
and doing some cleaning around the volunteer house to get ready for
our big clean-up tomorrow morning. After lunch the girls went back
to the mural, and I ended up playing FIFA on X-Box with one of the
farm school teachers for about an hour. I was sent for, however, at
2pm to go with another teacher to get the pizza we were buying
everyone for dinner. Why id we need to leave the school at 2pm to
get pizza for dinner? Well, VERY long story short, five hours later,
we arrived at the farm school with plenty of pizza for everyone.
After dinner the buys had a “Goodbye
Program” planned for us that involved a representative of each
class saying their thank-yous and goodbyes to the group, an
opportunity for us to share with the students how much the week had
meant to us, an game involving the popping of balloons, and a funny
skit about trying to read a goodbye letter from the students to us
volunteers.
Many of the students wrote letters to
members of the team. Most of the letters were for Maddie, and quite
a few of them were very fun to translate in front of the team during
devotions.
In the morning we'll have a couple
hours after breakfast to clean and pack, and then we'll be headed
straight to the airport. We'll be at the airport for a long time
before our flight leaves, and we have a considerable layover in
Atlanta, so it will be a very long day. The rest of the group will
take some time to write down their reflections from the week, and
I'll hopefully be able to post both their reflections and some
pictures from the trip on Saturday.
Thank you again for following along
with our trip! See you all soon!
-Slocomb
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