Football, Poetry, and Carrots

Hi guys!

This morning, I volunteered again in the OSSO house with the disabled kids.  Everyone is currently in a state of great excitement--we're planning a half-wheelchair, half-able-bodied soccer tournament for tomorrow afternoon.  I'm playing, as well as the majority of the other volunteers, and all of the residents of the house who are able to walk, propel themselves, or somehow kick at balls in their wheelchairs.  Much of our morning was devoted to preparation for this.

We'll have two teams, Team Ecuador (which will be wearing blue) and Team USA (dressed in red and white).  Each team is a mix of volunteers and residents of the orphanage, and they were balanced very carefully in order to preserve optimum competition.  I'm on Team Ecuador (I'm not entirely sure that I'll be an asset to them).  The kids are so excited--even the ones who won't be able to join in the game because they can't leave their beds are thrilled to be able to cheer on their friends.

We spent an hour or two making decorations for the game this morning--we made pennants, flags, and decorated lists of players.  When talking about it with the residents, we referred to it as "football," because that's how the game is known in Ecuador (and everywhere else in the world.)  But one of the volunteers making decorations apparently didn't know this, and so she drew little American footballs on everything.  I wish I had a photo of her face when we told her about the mistake--she had never realized that it would have a different name.  I'll let you know tomorrow who wins.

We did other activities today besides just soccer preparation.  One of the boys and I are in a continual high-five competition--whenever we see each other, we try to do "up high, down low, too slow."  We're pretty much tied.  And whenever we lose the "too slow," we stick our tongues out at each other.  It's gotten to the point where our initial greeting is just sticking our tongues out.  It's a strange kind of friendship,  but it works for us.

I also spent a while pushing one boy's wheelchair around the courtyard (update--the muscles used in uphill wheelchair pushing are your calves, lower thighs, and inner upper arms.  Or at least that's what was sore on me.)  In general, when the volunteers aren't here, the kids don't get to move much, so we walk them around as much as we can.  I also spent a while with Maria again--I'm running out of Maria-themed songs to sing to her (I've gone through Sound of Music and West Side Story), so today I spent a while just talking to her.  I told her what it's like to go to the ocean, and recited a bunch of poetry.  I have no idea if she understands me, but I know that she can here, and figure that she likely doesn't mind the company.

When I was younger, one of my favorite books was Moloka'i, a novel written about the leper colony in Hawaii.  In the book, they printed this poem, which was written by Robert Louis Stevenson about the actual colony when he visited it.  I thought about it for much of today when I was taking care of the handicapped kids, as it's so easy to simply pity them, instead of seeing their beauty.  The poem sort of religious, so for those of you that don't believe in a deity, just think of the references to God as a greater goodness.

To see the infinite pity of this place,
The mangled limb, the devastated face,
The innocent sufferer smiling at the rod --
A fool were tempted to deny his God.
He sees, he shrinks.  But if he gaze again,
Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain!
He marks the sisters on the mournful shores;
And even a fool is silent and adores.

(copied and pasted from https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/stevenson/to_mother_maryanne.html)

For our second shift of the day, we went next door to the orphanage for healthy children.  I was working with the group that's approximately 3-7 year olds.  We had brought jump ropes, and they were very excited (especially the girls).  As soon as you go there, you get swarmed by children wanting to play and hug and hold your hand--one of my fellow volunteers doesn't really like it, and he compared it to throwing a steak into a piranha tank.  

But I loved it.  I spent a lot of the shift with one girl, named Diana--she grabbed hold of my hand at the beginning and refused to let go.  She was probably about 5, and pulled me around everywhere, showing me all of the facets of her daily life.  Occasionally, she would try to jump into my arms, and I would let her (even though we're not supposed to be carrying the older kids around much.)

There was also another volunteer there, not from OSSO.  She was an Ecuadorean girl, about my age, named Guadalupe--she was just there to do some volunteer work.  It was great having her there--she was very sweet, and could speak to the kids in Spanish.  Alyssa was there too, so we were pretty good in the language department.

I also ended up spending time with another boy, probably around three, who would cry whenever anything mildly bad happened.  I figured that he just wanted a bit of attention, as he would cheer up pretty quickly as soon as I took him in my arms, so I toted him around for a bit.

This evening, we went to yet another orphanage (the same one we went to on Thursday night).  Mondays are usually craft days there, so we made these bracelets out of cords--it was fun for them, but I couldn't explain how to do it well, so I helped some other kids who were doing puzzles.

And I should probably tell you some things about general life here.  Showering is an adventure--the water  has minimal pressure and comes in two settings, ice or lava.  In theory, you are able to mix the two to get a bearable temperature, but in reality, if you turn on the cold water while the hot water is on, it all turns cold.  Fortunately, it all starts cold, so there is about an 8 second period when it is warming up where you can be comfortable.

Also, you can't drink the water here, which is normally fine, although it can be frustrating to have to bring your water bottle to go brush your teeth (it sucks when it's late and you've forgotten it and need to go back to your room).  It also means that washing fruit is an 8-step process that involves both bleach and vinegar.

It's still cold here, although we're all getting more used to it, and learning to adapt.  I wear my church ballet flats around the house, because they are my easiest shoes to slip on (besides my shower flip-flops, which are usually wet), in order to prevent my feet from freezing on the tile.  And I wear socks and a sweatshirt to bed, on top of my flannel pajamas.

The produce here is crazy.  This was a carrot that one of the volunteers picked up at the grocery store.
But everything tastes fantastic, even if it is a bit on the large side.  Also, that's Julie holding the carrot--she helped start OSSO and has been here over 30 times.  Plus, in her normal life, she's a nursing professor, so she answers all my medical questions (pre-med me has a lot) about the kids' disabilities and treatments.  In the next few days, I'll write about all the different volunteers here.

Anyway, I'm off to more work tomorrow morning, so I need to go to bed soon.  Bye guys! Stay wonderful!

Ecuadorean Sunday

This morning, I went to another part of the orphanage next door (the one for healthy children).  This one housed children from about age 3-7.  I got many warnings about this--I was told that the kids were a bit crazy, and I would be mildly insane by the end.  But I loved it.  Everyone was speaking Spanish, and the kids were disappointed that I couldn't, but we managed through charades and the help of one of my roommates, Alyssa, who served a Mormon mission in Chile and is therefore fluent in Spanish. (OSSO isn't a religious organization, but it primarily recruits volunteers out of Utah and Idaho, so everyone currently volunteering in Ecuador is LDS.)

The kids were so excited to have volunteers come to visit.  As soon as I entered the room, I was greeted with shouts of "hola, amiga!"  They were eating breakfast, but as soon as they finished, they ran over to the other volunteers and me and started to climb all over us.

The nuns who run this orphanage then told us to separate into what are called "casas"--groups of about 4 kids who live in adjacent rooms.  Each volunteer was in charge of supervising one of theses casas.  I was in charge of four kids: the girls Mayuri and Cataleya, and the boys Brian and Jordy.  There was supposed to be a boy named Ismael, but he was gone somewhere (perhaps he needed to spend some time with Ahab.)

I was told to bring in activities to do with the kids, so I brought in paper bags, markers, and pipe cleaners to make puppets.  That went pretty well--they enjoyed all the coloring, and for the most part, they behaved.  And the boys had fun stabbing the bags with pipe cleaners to put arms on their puppets.  They also loved to play caballo--piggyback rides (caballo is Spanish for horse.)  These kids really liked to be hugged and touched--I learned very quickly not to sit in positions that would be uncomfortable if another 40 pounds just happened to plop down on some part of my body, as the kids had a tendency to just come and sit on my lap (or outstretched knee, or forearm, or hand) with little warning.  It's fun, to always have a child in your arms, but also a bit sad, as they are so starved for affection that they climb on random strangers.  (If this were a radio show, then now they would cue "All You Need Is Love," which is currently in my earbuds.  If you want a more authentic Taylor-in-Ecuador experience reading this, go listen to the Beatles.)

After the paper bag puppets were made, the girls decided that a nail salon was in order.  They took their markers and worked first on their own nails, and then on mine.  I had quite the rainbow!!
                                        
I brushed Mayuri's wet hair right after they markered my nails, so a lot of the color came off.  Nonetheless, it is the best manicure I have ever had.

The kids at this orphanage were also fascinated by my glasses--they pulled them off my face and all tried them on (under close supervision, because I really don't want my glasses to break.)  The kids then decided that my glasses (I think the Spanish word is luntas) needed more decoration.  I ended up with these:
Obviously the peak of high couture, with pipe cleaner decorations.  The kids then took the pipe cleaners and made their own glasses out of them--it was one of the cutest things I have ever seen, and I was so flattered that they wanted to be like me, a girl that they could barely even talk to.  (I think that my ideal career would be a professional role model for children. However, that isn't really hiring, so I plan to be a pediatrician--someone who most kids fear.)

And one more story about that orphanage--apparently the boys there learned the meaning of a raised middle finger, so whenever they were mad, they flipped me off.  I know that it's really bad behavior, but it was so hilarious to see this little kid making the gesture.  I should teach them to stick their tongues out instead.

Because this was Sunday, and all the volunteers here are Mormon, we all went to church.  They have an English branch in the city limits of Cuenca (quick crash course for those who are unfamiliar with Mormon services--wards (bigger) or branches are what we call congregations, and a typical Sunday service is made up of 3 parts--sacrament meeting, where we take the sacrament (prayer-over bread and water which represents Christ's sacrifice) and then 2 classes based on age and gender.)  We only went to the sacrament meeting today, and it was really cool.  It felt very familiar, as it was in English, and the format was the same as at home.  Mormon churches are like bookstores and pianos to me--no matter where they may be, whenever I am around them a part of me feels like it belongs.

There were a few differences, though.  The English congregation was tiny--maybe 40 people in the chapel.  A few volunteers went to the Spanish service earlier in the morning, and they said that it was pretty full, but there weren't many people at our church.  The man who blessed the sacrament (said a prayer over it to make it, in our beliefs, sacred) was this older bald man with a ponytail and a thick southern accent.  I wish I would have talked to him to ask about his life experiences and how he ended up in Ecuador, because it seemed like it would be interesting.

Also, the music here is a bit different.  They sang three hymns (opening, closing, and sacrament, as is typical at home), but the opening and closing hymns were ones that no one had ever heard before.  I'm asked to be the pianist at quite a few church activities, so I've read through most of the book, but even I didn't recognize the tunes.  And people here seem to sing better than at home--people actually sang the 4-part harmonies, which was really pretty to listen to.  Sometimes, at home, I'll try to sing the alto part to hymns, mostly as a musical exercise, but generally that just feels odd because ear training is really not a musical strength of mine, and I'm never quite sure if I'm singing the right notes.  And it's usually only me singing harmony.

After church, we went back to the OSSO orphanage.  We didn't do much different today, although I did learn how to brush the teeth of a child with a feeding tube, which is something I couldn't imagine doing a month ago. (In a few words, you do it very carefully).

I also spent some time with this little 5-year-old named Brian, who is absolutely adorable.  He is almost completely deaf, which makes communication with him challenging, (plus he's a five-year-old boy, so he probably wouldn't want to listen anyway), but he has the greatest giggle and loves to explore everything.

This evening, we had a big formal Sunday dinner, made by a few of the volunteers (they took the afternoon shift off to cook, and everyone who didn't help cook did the dishes after).  We invited a few of the orphanage employees, and it was really fun to all be together for a meal.  Also, the juice here is awesome.  They had a bunch of different kinds at dinner, and one of the volunteers suggested that we line them all up and pretend to be taking shots (we didn't.  But sort of wanted to).

 

That's fruit salad, a roast, mashed potatoes, and salad. Plus carrot cake for dessert.  It was wonderful.

 

That's all for tonight guys!  I'll write again soon.  Thanks for reading!

OSSO and Babies

Hi guys!

This morning I was at the OSSO orphanage for kids with special needs again.  At the beginning, we gave them all baths--it took a pretty long time, because they only had one tub on our floor, so they could only wash one child and dress one child at once.  And it's hard, because a lot of the kids are partially paralyzed or have limited muscle tone, so the volunteers and workers have to do pretty much everything.

After everyone was showered, we fed them.  The tias make up food for each child, blending it according to their needs (some can feed themselves and are able to eat more solid food, while others need to be fed and usually eat liquid food.  These kids are usually the ones with swallowing issues.)  Then we brushed and braided the girls' hair.  There is only one male volunteer, and he asked me if it was painful for girls to get their hair brushed.  I told him to just be gentle.  It's strange how much I assume is common knowledge based on my experience, but others have no idea about because they have no need to.

All the girls here have ridiculously thick hair.  It's gorgeous, long and ebony, but a bit difficult to deal with, especially when they can't support their necks and you have to lift then off of their wheelchairs to brush it.  Also, everyone here has gorgeous eyes.  Their irises are the darkest brown, so deep that you can barely see their pupils.

After the morning routine, I went to spend more time with Maria.  She is less interactive than a lot of the other kids at OSSO, and therefore usually gets a little less attention, so I try and work with her more than the others.  I'm figuring out the other ways to make her beautiful little giggle come out.  Along with rubbing the base of her thumb a certain way, I've learned that she laughs during certain parts of songs, usually when the speed changes or the notes get high, as well as a lot of other noises and some tactile things (she's blind, so has to use her other senses).

She scared me today, though.  She has some issues with her lungs, and the tias have to do chest percussions on her every morning (pounding her chest and back with cupped hands).  She started coughing, which is fairly normal, but wouldn't stop, and the noise sounded like it was too big for her tiny body.  The tias told me to just pat her on the back until she was able to breathe again, but it was scary.  It's very easy to forget that these children are so ill, but many of them will live their entire lives in the orphanage.

I also was with Laura, the girl who takes her doll everywhere, today.  She had seen that some of the volunteers had friendship bracelets on, so she wanted to make one for Wawa.  Together, she and I managed to braid the string to fit around the doll's wrist, and she was so excited to tie it on (and then wanted one for herself.)

In the courtyard of the special-needs orphanage, there is like this musical metal plate statue.  It's basically a bunch of metal disks tuned to different pitches that the kids can hit with a rubber hammer. One of the younger boys, Cristian, figured out that if you put a handful of dirt on the metal plates and then hit it, the vibrations will make the dirt and pebbles jump all over.  We had a good time doing that--I tried to actually play a song, but most of the plates are too out of tune to make much of a melody.  But he has this awesome bounding laugh, and would crack up whenever the pebbles would move.  I guess it's teaching physics?

For the second shift of the day, I went back to the orphanage next door for babies (these kids are healthy).  Cuma wasn't there for some reason, but another boy named Hector was.  Hector was the youngest of the four--he didn't really know how to crawl yet, but was very serious and pensive.

Erika, the girl who wants to be held all the time, is absolutely adorable.  She only knows one word--"wow!"  Whenever something happens, it gets a wow.  She gets picked up--wow.  There is a window (even if it's the same one she saw five minutes ago)--wow.  There is a decoration on the light switch--wow.  It's hilarious.  If everyone had the wonder of an Ecuadorean infant, the world would be a more fascinated place.  She also loves to dance and wave her little arms around, and will try to sing along to anything she hears, regardless if she knows the song or not.  And whenever someone new walks into the room, she runs up to them and puts her arms up, demanding to be picked up.  Which, of course, we do.

Something really exciting happened today!  There were possible adoptive parents for Manuel who came to visit (I think.  I couldn't exactly tell what was going on, and our scrappy Spanish was no match for the conversation that they were trying to have.)  But they came and played with him and seemed to love him.  (One of the volunteers said that he should be like a used-car salesman and point out Manuel's good features.)  This is wonderful news, especially because Manuel is the most developmentally behind child in that age group--he was born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and is a little slow in everything he does.  But the couple played with him for a while, and then randomly left and brought the volunteers little yogurts.  I'm still not quite sure what that was about, but whatever.  It was very nice of them.  Although I have no idea where they got the yogurts from (it was in a sealed package though, so it was safe.)

Back at the volunteer house, we've been having fun.  Most of the group is from Utah or Idaho, where cursing can get a bit odd (not that I curse normally--rats!--but still.)  We had a debate over the use of the phrase "oh my heck"--I think that it sounds ridiculous, but some of the Utah natives fought very hard that it was a legitimate exclamation.  It just sounds really funny to hear.

One of the volunteers also bet the volunteer director that he wouldn't eat an entire spoonful of garlic.  He took the dare, and swallowed basically a tablespoon of chopped garlic, much to his wife's dismay. He got ten bucks out of it, and he seemed fine, but it was disgusting to watch, so I can't even imagine the taste of it.

It's getting sort of late here, so I have to go.  Bye guys!

OSSO Orphanage

Hi guys!

Today was my first day in the actual OSSO orphanage.  (It's completely funded by the group I'm volunteering with, and only houses kids with disabilities.)  It was wonderful.

We got there just around breakfast time, so we started off by feeding the kids.  I was with a boy named Edison, who has severe cerebral palsy (that's one of the most common conditions for the kids here.)  He was, in general, a good eater--he could support his own head, actually wanted to eat and opened his mouth when the spoon approached.  I was very lucky on this account--one of the girls here is constantly shaking her head, so trying to feed her is a challenge.

I then went to go spend time with one girl named Lucy.  At the volunteer house, there's a book with entries about each child, detailing their special needs, a bit of their history, and their general preferences for the volunteers.  It mentioned that she was blind and nonverbal but loved music, especially songs with her name in them.  I sang to her, but the only song that I know with the word Lucy in it is "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds."  So if you want to picture innocent me singing a song about hallucinogens to a wheelchair-bound Ecuadorean orphan, you can.  (However, I only know a few lines of the song, so I made up the rest.)

The tías (orphanage employees) then asked me to change the clothes of a girl named Maria--she is also blind and nonverbal, and has microcephaly (not from the recent Zika outbreak in Ecuador, though).  It was physically harder than I would expect, because she was a teenager, probably about 60 pounds (she's the size of a young child), and can't really move her limbs much, so it was like changing deadweight.  Also, she can't eat by mouth, and therefore has a feeding tube, so I had to be very careful around that as well.  She did well, though--throughout the whole process, she only whimpered twice.  And I discovered that if you rub the base of her thumb a certain way, she lets out the most adorable giggle that I've ever heard, and that makes it all worth it.

Everyone then went to the courtyard, and I pushed Maria around the yard in her wheelchair.  She loved it--she would giggle whenever we went over a bump or crack in the cement (so I made sure that we went over a lot of bumps and cracks in the cement.)  And the other volunteers who could see her face said that she was grinning the whole time.  But the courtyard has a pretty steep incline, and I probably went up it 20 times, so I'll probably find out tomorrow morning exactly which muscles are used in wheelchair-pushing on hills.  While we were walking around, we were somewhat alone (although there were a few other volunteers and kids doing the same thing), so I sang to her, too.  I started with "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?", then went on to
"Eidelweiss," to keep the theme.  And then a bunch more, because we were walking for a while.  It was probably good for me, though.  It was essentially long-distance pacing, but more productive.

Then Maria had to go in to work with the physical therapist employed by the orphanage, so I went over to a girl named Laura.  Laura always carries around this doll which she calls Wawa--Quecha for baby.  (Quecha is the language of the native Ecuadoreans).  There is a swingset in the courtyard that Laura had just come off of, and she motioned towards it.  She didn't want to go back, and I finally realized that she wanted to push her baby doll on the swing.  It was the most adorable thing--her in her wheelchair, concentrating on pushing her beloved doll.

While she was doing that, I was pushing another boy, who proceeded to fall asleep.  The swing had a back on it, so it didn't matter--it was just very sweet.

We then broke for lunch--the food here is awesome, but this post is getting kind of long, so I'll tell you about that another time.

After lunch, all the volunteers and OSSO orphans went to an all-abilities park (parque inclusivo).  It was actually created by the same organization that made Brandon's Village and Aidan's Place in LA (fun fact--my parents helped fundraise for Aidan's Place on the Westside, so they were allowed to name a piece of equipment.  One of the swing sets is called Swinging With Taylor.  I'm officially a permanent part of LA.)  The park was really fun.  They had this sort of wheelchair teeter-totter--it's sort of hard to describe, but basically a lever that can fit 2 wheelchairs on each side and sways a bit instead of going all the way up and down.  I was with a girl named Vanesa, who was wheelchair bound, and she loved it.  They also had bikes there that had wheelchairs on the front, so we rode on one of those, which was fun for both me and her, but also very difficult (for me) because the path was on a hill, and I was pedaling with a bunch of extra weight on the front of the bike.  Eventually, we all had to leave to go back.  It was about an hour bus ride back to the compound, and Vanesa ended up sitting pretty much on my lap the entire way.  She doesn't have the muscle tone to support herself sitting, and will just slide down the seat, so she ended up leaning on me while I held onto her shoulders.

This entire city is quite pretty--the nice parts look like you took a bunch of Spanish Colonial architecture and popped it down in one of the parts of the South that's just completely forested.  It's astonishingly green here (especially coming from Socal, which sort of looks like 50 Shades of Brown during this part of the year.)

Also it's cold here.  It hit like 55 today at the warmest, and there's no heating indoors.  One of my roommates is from Idaho and she thinks it's cold, which I think is hilarious (but she said that subzero is ok if you're prepared.)  But it's fine if we keep moving, which we are, most of the time.

Love you guys! Thanks for reading!

The Beginning

Hi guys!

9:30 AM: I'm finally here!  I got to the compound where we stay about an hour ago, got a brief tour, and was told just to rest until 11:30, when I have my orientation.  I start working with the kids this afternoon! This all doesn't seem quite real yet--I can't believe that I'm on a continent that I've never been to, that I got here all alone, that I'll be volunteering with orphans in a few scant hours.  I've wanted to do something like this my entire life (literally--in elementary school I would occasionally send my imaginary friend on trips to Uganda to treat kids with HIV.)

The flight over here from Quito was interesting.  It was gorgeous--you could see these lush green mountains peeking out from between cotton-candy clouds.  However, it's fortunate that I don't get motion sick at all--the ride was not smooth, as it was a fairly small plane in thin mountain air.  We weren't allowed to even have our tray tables down for much of the flight because they would rattle.  But look at these views! My cell phone photos don't do it justice.

When I arrived and found the volunteer director waiting for me, we took a taxi to the volunteer house.  The driving here is crazy--most road laws seem to be either optional or nonexistent, and people make up lanes at will.  And much of the city is poor, in ways that I've never seen before.  I didn't get to see much, but it's strange--there's the intersection of what you picture in your head as "third world poverty" with modern life--cars and airports and iPhones.  And there's tons of stray dogs.  I probably saw 30 dogs on the 20 minute taxi ride.  They said that they don't spay and neuter here, so the population just grows.

The volunteer house is really cool.  It's not big--a downstairs with a kitchen and a sort of living area, and an upper floor with a few bedrooms and bathrooms.  Here's my room:

I have 2 roommates who I have yet to meet--everyone was already working when I got here, so I have a few hours to myself before orientation.  I'll write more and actually publish this online once I've started working this afternoon.  

9:00 PM

We had orientation, where we met a bunch of the people living in the orphanage whose grounds we’re staying on.  Some (or most) of these aren’t actually orphans—everyone staying at this location, in the same compound as the volunteers, has special needs (mostly pretty severe), and a lot of them were given up because their parents didn’t have the resources to care for them.  Their disabilities vary greatly and are both intellectual and physical.  We were just introduced to everyone, and then we went to work our first shift!

We went to a different orphanage, next door to the compound where we are staying.  This program is run by Catholic nuns and houses children from birth to about age 7.  I was assigned to the second-youngest group—basically kids from crawling to about age 3.  There were only 4 of them, and 2 volunteers assigned to it, so we each got to supervise two children.  The most fascinating thing to me was the way each child had its own unique personality, even at such a young age.  They couldn’t even speak yet, but there was still Couma, who wanted to be the boss, Kimberly, who is almost always smiling, Manuel, who wanted to connect to everyone, and Erika, who just wanted to be held.  (Which I’m fine with.  I could hold babies for hours and not get bored.)

But something struck me as I was working with them.  I noticed that Erika had earrings in—the little baby ones that you can get at Claire’s in the US.  And the nuns wouldn’t have given her the piercings—I’m sure that earrings are far out of their budget.  So it means that this child’s parents took pride in their daughter, did something to make her a little more beautiful, and then had to give her up.  This child has suffered more than I likely ever will, all before she learned to speak.  She was loved, and she had to lose that.  She is still loved, but now it’s by shifts of teenagers in Ecuador for a few weeks and overworked nuns.  There’s so much sorrow in the world, and I don’t know if anything anyone can do will ever be able to ameliorate it. 

To end on a happier note—this evening, we went to yet another orphanage that OSSO works with—this one for mostly girls, with a few of their brothers.  Beforehand, we looked up translations of Disney songs in Spanish, and one of my roommates has a ukulele, so the kids and we sang half of the songs from Frozen.  The little girls were so excited, and it was lovely to see their faces light up.  This trip was just plain fun—it also involved double-dutch jump rope and a game that was sort of like tennis (if there was no net, the ball was a balloon, and the rackets were made of paper plates and sticks.  And all rules were disregarded).

Anyway, I’m very happy to be here, and the first day was wonderful.  (And I’m very sorry about depriving you of photos of cute little kids, but we legally can’t take pictures of the orphans.  Just imagine.)

En Route--Quito

Hi Everyone!

I'm writing to you from the other half of the world!  (Maybe.  The equator runs through the city I'm in, but I'm not quite sure if it's north or south of the airport.)  I'm officially in Ecuador now, in the airport in Quito, the capital.  My flight to Cuenca, where the orphanage is, leaves soon.

My passport stamp!

The ride was nice--I got a window seat, so I was able to cocoon against the window and sleep for a bit. Plus, they gave me my first taste of what I think is Ecuadorean food onboard--spicy chicken with sautéed bell peppers and this excellent rice-beans-corn combination.  (I'm sorry.  My culinary writing leaves much to be desired.)

All I've seen so far of Ecuador is the airport, but it's quite nice.  It was actually chilly getting off the plane, which was very exciting, coming from a Southern California summer.  I made it through customs--I got this very cool stamp on my passport indicating that I am, in fact, in Ecuador and entered in Quito.

I'e met some more interesting people--one man in line in front of me at customs lives in the same town as the University of Oregon and hosts international students when they first arrive to teach them about American life.  He was here to attend the wedding of one of the students he formerly hosted, and told me that he had volunteered in orphanages in the past as well--he helped do the bookkeeping for one in Honduras, so he didn't work much with the kids.  And there were more French people (it's a little odd how many I've met so far.  But it's possible that my ears are just more attuned to hear a language that I can sort of understand amongst all the Spanish.)  They were a few years older than me, here to backpack.  I also saw a trio of Ecuadorean girls, probably around 13 or so, giggling and taking duck-face selfies.  I couldn't understand what they were talking about, but judging by the tone of their voices and volume of their laughter, I was like 90% certain that they were discussing guys.  Some things apparently don't change based on culture (I've had...more than a few conversations like that with my friends.)

My bed tonight.  It was roughly as comfortable
as it looks.  It's an adventure!

Sleeping tonight has been interesting.  I couldn't print my boarding pass at home, so I had to go to the ticket counter after customs, where they informed me that they wouldn't be able to print it there until 4 AM (it was around 12:30 AM at the time.)  So I had to find a place to sleep for a few hours.  However, in general, the safest places in airports are well-lit and have plenty of people milling around.  That doesn't always make it easy to sleep.  Nonetheless, I found a bench that I could curl up on, with my feet on my suitcase, my arm through my backpack strap, and my purse tucked under my sweatshirt.  Everything survived, and at 4 AM, I went to the ticket counter.  There was a line, but no attendant.  Fortunately, one showed up around 4:30, and I am officially ticketed and through security.  (Security took approximately 2 minutes.  It was awesome.)  I'll be in seat 13, which seems auspicious--it's the date of my birthday.

Thank you so much for reading all my ramblings about airports!  In my next post, you'll hopefully get to hear about my experience channeling my inner Eliza Hamilton (bonus points if you get the reference.  Double bonus points if you immediately know the song that I'm referring to.)  Love you all!

En Route--Houston

So I'm writing to you guys from...lovely Houston, TX.  You could feel the heat and humidity just walking in the enclosed space from plane to terminal.  I finished flight one to get to Cuenca (there's three in total.  I'm leaving in about an hour for Quito, the capital of Ecuador, then continue on tomorrow morning for the short flight to Cuenca, where the orphanages are.)

I've calmed down a bit (probably partially because I didn't sleep much last night), which is good, but fortunately I'm still really excited.  Like I would go skip around the terminal, but that is somewhat frowned upon in polite society, and international airports aren't really the best place to try out socially unacceptable behavior.

This morning had a few goofs--apparently some LAX doors only open in or out, but aren't labeled, so I started out by almost walking straight into the glass sliding door.  I then proceeded to flag some security thing with my toiletries, so they had to inspect my shampoo (it passed.)  And then I proceeded to drop my plastic bin thing (empty) on some random guy's foot.  Fortunately, he was very nice about it.  As always, I am the epitome of grace.

I've met some interesting people so far.  Everyone I've talked to has been a native French speaker--the man I sat next to on the plane to Houston was from the south of France, and I waited in the airport next to two friends from Quebec.  (All the vocabulary from AP French paid off--I was able to describe comment j'irai faire du voluntariat avec les enfants abandonnés.  I hope all that was grammatically correct.)

Anyway, we're taking off soon.  The next time you hear from me, I will officially be in a different hemisphere!

Here's to adventure!

The Night Before

Hi Guys!

So, I'm leaving for Ecuador in roughly 12 hours.  I should probably be sleeping, but I am much too excited to do that now.  Maybe writing this will calm me down a bit, as pacing around my bedroom while listening to the Hey Jude on repeat didn't really seem to do much.  This seems slightly more productive.  (Although now Spotify has gone to River by Joni Mitchell.  Christmasy sorrow is not quite the mood I was looking for.  If anyone has any good international volunteering music--or good music in general, or just random opinions that they want to say--feel free to comment below.)

I'm leaving tomorrow to volunteer with a program called Orphanage Support Service Organization, which sends people to Cuenca, Ecuador, and Chiang Mai, Thailand to volunteer in orphanages.  They work with a lot of special needs kids, as well as kids from a variety of different backgrounds--the ultimate goal is usually reunification with the families or adoption, so the orphanage is just a stopping place.  I've always loved children, but I've only really been in charge of four or so at a time, so it will definitely be different, being in charge of 20 or so, especially when we don't speak the same language.  (The online program I tried informed me that I was 1% fluent in Spanish, but it had me translate incredibly useful phrases such as "I am a horse," which I'm sure will be more helpful than "where is the bathroom?" or "what is your name?").  Hopefully, I'll be able to get by using English, French (hey, at least it's a Romance language), and charades.

My packing--all in carry-on luggage.  

Everything is officially packed (except for my list of stuff that I still need tonight that I'll put in my bag in the morning before I leave.)  I have 2 of these last-minute lists taped to my door, plus my boarding pass, and I've repacked twice in the past few days, so hopefully I'll be good.

A few pages of notes for the trip

I'm sort of really nervous, but also incredibly excited.  Google has informed me that there is no real word for joyful nervous excitement.  Anticipation?  Enthusiasm?  Neither of those are quite right.  The English language really needs to work on that, because to a milder extent, that's how I feel almost all the time.  Just now it's on overdrive.  But it's a good feeling, closer to that's-a-cute-guy-over-there than holy-crap-that's-a-raccoon (for those of you who don't know, raccoons are evil.)

Anyway, I'm very excited for tomorrow.  I've never blogged before, so I hope I'm doing this right--I'll have better stories when I'm actually in Ecuador.  I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post, because the internet is very slow at the orphanage, but I'll try to keep you guys updated.

Thanks so much for reading!  Wish me luck!

Taylor

Last-minute emergency to-do list