It has been a while since we updated... We have been pretty busy in the mean time. For the first couple of weeks, we were working at the children´s hospital here in Quito, but it was not going very well. The hospital had tons of volunteers already, and did not seem to have much of a role for us. We felt more in the way than anything, so we asked if we could switch sites.
Now we work at a foundation called Abuelitos de la Calle (literally Grandparents of the Street). It is a non-profit that opens up every weekday morning and provides food, entertainment, medical, psychological, and social welfare help to elderly homeless people in Quito. They begin by doing excercises and stretches (it´s pretty funny to watch 50 grumbling 4-foot-tall grandmothers comaplain about not wanting to do their excercises) at 8:30. They serve breakfast, which usually consists of bread and some sort of oatmealesque beverage, at 9:00. For the rest of the morning they organize some games and crafts for the abuelitos to do. They do things like draw artwork to hang around the little compound or sew little change purses. The games are pretty simple too, but they really seem to enjoy them. It´s amazing how happy some of the people are considering their failing health and poor economic conditions. Almost all are extremely friendly to us and endearingly refer to us as gringito and gringita. Throughout the morning, more and more abuelitos file in. Many just come for lunch, which is served at 1:00. We have probably been averaging somewhere around 70 or 75 people at lunch. Today we helped in the kitchen all morning to prepare lunch. We probably peeled about 45 pounds of potatoes (without the convenience of a peeler, by the way...) Anyway, we have also been helping with serving lunch, fixing computers, and some other random tasks. So far, it has been a lot of fun. Everyone at the organization really seems passionate about what they do, and we have felt very welcomed and appreciated.
This weekend we went to a little town called Mindo. It is about 2.5 hours west of Quito (a $2.50 bus ride, by the way). It is in the middle of what is called the Cloud Forest, essentially a high elevation rain forest. It is kind of an environmental sanctuary in Quito. There are a number of different organizations working to preserve their forest and wildlife. Because of this, it´s one of the best places to go to experience nature in Ecuador. They claim to have something like 500 different species of birds. It reminded us both of Costa Rica (minus the scorching heat and humidity). It never gets above 80 or below 60 in Mindo... We stayed in a small hostal that had a nice patio with hammocks. It overlooked a part of the small town and the soccer field. The entire town probably only takes about 10 minutes to walk across, so it was quite a nice break from Quito. We saw some beautiful waterfalls just outside the city and visited a butterfly garden with like 50 different varieties of butterflies. Oddly enough, we also ate some of the best pizza we have eaten down here. All that was great, but the highlight of the trip was something different. It was a brownie. Two brownies to be exact...
There is a couple, the wife is American and the husband half Ecuadorian half American, that run a hostal and restaurant in Mindo. They do demonstrations on how they make their own chocolate from beginning to end. They start from the raw guava plant, harvest the beans, roast them, dry them, ferment them, grind them, temper them, and then serve it... I think I am forgetting a few steps in there. Anyway, they make some of the best chocolate we had ever tasted, and they just happened to be finishing up a batch of brownies as we were leaving. It was by far the greatest brownie and ice cream either of us had ever tasted. It even warranted a whole paragraph just to describe it... That´s how good this thing was. There will be pictures posted of said brownie, but just know that no picture does it justice... Well we are being kicked out of the spanish school. They are getting ready to close.
Until next time...
-Ash and Andy
