Diga Jolie

7-9-11

Back to Tonsupa to visit my good friends before they leave for the States the following week.  We all went to the school to teach English and help out some of the teachers.  The following week the students will take exams (English included) so we helped them prepare for their exams which we will prepare for them and did a review on the whiteboard in the front of the room.  The students paid attention to us as if their grades depended on it (which, they did).  During recess, the students love to take pictures and play “Pogs” (I can’t believe they’re popular here!) In the afternoon, Doc, Mabel and I went to the small clinic which is located inside the school, but no one showed up, so we all just caught up on each other’s lives instead. Before dinner I ran a couple miles barefoot on the beach, which felt great running on the sand with a little bit of water splashing around.  

Saturday morning we woke up to no electricity or water.  It was quite an adventure as we were “roughing it” all day.  We were all thinking that the water would come back on pretty quickly; no such luck.  For lunch, a volunteer from Japan made us homemade Japanese food.  It tasted pretty good since we hadn’t eaten much the whole day.  I liked living simply the whole day with minimal water for brushing our teeth and what not. Some of us went for a run on the beach again while the sun was setting, hoping that we could take showers when we returned.  That didn’t happen either.  Instead, we used buckets of water and bowls to wash our hair outside with our bathing suits on. It’s really cool to see how little water we actually used to wash our whole bodies.  It was a great adventure to live simply the whole day.  At night, we all went out dancing at the beach in Atacames.  Everyone had a great time!

This morning I woke up early to go to the beach.  It was great relaxing and sitting on the beach by myself.  After some time of lying in the hammocks and talking to all the girls, we ate breakfast and were off to a “fiesta”.  It wasn’t really a fiesta; it was an area with about 3 bars that overlooked a river where many people gather on Sundays. It was a very “tranquilo” place with music playing in the background and the 12 of us talking.  Some of us ended up swimming in the river which was fun, but the water was pretty cold.  We all had a lot of fun dancing the afternoon away, with John playing his trumpet to the Spanish music. 

He is so talented and everyone enjoyed his addition! We ended the night back at the compound where we ate chicken and rice for dinner and played “Cuarenta” and “Quita Montón” (card games).