We landed in Ecuador at 12:30 am on July 11th, my 12th birthday. We stayed in Ecuador’s capital, Quito, for a few days before heading into the jungle. It was nice and cool. We rode the 5 ½ hours with Mr. Roberto Davalos, Jr. to the jungle school. The roads here aren’t all asphalt with yellow lines – they’re mostly dirt or gravel. And there’s only seat belt laws for the front seat, so a lot of the time I’m bouncing around in the trunk. Or we take a cabinetta or a bus. And that can be tricky since we don’t speak Spanish.
We are staying in the intern cabin here on the campus until our house is done. And the bugs here are Horrible! We are constantly swatting at misquitos and no-see-ums. We are being eaten alive for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We brought mostly shorts and capris, so I’m wearing socks up to my knees and pants every chance I get. But we are still covered in bug bites.
A few days after we got here, a college team came for about a week. We went with them and helped with several VBS programs for the local children. We went to 4 villages. The people here are really poor. The kids were dressed in rags, they take care of their younger siblings, but worse – their parents don’t care where they are. Abigail played hopscotch with a few girls, Dad threw a football with some boys, mom was talking with some of the women from the tribe. One little girl who was about 7 couldn’t play because of the infant she was carrying in a sling. The girl let me hold her baby sister while she played with her friends. And I knew I wanted to see all of them in heaven someday.
To get to that village we had to ride in a huge canoe for 30 minutes. I didn’t feel especialy safe when the boat stopped in the middle of the Napo river and huge snakes swam around us.
The market in Tena is where we get most of our stuff. They sell fruits, vegtables, clothes, shoes, fish, and this is gross – grubs. They fry them up and eat them.
We’ve also been to some waterfalls. It was a 1 hour hike through the jungle with the team. It was pretty amazing.
The Misahualli square is awesome,too. There are adorable white faced capuchian monkeys running around everywhere. We also took a 2 day trip to Banos. It was great! Nice and cool, the mountains were amazing. The only bad part was the bus driver almost broke our necks and mom threw up.
The new-ness of this jungle is wearing off. Getting used to living here is going to be difficult, and in September jungle school starts. I’ve been home schooled until now, and I’ll be in 7th grade this year in a classroom with girls who are 10 to 15 years old. I’m missing my friends, too. But God’s going to make sure everything turns out fine.
Blessings,
Madeline Studebaker