I will survive!

Here we are in Ecuador. We have had so many great experiences already. The kids started school on September 6th. The community that we live in is called Quichinche. It is about 10-15 minutes up the hill from Otavalo. This picture is from a monument at the equator, which we passed on the way to Otavalo.The family that we live with is so wonderful. They have 5 kids and 3 of their kids go to the same school as ours. We share meals with them and enjoy their hospitality and kindness. The family is indigenous so they all have long hair, even the males, and the girls wear a beautiful shirt and skirt.
At the school the kids wear jeans and white shirts with the school sweater or the indigenous clothing. Our girls decided it would be fun to wear the same clothes as the family we live with. We bought all the necessary items and after the first week of school they decided that jeans were more comfortable.
We bumped into the missionaries on our first day in Otavalo and went to a baptism that same night for a boy in our ward. We have enjoyed attending church the first two Sundays.
Audrey celebrated her birthday on the 11th with the boy in the family we live with and it was a lot of fun. We ate guinea pig for the first time and it was actually really good.
The name of the family we stay with is Lopez Perugachi (Lopez is the father's last name and Perugachi is the mother's). Susana and Carlos are the parents, Monica is in high school and Josue, Adela, and Ruth go to elementary school, and Anahi stays home with her Mom.

We were given two rooms for our family with our own entrance. It is a rough cinder block building with unfinished wood holding up the tile roof. There are rough cement floors and a window in each room. We have a piece of material hanging on a string for curtains. We bought beds that we will leave with the family after our year and we also bought some woven mats for the floors. There is no heat and the windows are not completely sealed, needless to say it is cold every night. We are at 8,500 ft altitude so the weather is hot when the sun shines and cool when cloudy, and very cold at night.These pictures are the inside and outside of our little place.


We are getting used to the cold nights, we all have llama wool hats to sleep in and loads of blankets on all of our beds. We get up pretty early so we have to get dressed fast and warm up our clothes. The bathroom is in a separate little building and we helped them install a water heater so we can take hot showers.Here is Amy trying to stay warm. The first couple of nights we arrived it was raining and pretty cold. After a couple of days we had some sunny days, where we all put on shorts and flipflops. Still the nights are almost always pretty cold. Still working on getting the kids up in the morning at 6:15 to get to school by 7:00.


I have loads of pictures, they should help get the idea of our set up.
Outside the house there is a small vegetable garden in the back. Two pigs in a cinder block pen, chickens that sleep under a piece of plastic on the top of a tall stump. There are guinea pigs in another pen that the kids love to hold along with the baby chicks that hatched last week. There is a big open courtyard where the kids play soccer and laundry hangs to dry. Next to the bathroom is a big cement sink with the only running water for the house, we do laundry there, wash dishes, wash hands, and brush teeth. Here is the bathroom and the laundry/sink/clothes washing place.

I have a Spanish class now so Beau will post some pictures. It took a while to upload these few pics (slow connection I guess), so I'll post more later.

Please send responses and e-mails, we miss all of our friends and family dearly!