Adventures in Quito, day 2
Our day began with a wonderful breakfast here at the hostel. I believe that Ecuador hot chocolate is the tastiest in the world. When the woman asked us how we’d like our eggs, we didn’t know the Spanish word for scrambled, so we told her in charade form. Imagine that! It’s not easy to do!!! Crazy thing is that she understood.
When we discussed how we wanted to spend our day, we all agreed that we just couldn’t stay away from the orphanage, so we spoke with Rex Head once again and he told us that we could go over to Ramar after noon when everyone had returned from church. We caught a taxi to a grocery store and bought some supplies to take to the children. We bought nail polish to paint the girls nails,
some cute things to put in their hair,
and teething rings and extra nipples for baby bottles.
We also loaded up on bags of potato chips, books and balloons for them.
As soon as the kids at the orphanage arrived, they ran to us and embraced us. They had no idea we were returning and were so surprised and excited.
We returned once again to the playground and got busy painting nails. They especially liked light blue nail polish.
We had an interesting experience when we handed out the books, balloons and hair things…
until that point, all the children were playing so well together, and were loving and compassionate toward each other. As soon as we brought the stuff out they began to fight and argue. Some tried to take more for themselves and didn’t want to share at all, some wanted more than we had and began crying. It made me wish we hadn’t taken anything for them because they respond so much better to love and attention than material things. Since I adopted a child from one of these orphanages about 15 years ago, I know from personal experience that gifts can be too overwhelming and causes anxiety.
We quickly distracted them with more nail painting, soccer and a game of volleyball.
The girls really liked Jude’s camera and took pictures of each other with it.
We read books and played.
Eventually we pried ourselves away, realizing that most likely, none of us would ever see these sweet faces again. That made us sad, but we hope that we have helped them feel important and loved.
We decided that since we’d been on our feet so much, walking the streets of Quito, we were ready to treat ourselves to a movie so we could sit and chill out for a bit. Beauty and the Beast was showing in English, so we bought tickets, grabbed some fast food and settled in to watch the show. It had been so long since we’d been to the movies, and was such a fun treat. The movie was wonderful!
Afterward I brought up our route back to the hostel on WAZE, and we began walking. Aidan was delighted when we came across an epic skate park.
Since we are all easy going and just happy to be here, we stopped for a while and let him have fun.
It was fun watching him with his ninja skills.
After a while it was time to head back, and as we walked it started to rain. We still had a couple miles to go so we hailed a couple taxi’s. It felt amazing to finally take our shoes off, wash up and snuggle down for the night. What another beautiful day.
Adventures of a Tribe 