Day 4 of the race.

Like every other day thus far it started out pretty early. Once again the teams were switched up and I was with Sarah and Marion. Our first challenge was to walk to the bus terminal and take the bus to Portoviejo. It was funny because as we were all walking down the hill towards the terminal, a lady in a jeep honked at us and yelled out the window if we spoke English. She stopped and we walked over and it turns out she is from the States (somewhere in the South) and had heard that there were a bunch of gringos in town and wanted to say hi. We talked with her for a few minutes, telling her what we were doing and such. I just thought it was such a random encounter; but during the race, it was crazy to see how many people we met just on the side of the road who were interested in what we were doing and such. She gave us directions to the bus station and actually drove in that direction so we could follow her and not get lost. When we got there we discovered that we had to wait about an hour and a half for the next bus to Portoviejo. That was fine, we all just sat around there and hung out. There was a vendor right beside the the station who was selling yucca bread. I don't know how this came to be, but Annie went over and he showed her (and let her make) how to make yucca bread. Afterwards she bought some and shared it with the rest of us, and oh my goodness it was delicious! That is one thing I want to learn how to bake before I come home, yucca bread is absolutely amazing! Anyways, aside from the random facts... We eventually got on the 5 hour bus ride to Portoviejo. From there we had to find this restuarant where we were to get into a Inca Link vehicle and travel towards the garabage dump. Once there we had to fill two one-gallon buckets and carry them up the hill and give them to a family - this water was their drinking water for the week. We finally got the water up and then one of us had to share our testimony to the families, the only problem was that it had to be in Spanish. Thankfully Sarah is fluent in Spanish so she gave hers and then we had to sing a song, but again it had to be in Spanish. While we were driving to the dump Sarah quickly taught us “Open the Eyes of My Heart” in Spanish so we sang that; just like every other team. At least it didn’t matter that we all sang the same song, because otherwise we would have had a problem. I really need to learn Spanish; I now know a few worship songs in Spanish from helping my aunt lead worship at the women’s prison yesterday (Wednesday). And now I have to learn six more songs in Spanish for this weekend (I’m helping Percy, the pastor in Portoviejo, lead worship on Sunday).  I’m kind of learning Spanish from learning these worship songs, but I still cannot have a conversation with anyone. I think in a few weeks I want to try leading worship at the prison, and eventually I would like to lead a Bible study (an English Bible study – half the women in prison actually cannot speak Spanish, so every Wednesday there is a Spanish Bible study and an English Bible study. If my Spanish improves dramatically in the next two and half months I would like to try lead, or be a part of, the Spanish Bible study. However, I don’t think I’ll learn that much this summer, but in a few years I hope to be close to fluent. I know I’m getting off topic, but I need to try get caught up with what’s been happening this week, as well as finishing up my blog from the race. Anyways, I’m getting off topic from the race. Once our, well Sarah’s, testimony and song was approved by the judges we got our next clue. One team member had to ride one of the donkeys down the hill and over to where some of the locals were playing soccer; the only way to get our next glue was to score two goals. Oh dear! I can’t play soccer as y’all (thank you my Southern friends! =P) know, and both Sarah and Marion said they couldn’t play, so it was going to be a challenge. We played against two of the locals and then Casey and Renee’s boys, Luke and Jordan. Luke and Jordan were both playing forward, every time they had the ball and I tried to go after it I felt bad because I’m so much bigger than them and I didn’t want to hurt them. Luke is the oldest and in grade five I believe and I want to say the Jordan is in grade three. I didn’t really need to feel bad as they were both better than me anyways. We played for about 10 minutes and then Marion got both of our goals. Our next clue told us to walk around the dump and hand out drinks and oranges. The dump was pretty large, we walked for about 20 or so minutes before we reached the end of it. There were piles of garbage everywhere the people were sorting through looking for anything that could be recycled, the rest was burned. The burning garbage was a horrible smell. It’s crazy because you hear about people working in the dump, but to actually go there and see the condition people work and live in is quite shocking. It was gross walking around through the trash, but I didn’t want to make a big deal about it because we were there to serve those working there. How would they feel if we showed I showed my disgust? While we walked around handing out drinks we stopped and talked to people. Sarah was the only who could talk to them, so Marion and I just stood there and smiled and said what little we could. I would have been nice to do a bit more, because it felt like we weren’t really doing anything by giving them pop and fruit, but I feel like it’s the start of something. We’re (and by we, I mean Ben, Reese, Mandi, Julianne and myself – the only Ecuador interns this summer) heading to Portoviejo tomorrow to work and serve for a few days. Don’t really know what we’ll be doing, but it’d be cool if we could go back and serve more at the dump). We walked back and forth around the dump until everyone had something to drink and something to eat. Then we got our next clue saying that we had to drive to Templo Metropolitana Alianza for our next challenge; we had to paint the fence across the street. Each team was given a section in which we had to paint. The paint we used was a mixture of water and powder; thankfully since it was water-soluble we were able to wash it out of our clothing. I dipped the roller in and went to paint the top of the fence and got a paint bath. I was covered head to toe in white paint; the entire race I made a fool of myself with silly little things like this. Oh well, it was something to laugh about. Once our section was painted to the judges satisfaction we were done for the day. Afterwards we had a brief debrief about our time in the garbage dump and just talked about what we thought about it. Everyone had similar thoughts about the day, how we wish we could have done more than just hand out something to eat/drink. Though we didn’t do much, it was still the start of something. We then went to where we were staying for the night; everyone was split up among some of the congregation. I at first went to Percy’s fiancé’s house to shower and wash up, but then I found out that I would not be staying there. I stayed at this guy, Carlos’s place. Carlos know a little bit of English so we could kind of talk to each other. But after supper and the soccer game, he just dropped me off at his place and his mother doesn’t know English so that was hard. It was just frustrating because I wanted to tell her how grateful I was for opening up her home to me, but I couldn’t say anything. All I could do was smile and say ‘mucho gracias’. It’s something, but I wish I could have said more. Supper was a funny event; we went to this burger joint near the soccer field. They had more options than just hamburgers so I ordered a chicken burger. Unfortunately it came with bacon that no one would let me get rid of. I gave it to someone else, but Matt was quite shocked (him, and Sarah, and Robin, and Julianne, and Reese, and Vicky, etc...) that I had never had bacon before. Needless to say I was forced against my will to have a small bite. I can now say from experience that bacon is absolutely disgusting!! Other than that supper was a lot of fun, just hanging out and playing random games with the people I was sitting near. I know that there’s more that I could possibly write about this day, but I’ve already written a lot. More later!!