Reeds in Salinas

Holo todos--

We finished our time at the orphanage on Sunday, amidst tears. The hardest part for me was to see Sam say one last goodbye to Andres, and then leave the room crying. I am sure it was not good for the kids there, either, to see us sad. They are such sweet kids, and I am sure it is really hard for them to see volunteers come and go. We have heard a lot of adoption talk in the past few weeks now that adoptions from the US are open again--hopefully someone will come and take them ¨home¨. I wish we were the ones taking Andres home, but we are too old. You can only be 45 years older than the child you want to adopt. I am sure there is some family who will eventually get Andres, or Carlos, or Ana, or any one of the others, and be so, so happy.

There was a new girl at the orphanage this week. Her mother left her at a church on Sunday. and the only thing the nuns knew was that her mother was very sick. We called her Juliana for a few days, until we found out her name is Nataly. I think she is about a year old. She was scared the first few days, but seems to be doing better.

We also said goodbye to the special kids. I just tucked them in and gave them a kiss. I didn´t go to the older special kids sala. I hear Martin there rips up the pictures of the old volunteers to help him deal with the fact they are gone. I know if was hard for Rachel to say goodbye. My favorite, Eddy, couldn´t do that, because he is too handicapped. He gave me one of his awesome Eddy smiles as I tucked him in.

It has been a great experience for us, to actually get to go to Latin America and do something so worthwhile. It has also been an opportunity, to get to know these kids.

We traveled yesterday from Cuenca to Guayaquil by bus, to save money. The scenery was beautiful on those windy, high Andean mountain roads, and I got a great view with my head outside the bus window hurling. I feel bad--the bus definitely needs washed.

From Guayaquil we took another bus to Salinas, on the coast. It is one of the ¨resort¨towns in Ecuador. It reminds me of Mazatlan in Mexico. We are just staying here today, then back to Guayaquil tomorrow, to hopefully see a few things there before we go home Friday. The bus trip here was not so bad, because the country is flat, and the roads not windy. We did have a really obnoxious Chinese war movie in the bus that we tried hard to ignore. They must like violent army movies here in Ecuador--on the first bus ride they played Cheyenne¨¨ with Bruce Willis in it. It was easy to avoid the words, since they were in Spanish, but it was hard to ignore all the screaming and gunfire, especially from the second movie--those Chinese filmmakers like big guns and lots of gore.

Our hotel here is nicer than some, so this can be a ¨vacation¨and does have an awesome view of the ocean, like Mazatlan. We have been out of the beach enjoying the sand and the water and the zillions of salespeople strolling by. We bought a ¨whalewatching¨tour this afternoon for a good price, so I better go, to take Dramamine and get ready for the tour.

Hasta luego,

Shelly