Vamos a la playa (in Ecuador)

 

La playa!



Our sand "castle"/mountain.

Same, Esmeraldas, Ecuador
(that's Sah-may, not pronounced "same")
We were invited last weekend to go with the MAP staff to their 6th annual national conference for health promoters. When we were told it was at the beach, nothing more needed to be said! We constantly sang Meg's favorite song, "vamos a la playa" for the days leading up to our trip. Meg, Amanda, Emily and I drove with Giovanni and Holger in the van. They decided it would be best if we left Quito and drove through the night - so we left Thursday at 2:30am! I had slept from about 10pm - 2am and then was up with Giovanni while he drove us through the super twisty roads to the coast. We arrived to Esmeraldas around 10am and napped on the beach while we waited for other promoters to arrive. The conference started that evening, so we attended the sessions and played some ice-breaker games. The next day we spent a lot more time on the beach - skipping some of the conference and then going back during the alotted free time. We swam, sunned, built a sand castle, and had a very brief mud fight. It was so fun and relaxing! We also had an intercultural exchange that night - so the promoters from different areas either showed off a dance, sang a song, or did some other kind of presentation and we sang some worship songs with Meg playing guitar. We attempted to go to a local church and perform in order to gather more of an audiance for the event. We arrived, everyone was dressed and ready to go and a crowd was gathering, but then it started pouring rain! They hadn't had rain in months! So we all ran back to the bus we had ridden over, getting soaked in the process. We sat waiting on the bus for further instruction about what we were going to do. I just remember thinking, as some of the people started singing songs: never would I have imagine getting to this place; stranded soaking wet, on a bus full of ecuadorians, in who-knows-where Ecuador. We ended up just having the event back at the retreat center/camp where we were staying. Sunday we traveled all day to get back to Quito - leaving about 2:30pm (just the opposite of driving there) we got back to the city around 10pm.

One of two pictures that Marcelo actually took of us - he stood there with the camera for about 5 minutes.