Dia de las Mujeres

Apparently, tomorrow is international day of the woman.  It is a day to celebrate women and all that they do.  Our host mother already received a rose for the special day.  I hope that it means women get the day off from all their chores and hard work.  As I wrote a while back in a previous post, women here in Ecuador work exceptionally hard.  I don't know anyone that celebrates this holiday in the USA, but I got to thinking it would be nice if we did.  I know Mother's day is just around the corner and we just had Valentine's day which is really a holiday for women if we are honest with ourselves, but hear me out here.  There are many wonderful women out there that are single and/or do not have children, but nonetheless they are wonderful women who deserve to be celebrated.  We all know someone who is a great friend, a hard worker and a woman deserving of celebrating who does not have a significant other to celebrate Valentine's Day with and who does not have children to celebrate Mother's Day with.  I think this day could become a day to celebrate those women.  So tomorrow think about calling a single female friend or telling a wonderful woman just how wonderful she is.  We should not need to be told that we are wonderful by others, but we all also know it feels wonderful to be told we are doing a good job or we are a good person.  This idea is going to be another thing that I am going to do during Lent.  I am adding to my lenten promise to thank people for the wonderful things they do that seem mundane and celebrate the wonderful people I come in contact with every day.  Here's to the wonderful women in my life.  I love you all.

Siblings

Today was another good day at the daycare.  Lucas learned to skip which he has been really working hard at completing and Melayna continues to make good progress with potty training.  They are really sweet to watch on the playground when the daycare kids are eating because they are all by themselves and Lucas helps Melayna with everything and she wants to do everything he does.  He is so gentle with her and he really watches out for her.  This morning on the bus he kept hugging her and told her she looked pretty.  He is so sensitive.  Melayna reciprocates the affection most of the time too.  She is always wanting to know where her Lucas is and she runs up and hugs him after he makes a goal when playing soccer.  I think she is going to have a hard time when Lucas goes back to school because it will have almost been a year since she spent a lot of time apart from him.  Lucas will miss her too, but he will be busy with school.  Seeing the two of them together makes me happy. I hope it stays that way.  I see my niece and nephew who are older than my two and how well they still get along and it makes me hopeful that Lucas and Melayna will be able to do the same.  Seeing Lucas  and Melayna today made me think about my siblings.  We have such an awesome relationship now.  We used to fight all the time, my brother and I especially, but when I went away to college he wrote to me and ever since then we have gotten along much better.  I shared a room with my one sister, and I have to say we have a special relationship because of it.  We are the closest in age too so that may be why we are so close, but either way I love her dearly.  Matt and I have even lived with her and her husband two different times without any problems.  My oldest sister always looked out for me and takes special care of me all of the time. She even offered to carry a child for me if I couldn't.  I am so blessed by the siblings I was given and then to make things even better, I was blessed with wonderful in-laws.  My family and my in-laws would do anything for Matt and me and for Matt and I's children without a second thought.  One of my sister-in-laws even cried when we left for Ecuador because we have become so close.  I miss them all more than they know and thank God they are in my life.  If you are near to one of them when you read this give them a hug from me and remember to hug the wonderful people in your life.

My Little Shepherds

Today being Ash Wednesday, I started thinking about what we could do as a family to prepare ourselves for the miracle of Easter.  Lucas and Melayna showed me today that we don't have to do anything big to prepare ourselves.  They hugged every kid that cried, helped kids up that had fallen, said they were sorry when they ran into another child, let each other go first on things and served others before themselves.  They really showed me that it is the little things that matter to God.  He wants us to be shepherds watching over his sheep in our daily lives.  As the Gospel said today, God also wants us to do the things that won't be noticed.  The kids had no idea I was watching them today and yet they still did everything they could to make other feel good today.  So as Lent begins, I vow to be like my little shepherd examples and do the little things and do them in private where people will not notice.  I think it was a great start to Lent.

Back to Work

After a long weekend of carnival, work will resume tomorrow for Ecuador. Including us, most people used this day as a “recovery day”. Shopping was busier today than usual and we only saw a few people that threatened with water or foam spray. We spent a laid back afternoon playing, but in general, it was a slow day.

I will part ways from Bethany and the kids again tomorrow for work. This week will be a bit different as I will be participating in a medical brigade from Montana State University. Tomorrow I will be seeing patients at Centro Medico. Patients that have reserved an appointment will be seen first and then I will see patients that are referred from staff and students in the MSU brigade. I am fairly positive that I will be the only PT involved with the brigade. This is my first medical mission brigade so I am excited to see the dynamics and am hoping to incorporate something similar at South Alabama in the future. Wednesday night I will probably go to the weekly bible study with the Oviedos. Although, I am thinking that the bible study might be cancelled this week because of Ash Wednesday services.

Thursday will be a regular home visit day with Mercedes. I decided to break away from the brigade for one day because there are a lot of home visits to make in Burneo. We hope to continue our momentum from previous weeks. Last week, we noted significant progress on a middle aged patient with a rare form of muscular dystrophy and an elderly patient with balance and gait impairments. We also observed a few patients who admitted doing little over the last month and had no improvement to show. This is a little deflating but the trends in home exercise compliance seem similar to patients in the States. Thursday night I am hoping for a good meal with the brigade from MSU.

Friday, I will be back with the brigade at another small community in Santo Domingo. The set up will be similar to Wednesday, except that it will be in a different section of Santo Domingo.  I will try to catch a bus around 430 or 5 to head back to Quito on Friday night as usual.

Pray that the brigade is a success both for the patients and students involved.

Botanical Garden

Today we decided to go to the Botanical Garden in Quito.  It was really beautiful.  My camera does not do it justice.  We saw orchids of every size and shape that were beautiful.  They had all kinds of cacti, Bonzi trees and all sorts of Amazonian plants.  They had a kids tree house area and all kinds of ponds with fish.  There was also a huge garden of foods, a garden for tactile input and a huge rose garden.  The roses smelled so wonderful we had to smell as many as we could reach.  After the gardens, we had a snack in the park that was packed with people spraying one another and throwing each other in the pond and headed home.  I made one last dinner on our own and we had chicken, carrots and roasted potatoes.  It was really good considering I had to cook it in the skillet instead of the oven and I had never done that before.  It was a hit and both kids thanked me for making it before and after dinner and Lucas said the carrots were "Muy bien!"  I love to see them using their Spanish more.  This evening they were as polite as I have even seen them and I love to see that too.  You wonder as a parent how many times you have to remind them to say please and thank you and then you have a day like today where they do it freely and it gives you hope they really will be polite kids.  We plan to take it easy tomorrow and go to our park that is close and do some shopping for new shoes.  It should be another good day.

Matt's new hairdo

Carnivore plant

A Melayna leaf

A Lucas leaf

Check out the spikes all the way up the trunk!

Lucas wanted to take a picture of us

Give me five!

Really cool orchids

Tiny orchids as small as an eraser on a pencil

This orchid looked like a bird in flight

Carnival in Old Town

Well we had a very exciting day.  After church we decided to walk around in Old Town Quito and see what was going on.  We found a big party!  There were people everywhere and music and dancing.  There were people walking around on stilts and faces painted everywhere.  People had foam and water guns and you never knew when you would get sprayed.  Melayna hated it and Lucas loved it. Some people even got egged.  It was a lot of fun and we luckily never got egged.  Matt bought Lucas some spray and he had a blast with it.  I think he took more than he dished out and an older man (obviously a tourist) asked to take Lucas' picture with foam all over him.  He had a huge smile in the picture too which was sweet.  We walked around for a few hours and looked at some churches and checked out the place where my dad and brother are staying when they come to visit.  The area looks really nice with lots of little coffee shops, ice cream places and restaurants.  They are really close to la Rhonda too which will be a lot of fun.  We walked on la Rhonda and stopped in a little place for a slice of pizza and then headed home for a little more lunch and a rest.  When we got home there was a party starting in the courtyard beside ours.  They had people in traditional clothing dancing, playing drums, singing and chanting.  They are still out there partying.  It has been a really great day!

A little band

Foam fight

Lucas got it good

Dancers in traditional dresses

A drum band

La Rhonda

A cut out Lucas insisted he needed a picture with

Another cool band

Dad and David's hotel

Not clear, but this is our next door neighbor's party

 

The House to Ourselves

To start the day off we went to another park called Carolina.  It was really big and had about thirty small dirt or paved soccer fields that had pick up games going on on most of them.  They had tennis courts and basketball and volleyball courts, a playground, two little areas of carnival type rides, paddle boats, running, biking and walking trails and even a Botanical garden.  We did not visit the garden, but we will probably this coming week.  We had fun in the park and took a picnic lunch.  It was very pleasant.  After the park we came back to the house for the evening.  This weekend because of Carnival, we have the host family's house to ourselves.  We were told we could use the television and the couch and we had access to the whole kitchen to cook whatever we wanted.  The way the arrangement works here is that we paid a certain amount and that includes the rooms and three meals a day.  We try to eat what is cooked all the time since we already paid for it and we don't have access to a stove or microwave in our place.  Well this weekend for three days our host family is on vacation at the beach so we have free access to cook whatever we want.  Well let me tell you the first thing I did this morning was look to see what food was in there to see what I could cook.  I have said in the past that I wanted a cook to make dinner for me, but I will change that now to also say I want a cook to cook what I ask for every night.  Anyway, we sauteed peppers and onions, had hearty thick sausage, made a salad with all kinds of vegetables and had steamed broccoli.  You would have thought we made the most extravagant dinner ever the way we all ate.  It was so good to have control of what we ate and to eat a good amount of veggies.  We thoroughly enjoyed our dinner.  Both kids asked for seconds and thirds.  We ended the night with milk and cookies while watching Wall E on a real couch that we all fit on.  It was a great first day with our new freedom and we look forward to the next few days.

Our little Superhero!

Big hug!

Making dinner on our own

A real couch!

Mas por favor

Dinner

Cookies and milk while watching a movie