Family Fun!

For the past five days it has not stopped raining!  We were praying for rain, but not this much rain!  There had not been rain in a really long time and a water shortage was beginning to start; therefore we truly are thankful for all of the rain that we have received.  They were starting to turn off the water for a few hours a day before all of this rain came!  Hopefully it will clear up soon.  I think all of us girls need some sun to brighten our days!  We are getting so close to being home that some of us are feeling a little homesick…so if you could keep us all in your prayers that would be wonderful!

This past weekend we didn’t have any trips that were planned for us, so we decided to do our own stuff.  On Saturday morning we took a trip to CEDEI School which is where we teach everyday.  We are in the process of working on our beautification project.  All of us are so busy with teaching and taking classes everyday that we really haven’t had a lot of extra time to work on this huge project; therefore we came in on Saturday morning to try and get on track.  The first step in this project has been the painting portion.  We are painting the boring white walls to make them colorful.  The theme that we are using is from the children’s book Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom.  The walls will be painted a solid color and then we are going to paint the palm tree and letters from the alphabet on top of the solid color.  I think it will look awesome, once we are finished!  I will be sure to post before and after pictures at the end of our trip.

At this point in the day it was pouring outside, but we didn’t just want to sit around our house for the rest of the day.  We worked on homework for a part of the day and then walked to the market to go shopping!  I think our parents thought we were crazy for going shopping in the pouring rain!  It ended up being super fun!  We were originally planning on going on a Cuenca tour, but with the rain we decided not to go.  Trying to take pictures in the pouring rain would not work out very well; plus for the tour we have to sit on the top of a double-decker bus that doesn’t have a cover.  It’s kind of weird that we want to go on a tour of Cuenca now, rather than at the beginning of our trip.  Well, we did receive a short tour right as we arrived here, but all of us are starting to realize that we don’t have very many pictures of Cuenca and we thought that a tour would be a great opportunity for this.  We’re going to try and go on one this weekend! 

After shopping all the girls came back to our house and we hung out for a little bit.  For dinner, we ended up going to the pizza place that’s right in our neighborhood.  It was delicious!  The rest of the night was relaxing…we didn’t do too much and headed to bed nice and early!

On Sunday we had an awesome day with our family!  First, they took us to a zoo that was about 20 minutes away.  I love the zoo at home, so I was super pumped.  The zoo here wasn’t anything like the zoo at home, but it was still a lot of fun.  We saw a lot of neat animals! 

This was the entrance sign for the zoo!



The ostriches were absolutely hilarious!  I thought that they were going to nip at me, but our Dad had food to feed them so they didn’t.  My favorite animals that we saw at the zoo were the monkeys.  They were so cute!  There was one that was out of the cage.  At first he was kind of hiding behind the fence, but as soon as he saw that our sister had a bowl of food he came right out.  I have never been so close to a monkey!  After the monkey was finished eating a banana that our sister had given him he sat back down on the fence.  All of a sudden he jumped on Laura and quickly jumped off…I’m guessing because of her loud scream.  I guess these monkeys are known for looking in people’s pockets for food; it probably thought Laura had something to eat in her pocket.  Here are some pictures of the various animals that we saw at the zoo!



The pretty peacock spread its beautiful feathers!





As we entered the zoo, our dad bought Maria Rosa a bowl
that was filled with different foods to feed the animals.
There were bunnies roaming free around the zoo...
they were so cute!





MONKEYS!!



This is the little monkey who was out of the cage,
he's pretending to be shy!



Once he saw the bowl of food that our sister
had, he was out from behind the fence in
seconds!



We had to walk out on this bridge order
to see penguins & some other birds...
it was sooooo wobbly!



Penguins!



 

These were some other birds that were underneath
the bridge; our guide told us that they were
from the Galapagos islands & you
can tell because of their blue feet!



TURTLE!



Crocodile...yikes!!



There were a ton of colorful birds that we saw
at the zoo; this is a colorful parrot that was
chatting with our dad...he was pretty
good at getting them to repeat
after him!



After the zoo, our family took us to a well-known waterfall.  This was actually a waterfall that we had looked into going to see at the travel agency, but we decided not to do this trip because it’s the dry season here right now.  As a result, the water level in many areas is very low which causes the waterfalls to not have very much water.  It was very thoughtful that our family took us here anyways!  We walked up a ton of stairs to reach the waterfall!  It was still beautiful and I couldn’t believe how tall it was!  We actually saw people swimming in it!  If I would have brought extra clothes I would have for sure taken a quick dip!  Our Dad was sure to explain how much further the waterfall usually comes out, but because of the low water level it didn’t reach the normal point.  I was glad that we were able to see the waterfall with our family!



~The steps leading up to the waterfall~



The path that we walked on was very pretty
with a lot of different greens! 



~The bottom half of the waterfall~




I tried to take a picture that showed how tall
the waterfall was, but I couldn't fit it all in...
so here is what I was able to capture!


For lunch our family took us to a secluded hotel.  It was a pretty hotel, but it was definitely in the middle of nowhere.  We took a long dirt road that lead us to the hotel.  It was the bumpiest ride that I have been on since I arrived here…which is hard to believe!  We took the pick-up truck to all of these different excursions!  On our way to the hotel there was a huge hill and an older man at the bottom of the hill.  Our Dad picked him up and gave him a ride!  It was so funny…this little old man was so cute!  He stood up in the back of the truck and pounded on the top when he wanted us to stop so that he could get out!  I wanted to take a picture so bad, but I didn’t end up taking one.  That was a neat little side story that I thought I would share…such a different culture here!  The food that we ate for lunch was actually good!  By the time we were done eating, it had become completely cloudy.  We were literally in the clouds and couldn’t see 20 feet in front of us.  It took us a while to get home, but it was a fun family day and just what we needed!




Here is a glimpse of the restaurant inside of
the hotel!

 I love that our family took us different places!  They are so thoughtful and generous!  Only about 3 more weeks with them!

Love you all,

Aimee