so far...

This has been a completely overwhelming few weeks so far here. Stacie and I are tagteaming what we did, so that you (who are both of our friends) don´t have to read it twice.

Also, these keyboards are strange. If i wanted to make a normal smily face :) ...like that, my fingers would instantly go to Ñ). Which doens´t look like anything at all. ...sorry. random thought.

At the moment we are in Riobamba. We came here because we were tired of Baños. Baños is a wonderful, uber touristy town with plenty of things to do if you want to spend a lot of money. Which we didn´t. So we spent a lot of time hiking around, we went on a 40+ km bike ride with these two guys we met who were biking from Vancouver CA to Tiera del Fuego. They were great. We also went into the hotspring pools, which was great. So relazing and amazing feeling.

One of the best things so far about these travels has been the people that we have met. To be honest, we havn´t met a lot of locals, mainly because of the extreme language barrier that exists right now, but we have met a lot of other travelers. We traveled a few days with this couple from Isreal that were great. (Check stacie´s blog stacieduvall.blogspot.com for those adventures) We stayed with them at this isreali hostel in Baños one night and ended up having an amazing conversation with an isreali guy (my guess would be around 20) and this woman from Chile who taught South American woman´s literature in Memphis at a university. Thi Isreali guy Gil was talking about the war in Iraq and how it was a good thing that America went in there and this woman from Chile (never caught her name) got incredibly fired up about how America was behind so many overthrows of democratic governments to dictatorships becaus ethey had leftist leanings. I really can´t do the conversation justice, but it once again reminded me of just how big the world is and how other contries view what our country has done. And how quickly everyone is to ask me what I think. As if I am any authority on anything.

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Also, the protest that are going on rigt now are making things a little difficult to get around. Right now, there is a television on behind me that is broadcasting pictures of the protests. I doubt they will be well adverstized in the staes, but there are a lot of road blocks up and it makes it a little difficult to get from A to B. They are all pertty peaceful, just a lot of tires burning, people in the streets, and rocks in the road. And LOTS of police everywhere in riot gear. But don´t worry (mom) everyone is really nice, and the one blockade that we walked through was totally fine. :) Ecuador has sold the water rights to the indigenous peoples and is trying to make them pay for the water they have always had and has lowered waiges for teachers. So they are both protesting. All over the country.

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So now stacie and I are in this waiting period. We have three weeks until we start working in this indigenous community up in the Andes and not a lot to do. Right now we are headed down to Cuenca and going to finally do some language school. That will be good. It is hard getting by on tiny phrases and lots of ¨No comprende¨all the time. :) I know that we can both use thoughts and prayers about how we are doing emotionally and physically. We are both tired of being ¨tourists¨and want to be doing something. Pray that we can find joy and excitment in just doing what we are doing as well as solidify everything for the future.