Here's one for you: three sick college students walk through the streets of Ecuador to try to find a German's house. Unfortunately, this actually isn't a joke.
Let's take it back though....
For the first couple days, we oriented ourselves with life here. One of the interns, Victoria, arrived just twelve hours after I did. The other, Emma, had been here for two weeks prior, though she had done other work with LGWI. My first night here, we stayed in Quito with Bruce (my 'boss' so to speak), though we didn't get to spend too much time there. When we arrived in Riobamba the afternoon of our second day, we got to meet our host, a wonderful Ecuadorian woman named Ines (she has quite an amazing story), then we got a chance to see our office and the place where we would study Spanish. We found out that we would actually be working with Codeinse, which is a Quichua organization that LGWI is partnered with, which provides us with the connection with the communities we'll be working with.
After taking that night to get unpacked and settled at Ines' we got ready for our first experience with Quichua culture at our community visit the very next day. We actually stopped by two communities, the first was a planned trip. When we arrived, a group of about 20 community members were ready to go, doing whatever work needed to be done. Apparently, when Codeinse shows up in a community for a planned trip, the community drops everything to come out because they so look forward to working with us. The connection that the organization has is exponentially greater than most other groups that offer water systems. Anywho, that community has had a landslide which knocked out their spring and pump system so our team of interns was able to test the water source while Bruce, Ephraim, and Martin (a German missionary working with Codeinse) figured out some other details. Now I'm going to be real, with the mountains we need to climb and the altitude, something as small as getting to the spring is enough to leave one panting.
Fast forward to the next day, Friday, we had a half day at the office before we had to head to Spanish training. Guys, we had SIX HOURS of training. 6 hours every Friday, 2 on Monday. It's enough to fry anyone's mind. But that's neither here or there, we managed to figure out better hours. Most of the weekend after was spent relaxing, getting better acquainted with our host and Riobamba in general. We had a chance to cook for Ines and her mother. We didn't know the week that we would have after that, so it was good that we rested.
On Tuesday, we were to head up to the community of San Bartolo to conduct topographic surveys in order to design a water system to replace the deteriorating one they have had these past 36 years. Monday was spent learning how to use the equipment, which was a wonderful reminder. Surveying is such a fun task. The next day, however, I awoke to rain. We headed up to the community. Cold, wet, yet excited. We spent two days trying to get all the points, lugging the equipment up and down incredibly steep hills. Thankfully, many of the community members helped with the equipment, so we never had to take multiple trips. It was on that first night that one of the other interns started feeling sick. The second day, it was significantly worse, and she went back to Riobamba to try to rest. By the next day, the second intern was feeling unwell as we worked with the collected data in the office. Later that night, I started feeling unwell, but we made our way to Martin's house where we invited to have dinner with him and his family. That is a connection that will grow into a wonderful one, that much is sure.
That brings us to today. June 16th, Friday afternoon. I awoke with a fever, though not one especially bad. The other two, however are a little worse with their fevers and dizziness or stomach problems. Please pray for us as we head into this weekend, that God would grant us rest for proper recuperation. We managed to make some amazing connections in both the communities and here in Riobamba, pray that we would be able to grow those.
There are a lot of finer details that are in there somewhere. If you're interested in hearing more about those, let me know and I'll try to write those up!