A Strange Weekend

This weekend was weird. A little insightful. A little refreshing, but mostly weird.

This is my last weekend here in Ecuador, and I decided that before I left I had to go and bid fare well to the beautiful Sierra. Quito and Cuenca are both in the Sierra (the part of the country with the Andes mountains), and I enjoyed both of the trips I took there. My travel book informed me that the second best market city (behind Otavalo) is Riobamba, just 3 and a half hours south of Quito, and a perilous 6 hour climb from Guayaquil. Fortunately, a group of Canadian students that are also here for the summer were planning to go there this weekend as well. I was going for the market and to see mountains, they were going to visit some Canadian friends who owned an orphanage in Riobamba.

That´s how I found myself eating, sleeping, and (of course) playing with 80-some children this weekend. It was not at all how I expected to spend my Friday and Saturday.

The orphanage itself still boggles my mind. I was expecting a couple days of cold showers and minimal supplies. I came prepared with a roll of toilet paper (always a good thing to pack in Ecuador) and a bar of soap. Instead, I found a renovated hacienda-style house situated on a good 3 acres of land. The house had hot water, enough rooms to fit 4 extra visitors, a trampoline, a soccer field, and a wall-sized collection of DVD´s. It was like a tiny slice of North America situated in this little corner of the Andes.

The Canadians that ran the place were an interesting couple. They had come to Ecuador 13 years before after God had called to them and told them to start a children´s home in a country in which they knew nothing about starting a children´s home. They have 12 children (2 of whom are adopted, 5 who live in the home, and 1 who is running his own children´s home in the Amazon). They and all of their children speak Spanish, with a blatant Canadian accent thrown into the mix, and enough "ay"´s to give away where they´re from. With the help of a good bit of coffee, they seem to be loving where they are and what they´re doing.

As far as what I did with my time in Riobamba, there was a lot of walking, and a few market trips. We watched a rock climbing competition and a skateboarding competition. Also, we saw this amazing fresh foods market where you could literally smell the change in produce of each section as you walked through it. I could have taken pictures there all day, but the looks you get for taking a close-up of a pile of tomatoes make you only want to take one. Sometimes two, if you´re feeling daring.

The scenery was beautiful; a perfect way to say goodbye to the Andes. The city itself had a lot of colonial architecture to it, and a strange kind of community feel that I´m not used to getting in Guayaquil.