Well I made it!

My flights were great and I just had carry on, so no luggage worries.  Today four different groups arrived from around the US.  So far, I believe I am the only California person.  There are a total of 76 people which will split up into 7 teams.  I am on the purple team.  In total we will be visiting 29 locations and distributing about 5000 shoe boxes.  Its now 1am here and I am exhausted but also so pumped up about being here I doubt if I am going to get any sleep.

First Thoughts on Ecuador

Clean:

• I have been on mission trips to Mexico before but this doesn’t look like the Mexico I know.  For one, it is cleaner than Seattle.  The stores look like upscale Tijuana stores, so you get the Mexico feel but the streets don’t have an ounce of trash.  Even the airport is spotless.  The airport by the way looks just like the airport in India.

The People:

• Height:  For one, the indigenous people are lucky if they get 5ft tall.  I took a picture with a cute older couple in the airport (photo below).  It doesn’t look like it but I am actually bending down a couple of inches!  Finally a place where my 5’8″ is tall!
• Eyes: I don’t know how many of you have paid attention to the eye color of the actors on Smallville, but most of the actors have grey/blue eyes.  I am sure it adds to the mystique of the show.  Well, besides the dark brown eye color you would expect to see in people who live in this region, many also have very cool grey/blue eyes.

Tomorrow:

• Active Volcano: They said there is an active volcano that I can see from my hotel room in the morning!  Sweet!
• The Distributions:  We are heading to La Victoria and Dulce Regufio (which sounds like it translates to Sweet Refugies, but doubt it).  I was hoping for a tribal destination but it looks like the purple team will be working mainly in the outskirts of Quito.  At La Victoria I believe we will help work on the facility that helps serve the community in the area in addition to pass out the shoe boxes to the kids.  At Sweet Regufio I am thinking we are doing some type of program for the kids.  I brought some magic just in case.