yes, i made it out alive.

hey all! so sorry i haven't updated this since i got back from ecuador. i kind of hit the ground running and went to work the next day...where i actually had to *work* (huh??) on stuff that had kind of piled up. i am currently sort of sick of sharing about my trip, because everyone i know has been asking me about it, of course with varying levels of interest and time available to spend listening to my stories. but i know YOU all want to hear a little more than my now-standard response "it was a great experience" that i've reserved for the polite coworkers that know i was away for two weeks and are vaguely suspicious that it was "some kind of religious thing." hehe.

so, the day after my last post, we packed up *some* of our stuff...make that *one backpack* for the entire next week...and made the several-hour trip to our camp in Shell. on the way, we stopped at a catholic church in a town called Banos. the church was pretty much built as a shrine to Mary. Banos is built at the bottom of an active volcano (whose retarded idea was this?!?) and the church contained giant murals recounting stories of how Mary saved faithful catholics from the fury of the eruptions. the church was, of course, very beautiful and ornate in the tradition of historic catholicism. but it was very sad and a little surprising to see the bold idolatry that is the south american catholic church. in their view, mary is the way to heaven, and Christ doesn't really factor in (so his death didn't really accomplish anything). it's north american catholicism that has been watered down (disguised?) to make Mary far less prominent or essential to salvation. i haven't decided if that's good or bad. i mean by all means, get further away from misplaced faith. but i think a lot of the watered-down stuff is very misleading. the point of Christianity is simply Christ's death and resurrection. Mary doesn't significantly factor into the equation, apart from the fact that her virginity means she didn't contribute her own sinful nature to her son. that's an important fact, but it has nothing to do with how we can know God!

so after that philosophically stimulating little excursion (and a wonderful lunch of street-purchased croissants and cheese) we drove another hour or so to our camp near Shell. it is an empty summer camp which is carved out of the jungle and let me tell you, there were some STRANGE noises coming from the trees at night! the camp was incredibly beautiful with several buildings and an outdoor basketball/futbol court. mountains rose up on all sides and they were almost always shrouded in fog (due to the high humidity). we were there for two days, relaxing and just having fun. we visited a jungle-animal wildlife refuge and some other cool places, including a much-hyped but somewhat-disappointing waterfall which took a long rainforest hike to find, but oh well, the hike was beautiful. :)

then we drove up, up, up to a high mountain village called Colta. this was the national-geographic-esque part of our trip. the people there are farmers and the village consisted chiefly of mud huts. everywhere there were women in bright shawls, men in striped ponchos, and herds of pigs, cows and chickens. some little kids even carried littler babies on their backs. we did a lot of work here, but one afternoon (after a delicious (or not) lunch of guinea pig and Coca-cola) we visited an after-school program for about 300 local kids. this was amazing. at first the kids (probably ages 5-12) just kind of stared at us, our white skin and colorful hair. but once they saw that we were friendly, they mobbed us! it was just plain fun...we played duck duck goose, futbol, and the most chaotic game of freeze tag EVER. then they all lined up and we sang to them, and they sang to us. that afternoon was definitely one of the highlights of the entire trip.

after our time in Colta, we visited Mount Chimborazo. now, they tell me that if you measure from the center of the earth (as opposed to from sea level), Chimbo is actually the highest mountain in the world. measured from sea level, it's only marginally smaller than Everest. it took us a couple of days, but we made it to the top! ok not really, but we did hike up to over 16,000 feet and we still had a giant mountaintop towering above us. while we were here, tourists kept asking to take pictures with us! or more like they'd walk over and put their arms around us. i think the only english words they knew were "pretty" and "charming" and "thank you". we definitely laughed about that for a long time.

i don't really know how to wrap this up, except to say we were all very blessed by the trip, particularly the hospitality and generosity of the local people that we stayed with. denise and i are going to get some gifts for our family...we already got matching "MOM" and "DAD" Nebraska mugs for Mauricio and Amanda. what a cool family to stay with!

well that's all for now...i have a lot more to say but due to the perceived short attention span of most of my readers, i am generally trying to cut back on the length of my posts. at least the non-crucial ones. :) thanks for reading, friends.