24DEC
Good morning! We left Quito on Friday evening and took an overnight bus to Guayaquil (the largest city in Ecuador that is along the coast of the Pacific). We arrived in Guayaquil at 4:20 am and got a bus to the surfing/hippy/beach town of Montanita, where we will be staying for 2 weeks to do language school.
We are settled into language school and enjoying the beach and warm weather. There are mostly college students here for break doing language school. We have enjoyed getting to know many of them from Germany, Sweden, London, and 2 girls from Michigan and Texas. Lille and Eva are a hit amongst the college girls and enjoy listening to all their accents.
Isaiah is taking surfing lessons with a guy from New Zealand, Michael. Michael is the surfing intern at the school and has taken a liking to Isaiah’s zest for life and fearlessness in the water. Michael has offered to take Isaiah out to “the big waves” and show him some tricks. Isaiah is thrilled and loving every minute of his surfing experience….me not so much.
Don is enjoying his time talking with the locals and getting us all settled in to a new routine for 2 weeks, as well as planning our next legs of the trip.
I am reminded of how much I value cleanliness. The cabanas we are staying at are convenient to the school, affordable for 2 weeks, and have a great community feel. But they are definately not the Marriott. I like clean…a lot. BUT I am getting over it a little and borrowed the cleaning ladies bucket yesterday to work on a few details on my own. It is better today. :). And my Spanish is getting so much better! It has only been a day of class so far, but I am remembering more than I thought I would. The teacher did laugh at me yeatsterday when she was looking for examples of words that start with every letter. I gave a food word on every single letter. I have my priorities: food and clean.
We are all a little homesick as Christmas approaches. The news of lots of snow at home actually made us all want to be there…snuggled in by the fire, eating Christmas cookies, watching the Packers, visiting with family. We each expressed our homesickness and now are looking for ways to make a new memory for this Christmas. Please pray with us that we would be able to shine the light of Jesus and the hope He brings. We plan to invite a few of the students out for pizza tonight and read the Christmas story with them. A new tradition of sharing Jesus with strangers on the beach with pizza isn’t so bad.