A Day in my Life

Well, I have another update half written but today decided that that update could wait a little longer. I decided to just share with you what I did today. Today was a fairly typical day for me, I hope this post helps give you an idea of the many little defeats and triumphs that make up a day for me. So without further delay I now present, "A Day in the Life of Risa Heatwole."

6:30am- alarm goes off and I think to myself, "Ugh I have to get up and do homework and write a lesson plan for later today!" After deciding that my homework wasn't that critical I decided to snooze my alarm for about 20 minutes. I woke up feeling much more refreshed after my 20 extra minutes of sleep. Normally I would head straight for the shower but this morning I decided to take a little time to read my Bible in bed. During my time here in Ecuador I have found myself keep coming back to Isaiah 33:2 "O Lord, be gracious to us; we long for you. Be our strength every morning, our salvation in time of distress." As I have struggled to learn the language I find myself in a large need for grace and knowing the amount of work I needed to get done in the next 2 days and how little time I had, this once again was my prayer.

8:45am-After showering, working on homework, and coming up with a lesson plan, I made my way to the breakfast table where I was greated by a bowl of bananas and papaya, a cup of instant coffee, two tortillas de trego, one tortilla de maiz, my mom, and my brother.

9:20- I am headed out the door wondering how even when I plan on leaving my house a little early I am running a little late. I catch my two buses to school and take the time along the way to marvel at the beauty of this place I am living! Today was a very clear day meaning there was a spectacular view of two snow capped volcanoes (Cotapaxi and Cayambe) on my way to school.

9:50 am- Yes! I arrived to campus 10 minutes before class so I will have just enough time to print off my paper for my class. The paper was actually due on Monday and I had emailed my prof my paper but she said she would like a hard copy and I could give it to her on Wed. Tuesday (yesterday) I took my original paper to my Spanish tutor and spent my whole time correcting my 4 pages of Spanish writing. Lets just say by the fourth page I was pretty sure whatever language I had been speaking surely couldn't be Spanish because of all the mistakes there were! So today I printed a copy of my original and of my corrected version and took it to my teacher. The original because that is what I had done on Monday and the corrected one because... well it was a lot better and a lot easier to read! After all that work I put into correcting my paper my teacher didn't even take the corrected version! Talk about a feeling of defeat as I handed that paper to my professor that I know was just full of mistakes.

11:00 am- 2:00 pm- Cooking class... cook and eat... a good class all in all although I did manage to get a small chastisement because I forgot to wear closed toed shoes this morning.

2:30 pm- Catch the bus to Lumbisi where I teach English. As I walk down the street to the school I am gradually joined by more and more of my students on their way to class.

3:00 pm- Class begins. The kids were really good today. They were paying attention and were both involved and excited about the activities I had planned. Towards the end of class I needed to take a phone call so I had another volunteer watch the class as I stepped outside. As I walked out the door I saw two small boys maybe about 5 years old each having a fist fight in the street. I yelled for them to stop as I ran towards them. As I was making sure the boy losing the fight was ok the other boy ran away. I walked the one boy to his house and talked briefly with his mom before returning to the school. We now enter "Recreo" this includes time for homework help, arts and crafts, sports, boardgames, puzzle, and general playing. Today for me it meant pushing kids on swings, getting chased and then tickled by a bunch of kids and then laying in the grass looking for animals in the clouds with the kids, as well as hanging up some string in the classroom where I can now hang up the kids' work with clothes pins.

5:00 pm- Walk some of the kids home, some of the kids walk me to the bus stop. The bus only leaves every 15 minutes and just as we were getting close the bus was pulling out so we (another volunteer and I) had to run for the bus... I am glad to say that we successfully caught the bus. On the way home as I went over all the many things I need to get done (including updating this!) in the next two days I looked out the window and saw the sun setting behind the Andean Mountains. My breath was taken away by the majesty of the view, what a mighty God I serve!

6:00 pm- Arrive home just as some of my cousins are arriving. As I get ready to start my mound of homework my little cousin asks if I can help her with her homework... I helped my cousin until dinner. During dinner I struggle to concentrate on the conversation and using decent Spanish grammar as I had a headache. After dinner, feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the homework I have yet to do, I holed myself up in my room and started working on minimizing my mountain of work to a hill.

Now here I am at 11:00 pm with my to do list somewhere between mountain and hill size and I find myself saying Lord, Thank you for being gracious to me today, Thank you for being my strength this morning, my salvation during times of distress today! Lord, Tomorrow be gracious to me: I long for you. Be my strength tomorrow morning, my salvation in times of distress!.

FAMILY VISIT! ....and the president is kidnapped

Well this blog is a long time in coming but here it is. The end of September and beginning of October were filled with action here in Ecuador. My brother and Sister in law, Dano and Tara, came to visit me for a week. They were planning on arriving on Tuesday however due to complications they weren't able to arrive until Wednesday afternoon. It is a good thing they arrived when they did because on Thursday September 30 transportation in the country became a bit crazy. Thursday morning we heard on the news that the police were holding a protest and none of them were going to work. A bill had just been passed that would prohibit the police from getting bonuses and make it harder to receive raises. We also heard the president give a rousing address to the police. Without much more thought we headed to the University. I was going to show Dano and Tara the University as well as take them with me when I went to teach English. Well my nice tidy plans for the day changed drastically! After being at the University for about an hour or so we heard that the protest had gotten a bit out of hand and the police had kidnapped the president! National students were told to go home while international students were not allowed to leave for another hour or two. Because there was no police presence there was some looting taking place, a couple banks were robbed, people were burning tires in the middle of the roads shutting down a lot of transportation and the airports had closed. After assessing the situation the international program director told us all to go straight home and stay there until further notice. (The buses we would need to get to our homes were still running fine.) Dano, Tara, and I returned to our house where we watched the news for a majority of the evening. My house is about a 20 or 30 minute bus ride from where the main action was taking place. In the evening the Military sent a team in to rescue the president from the Police. There was about a 20 minute gun battle (which my director could hear from his house!) which resulted in a successful rescue of President Correa. The following day there was no school but otherwise things were back to normal in Quito.

Now for a few photos of my time with Dano and Tara...



Dano and I singing hymns behind the doghouse on my roof overlooking quito :) It was so good to have someone to sing hymns with... my church here doesn't sing hymns.

Another friend Sean Fabling joined us for a couple days. While all three where here I took them to Mitad del mundo where we had a gorgeous view of Cayambe from the equator!



On our way we stopped in Quinche and visited a Cathedral that I had visited on a class trip. It was fun to show them places that I new at least a little bit about. In this Cathedral there is a sculpture of the virgin which is very well known here in Ecuador.



Before Sean arrived Dano, Tara and I took a paseo to Shell, Ecuador. On the way I got to introduce Dano and Tara to Ecuadorian Icecream. With flavors like avacado, Coconut, and rasberry it is hard to go wrong!




While in Shell we visited the Nate Saint Memorial School. In the library/ main gathering room there was a memorial to Nate Saint and the 4 other missionaries working in Shell who were killed in 1956. We also got to see the current planes MAF is flying and talk to one of the mechanics about what the organization is doing currently.



We also had the opportunity to meet and fellowship with current missionaries, the Umbles. Randy Umble in the nephew of Allen Umble who used to attend my church and who was serving in Albania as a missionary at the same time my Grandparents were working there. In the afternoon Randy and his family took us to the dike to cool off a bit! What Fun!