Arbolito checking in...

Greetings! Here's the latest from Arbolito.

First of all, on Saturday, Ecuador qualified for the World Cup! Now this may not be big news back home, but here it is huge! The whole country was celebrating and everyone is super excited. One reporter on tv said that these 11 players have given happiness to an entire nation that the government, due to its corruptness, never could. The statement is kind of depressing, but everyone here holds a lot of pride in their country and all are very excited about the World Cup. The phrase 'si se pudo' basically means 'We did it!' and it has been all over the place since Saturday.

Saturday was a really big day for me personally too, as I was the caballero in the quinceañera of a friend of mine here. So now to explain what that means, a quinceañera is kind of like a Sweet 16 party for a girl, except here the custom is when a girl turns 15. The parties can be very formal and depending on the part of Latin America. Similar to a wedding, the birthday girl has a caballero (gentleman or date) and can also have damas (similar to bridesmaids) who would have their own caballeros (gentlemen). In this particular party, there were no damas, only the birthday girl and myself (the caballero). This particular quinceañera was fairly informal and my main responsability was to dance the waltz with the birthday girl in front of her family and friends (around 60 people). The dance went off perfectly as did the rest of the party. The whole experience was a blast and the rest of my community was there to share it with me. And in true Latin spirit, the party lasted until about 6:30 the next morning, although I only stayed until about 4:30 (party-pooper).

In other news, construction is underway on our retreat house now and is progressing nicely. Hopefully that should finish up around November in plenty of time for our first retreat group in Arbolito in January. Also, I have started doing some physics tutoring/teaching at the high school I work at. I hold class four hours a week and also try to sit in on some of the students' physics classes, but everything is in Spanish! Teaching in Spanish has been a challenge, but it is definitely helping my language skills. I have also started tutoring some neighborhood friends in math and physics a couple of times a week. In addition, I am still spending time at the Hansen's disease hospital and getting to know lots of people in the neighborhood.

So, if you want to know what the weather here is like, all I can say is it is hot, and only gets hotter. Most days it gets to about 33 °C in the afternoon, roughly 90 °F. The strange part is that it doesn't even seem that hot any more. Currently, we're in the dry season and it hasn't rained once since I've been here. Starting in December, we will enter the rainy season (Winter) where it rains pretty hard every night and the temperature gets even hotter. I've been told that the mud is just out of control, but for now everything is just dusty.

In Semillas de Mostaza news, we've been having record setting days. Last week we had around 90 kids show up for an hour of homework, an hour of recess, and free bread, bananas, and water. Also, October 12th was Dia de la Raza and we marched 18 of our 'semillas' down main street in Duran during the parade. We marched behind the students from the tech school. It all went off super-chevere and the kids had a blast singing and marching down the street.

That's all the news I can think of for now. I hope all is well with you and yours. Peace.

Jason