Goodbye is the Saddest Word Photos

As our volunteer experience in Ecuador has come to a close we are sad to say 

goodbye to so many wonderful and amazing individuals. The following photos cover 

our last two weeks of volunteering and our time in Quito.

 

 

One of the children was wearing this hat when they arrived at the market, it quickly found a new owner and was put to good use!

Maoro using Tyler as his personal jungle gym. It is hard to believe that just 2 weeks earlier Maoro would sit behind the post hiding and playing by himself all day long.

After discovering the most amazing pizza restaurant in Quito, Don Matteo, we arranged a pizza party for all of the volunteers. Matteo and Vanessa closed the restaurant for us and we had the most amazing time!

Matteo is hard at work making the pizzas for the 17 of us.

I think that I might have found a new career. I already love pizza so why not?!

Our most amazing and wonderful hosts and our adoptive Ecuatalian family! Vanessa and Matteo.

After the pizza party we stayed behind to chat and Vanessa's daughter, Debby, does nails as a hobby so naturally Mary had hers done!

Guagua's de pan or bread babies, are a tradition in Ecuador leading up to the celebration of Día de Difuntos, Day of the Dead. The custom is to take these guagua's de pan to the graves of their ancestors, have a picnic, and leave some food for their ancestors. Typically the guagua de pan will have a marmalade filling.

We had the opportunity to make guagua's de pan in the volunteer house. Mary made a caterpillar...

So naturally Tyler made a dinosaur!

The day finally arrived when the cast could come off and it just so happens that it was on Halloween. It was a very exciting day!

Please don't cut my arm... When the doctor pulled out the saw to cut off the cast Mary and I looked at each other like oh boy, that is a big saw... Fortunately it only rotated the blade back and forth and did not actually spin, so it was more like getting tickled!

After 4 weeks in Ecuador with lots of sun and a cast I had an awesome tan line!

There are so many kids at the markets and many of them just want to be loved. This is a job that Mary excelled at!

Everyone has their own talents and Tyler loves to make balloon animals. This was a bit difficult with a cast but he managed with some help. During our last week of volunteering he made balloon animals for every child as their prize for coming to spend the day with UBECI. Normally the children received a sticker.

At one of the markets he had to make about 30 balloon animals.

Handing out the balloon animals.

When it is a volunteer's last week the kids come up and give hugs on their last day at the specific market. There were four volunteers leaving this week including us.

The UBECI staff. From left to right: Mary, Javier, Dani, Jessica, Katy, and Tyler. We loved working with these amazing individuals over the previous 8 weeks and getting to know each of them on a personal basis.

During our last week of volunteering we had the opportunity to take a night tour of the city for 2 hours. It was an amazing experience to see the city at night. It felt like we were in a whole different city. This is the Basilica.

The church of San Francisco. This is the church that Cantuña was commissioned to build and he tricked the Devil in to building it for him in one night. See a previous post for more details about this story.

The Panecillo statue of the Virgin Mary that towers over Quito.

From the Panecillo looking out on north Quito.

From the Panecillo looking out on south Quito.

Standing beneath the giant statue. It is remarkable how it was built. It is actually made up of lots of smaller pieces of aluminum instead of being carved out of one giant rock.

On Día de Difuntos the crypt beneath the Basilica is opened to the public, this only happens once or twice a year and is where the past presidents of Ecuador are buried.

Inside the crypt of the presidents, there is a row on each side of marble sarcophagi and lining the back walls are marble urns for those that choose to be cremated.

There were only 5 sarcophagi in the crypt that actually had bodies and names.

Well there were 5 until this guy escaped...

On the back wall of the crypt in the middle there was this amazing statue of the broken tomb and Christ rising up out of it.

On the other side of the Basilica is the public cemetery, also underground, although this is much larger and has space for around 2000 individuals to be buried there. On Día de Difuntos there were lots of people selling flowers and other things that people could put on the tombs of their loved ones.

The tombs under the Basilica seem to go on forever. It is interesting how other cultures make room to bury their dead when they do not have lots of open land like we are accustomed to in the cemeteries of the USA.

Each space where someone is buried has a little bit of room in front in order for the family to decorate it. There are also many places where there is still room for a new body to be buried like in the top and bottom left corners.

At the end of the hallway there was this room where only cremated bodies are buried.

Our last goodbye... Veronica, the cook for the volunteer house. Every meal was amazing!