Lots of Americans in Manabi

The new PC trainees came to visit Manabi for a tech trip. So, needless to say, 15-20 tall, white people walking around the towns drew a lot of attention.
The PC group started their trip at Kristen´s site where we all put on a health fair in the high school. We worked with over 900 students teaching them about nutrition, healthy life styles and HIV/Aids prevention. The kids were fun to work with but drained all of our energy by the end of the day.Health Fair team

Adorable Stacia...good PC buddy who is extending her service to stay another year! Yay!
¨Salta por tu corazon!¨
To promote exercise and healthy living, we had several intense jump rope contests.
The activity reminded me of my elementary school days with ¨Jump Rope for Heart.¨
Stacia was the lucky one to explain the activity.
Kristen encouraging the girls to join in on the jump rope contest. The fair was a hit and all our tireless hours of planning the fair paid off.

2nd group of Americans visit Emaus:

Right when I got back from the States, an American Christian ministry group came out and put on a medical brigade in my site. It was really rewarding for my community. Lets just say, I had lots of translating to do.
After the brigade, I took them out on the lake for a canoe ride so they could see they beauty of my incredible site. It was nice to have visitors...hint hint. :)
The Medical Brigade in the Elementary School. Some of the people even received new glasses!
Hanging out with Alvin and Maria Belin at the medical brigade...they are some of my favortie neighbor kids

Random photos:

Later in the week, we had a community baile and danced until 4a.m.
¨Don´t worry, Be happy!¨
My friends are taking an English course at the university where they had to learn an English song and perform it in front of the class. After they chose the song ¨Don´t worry, Be happy,¨ I had fun working with them teaching the lyrics and helping with pronounciation. They did such an amazing job. I loved how they decided to dress-up for the performance.

¨In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry you made it double
Don´t worry, be happy.
Don´t worry, be happy.¨

Missing Colorado and the people in it

It was good to be able to get together with so many people while I was in town. Thank you to everyone! Ariana, I'm wishing we would have taken a picture together eating our crepes! And Laura von, we need to a second round of Loaded Questions! Out for drinks with Bidwell and Amanda J. (They teased me for taking this picture but now I have it up in my apartment) Sarah was in town! We went to Amanda's soccer game to cheer her on with the rest of the big crowd . We went prepared with snacks and all. haha Chips and salsa anyone??

The "Big Gig" concert

We danced all day and all night

Love this group of people. Take a look at those delicous pineapple drinks!

Drinks at Amanda's house before Film on the Rocks. (Ashley, I can't wait until you come visit!) Amanda J (everyone seems to be calling you that these days. hehe) and I tried to get Red Rocks in the background of our photo but it didn't work out so well...

Walking around Pearl Street in Boulder

Breakfast with my mom's wonderful nurse friends

Sammy's adorable baby girl

My last night in Denver My Chloe girl wanted to come back to Ecuador with me. (I think she knows that I have a new cat in Ecuador and is jealous....Chloe will always be #1 though)

Side (Sad) note: One of my cats died while I was gone. Kisca was crossing the road and a car got her. :( I was very sad to hear the news.

I still have Anali though, and I love the bagibas out of her.

Amber and Keith's Lovely Wedding

Our journey up to Estes Park at 7a.m. to Amber and Keith's wedding!

(Love the face...couldn't resist)

My stunning date to the wedding

Drew, Sarah B., Me and Amanda waiting for the ceremony to begin...we couldn't have asked for better weather. Love, love, LOVE Colorado Mountains!

Amber and her father.....isn't she lovely

Watching Amber and Keith together inspired the unique kind of joy that comes with being in love. You could see it in their eyes as they recited their vows to one another. Lots of happy tears.

1st dance

Aboslutely gorgeous wedding! Amber and Keith, thanks for letting me be a part of your beautiful day! Many blessings to you both, and may you live happily ever after!

Red, White and Blue

4th of July...this year celebrated in the good ol' US of A. After a long trip back to the United States, including a few detours, I was so happy to arrive in Colorado for the big "Dia de Independencia."

There's nothing like it when, you pass through customs into the U.S., and the officer says "Welcome home."
My mom, dad, sister and I celebrated the 4th at the Rockies game, which couldn't have been better. Hotdogs, baseball, good Colorado beer and extraordinary fireworks....

I couldn't believe how teary eyed I got as I sang the national anthem and looked around the stadium at the hundreds of other people sounding out the words of our great freedom and oppotunties as Americans. I couldn't help but fight off the tears. (hey, it was my first day back) It felt so good to be home. Feeling very patriotic by this point
My incredible family....I'm a lucky girl!Isn't my sister adorable

The hundreds of people that got to lay out on the field for the fireworks show

So much good quality sister time spent on my trip....I couldn't be more thankful for such a fabulous sister
Awesome show!

After the fireworks, I got to meet up with a group of my close friends for a night on the town. It was such a good first day back and an unforgettable 4th of July!

Happy Heart Fundraiser

Sorry for the delay in getting the pictures from the Quinceañera posted. I know I have been talking about this big event for some time now and family and friends were very curious to see how this pink dress princess like party played out.

So without further adue....

My good PC friend Kristen and I decided we needed to do a fundraiser for our Happy Heat program and we decided it would be more fun to plan a fundraiser event than writing grants. So, because celebrating your 15th birthday is such a big event, Quinceanera, and Kristen and I never got to celebrate ours Latin style, we decided it would make a good fundraiser event. I know it doesn't make a lot of sense but it gave us an excuse to throw a party and to dress-up like princesses.

So we made little princess hearts as the party favors to go along with the Happy Heart theme

Kristen, I and the outrageous pink dresses, before the big event

Our host brothers were our little caballeros
After our very formal entrance into the party, we decided to spice things up and make things interesting by doing a coregraphed dance. 50 Cent´s song ¨Hey Shorty, It´s your Birthday¨came on, and the 4 of us whipped out sunglasses

After a picture slideshow of us and all of our friends, Kristen gave a presentation on the Happy Heart program. Instead of gifts for the big birthday bash, we accepted donations, which benefited the project. To get people up and dancing, we started ¨La Hora Loca,¨ where you are required to dance for one hour straight to fun well known dance songs.
Peace Corps girlsSomehow, my face was the only one that got pushed in the cake but it turned into a full fledged cake fight in minutes so no one was left out

Priceless.

I think this might have been the only time I actually got to taste the cake too...lots of dancing! The Quinceanera was such a good time that Kristen and I keep asking ourselves "when can we do it again?!" As if our communities didn't already think we were crazy. TQM Kristen!