Well . . .

What can we say? We came we saw and we left within 72 hours. San Jose de Minas that is. Without assigning blame to anyone let me just say that it did not work out as we had hoped. Part of it may be that Ecuador has a friendly culture that leads people to make promises that they cannot really keep and paint things in positive light.

We arrived in Minas and were greeted by our contact person. We spent three nights in a rectory with a priest and his various family members and helpers. We spent a few hours babysitting some adorable children. When it came down to it at the end of the day we just were not comfortable staying there for a month. It became apparent that we would not be doing much more than going to different pre-school type places each day to become human jungle gyms. Our accomidations left much to be desired and we had to come to the tough decsion that simply gutting it out for four weeks would benefit no one.

Of course we explained all of this to our hosts and agreed that there were no hard feelings.

So, with a lesson learned we have decided to move on and start seeing more of this country and this continent. We have not been deterred to pursue other volunteer possibilities, but we will make sure that we choose wisely next time.

An important final note to those of you that were sending mail to the address that we had posted previously: If you have not sent it yet please hold off on sending any mail for now as we likely will not be near Quito in the coming weeks. If you already sent something, let us know and we will make sure that we track it down - Oh and thanks!

-Jim