Bye beach, bye swim suit, bye tan, bye sun...I will miss you!

Well I am in Quito and flying back to the states tomorrow! Hard to leave the Galapagos but excited to be home soon. I will miss it--I have really come to love that Island. Here are some things I will miss:

Walking by the sleepy sea lions on my way to school! Kind of challenging to navigate through sometimes..especially at night! And yes..I had to walk on the beach to get to school everyday.



Batidos from Fruit Bowl, our favorite resturant with the nicest Galapaganian man. And fresh fruit!! I LOVE mangos!!

My school! Why can't Wartburg be located across from the ocean..?
Janna and Lacey! Team Athlete. A bunch of surfers visiting also started calling us team Fit because they would see us running all over town. haha I will miss them so much!! Janna is already home in North Carolina and I am missing her!

Marine Iguanas--they are my favorite animal in the Galapagos. Janna and Lace even got me a stuffed marine iguana for my birthday!
Swimming. This is the boat I swam all the way to! I did it!! Janna was a great swim instructor. I am going to keep practicing in the pool @ the W.
SUNSETS! Some beautiful sunsets here and always nice weather to enjoy them in. I loved watching the sun slowly sink into the ocean--they are always a great way to end the day.

Feliz Navidad!!

Merry Christmas from Ecuador! Despite being an island community, the Galapagos knew how to celebrate Navidad. It is still hard to get in the Christmas spirit without snow though. Lace, Janna, and I on our last night in Quito. Janna left a few hours after this :(

A cactus covered in Christmas lights--no evergreens here!!

A Christmas tree made out of recycled pop bottles on the Malecon (the main tourist/board walk type area that follows the ocean and has the port)

Mi casa y mi familia en Galapagos

This is my house in the Galapagos--it is the one above the blue house with the green on the side. My window was the big one on the right of the house. Definitely a quaint little house. I have realized it doesn't really matter where you live or the conditions. I was perfectly happy and got by great in my Galapagos despite the amenities I am use to living with!

Here is my host mom and little sister in the Galapagos. They aren't so good at smiling in pictures--or they just don't like me. Take your pick. I loved my family! They were always so sweet to me and very generous. I gave them all Wartburg Track and Field clothes before I left. Andrea was so excited to get one of my notebooks as well. Notebooks are hard to come by. She ran off to show her family and then came back to my room with one of her Hello Kitty dolls to give me as a gift. So sweet! My family only spoke Spanish--except my other host sister who was learning. I gave her a whole bunch of my music so she could hear even more English.

This is my shower--I got to shower with a mermaid mural everyday. Pretty sweet huh? I really don't know what I would have done without my cold cold showers in the Galapagos. Always the best thing after working out! This is my roof! I always hung my laundary up to dry on the roof. Notice the proximity to the ocean. I had a great view! Every night I could hear the waves as I went to sleep. I will miss that! No one in Galapagos has a clothes dryer. Definitely much greener to hang dry clothes. But I admit am very excited to throw my clothes in the dryer when I get back!!
Here is a much happier picture of Andrea, my 7 year old sister. She was sad to see me leave..she loved coming into my room, going through all of my stuff and bothering me. Gheese..who would've known what little sisters were like!? haha I actually liked hanging out with Andrea. We would color, draw, and play hopscotch. She loved dancing to my ipod, trying on my clothes, and playing solitare on my computer. May be strange to have peach and quiet at my house.

I'm so thankful for my family in the Galapagos! I plan on sending them a picture of snow--one thing they were fascintated with. As well as wooden houses. My host mom always asked me if my house was cement or wood. She's never seen a house made of wood! Her husband is a captain on a boat and gone for months at a time. A big sacrficie for the family, but it is the culture here in Galapagos. A lot of families are separated for long periods of time. Sad I will probably not see them again!

Volunteering in the Galapagos

I completed over 100 hours of service while in the Galapagos. I absolutely loved it and am so glad I had the opportunity to volunteer while I was there! The firs place I volunteered was CIMEI. This is a photo of Jazmine, the other volunteer from GAIAS and I in front of CIMEI. Our duties included walking Chocolate, the stray dog owned by CIMEI, assisting with surgery, cleaning, and doing some other public campaign things to protect animals and improve knowledge about pets!Chocolate and I! I almost brought her to back the US with me--especially when Jaz and I thought they were going to put her down. (Spanish/English communicationg error) They use Chocolate to take out at night to pick up other stray dogs in the community. I will miss her!!

The second organization I volunteered at was Nueva Era, a non profit group that teaches English as an afterschool program to kids. The man that started the program works with the National Park in Galapagos and orginially was started to teach English to children of fishermen so they would hopefully have another option than fishing in their lives. Overfishing use to be a big environmental problem in Galapagos. I taught English to 5-8 year olds. The first class (above picture) was 5-6 and the second class was 7-8.

I loved hearing the kids yell out "Teecher..Teecher!!" to me when I walked by on the street. They were a joy to work with and are the future of the Galapagos!! I will miss them. I would love to have the opportunity to work at the grassroots level with organizations in Latin America again someday!

Here comes the sun..

I spend a good chunck of every day outside--and you can definitely tell. My hair is BLONDE! I haven't been this blond since I was little. I am also going to come back pretty tan. I'm sure this will disappear soon after entering freezing cold snow. Check out the tanlines below! EEK!

p.s. it is 85 degrees outside right now. Only 4 days left on the islands!!

Snorkeling Pictures

I finally got some pictures of when I went snorkeling the first time to Isla Lobos and Kicker Rock--the director of my volunteer site took them on his Camera. Janna also took some pictures that were actually videos--I included some of those. One is also a video of a shark that my director took at a different time at Kicker Rock! My favorite video is the one of the marine Iguana eating algae on the rocks. Derek and I also took a whole underwater camera full of pictures when he was here--he has the camera in Iowa and is getting it developed! So I will try to put up more before I leave.

I'll keep working on the videos later--I'm headed to the beach for now! Got to try and avoid the Iowa blizzard while I still can :)

Cantando Jenny..Feliz Cumpleanos!!

Well..this was the first year I wore a halter top dress on my birthday and went to the beach! It didn't quite feel like my birthday without all that snow you are getting in Iowa! I'm perfectly happy bringing my 22nd in this way though :) I feel so old! Especially after Lacey wrote "Happy 23rd birthday Jenny!" on my card! haha

I had a great birthday in Galapagos! We started celebrating on Sunday..for Derek right? (Derek's birthday is the day before mine). Lacey, Janna, and I went hiking all afternoon. I got to spend time with my favorite Galapagos animals and enjoyed Tuna and tomato sanduches with Janna! The hike was amazing--we went to La Loberia and just kept going along the shore until we found the best spot to sit on the rocks and watch the waves. Gorgeous!

We had a flashback to earlier years by celebrating my birthday with a sleepover at Lacey's! We started by making banana pancakes, normal pancakes, chocolate chip pancakes, and our favorite "chocobanana" pancakes. They were delicious and Lacey even bought some maple syrup for my birthday--just the start of a sugar-filled 2 days. We also cut up fresh mangos and pineapple for some delicious fruit salads. Being the good boyfriend he is, Derek packed me funfetti cake, frosting, and a jar of chunky peanut butter--only 5 pounds of his luggage (not too much to ask, right?). Well, the peanut butter is long gone, but the cake I saved just for my birthday! We figured we could pull off cooking this processed, sugar-filled box of heaven for my birthday right? Uhh..we kind of failed to take into account the Ecuadorian oven. I guess there is a reason we never have cassoroles or oven baked food here. The oven was one of those with the actually fire on the bottom that apparntly only reached 250 degrees. We decided just to let the cake cook longer = bad plan. I got a nice funfetti cake with a not-so-fun crispy black bottom layer. Oh well! I still ate 1/3 of the cake all by myself mostly for breakfast..haha. I shared some and went running later in the day..don't worry! We kind of lived by the motto of Buddy the Elf (the movie we watched) of the 4 main food groups 1. candy 2. candy corn 3. candy canes and 4. syrup But it was more like 1. funfetti cake 2. funfetti frosting 3. ice cream 4. syrup. Someone please remind me to ease into American food--I felt terrible all morning of my birthday. I was starving by 10:00 and then had a huge sugar crash. haha

My Ecuadorian family was so happy so celebrate my birthday with me! I got hugs from all of them in the morning and a yummy supper of fish, rice, and tomatoes--the usual with watermelon for dessert. My seven year old sister Andrea challenged me to a watermelon eating contest in which I let her win. I was definitely glad they didn't serve me any more cake! My family also gave me a present--that I'm assuming Andrea picked out of a big teddy bear that sings an unidentified song in Spanish. Very thoughtful! I just don't know how I'm going to fit it into my luggage..

I didn't get to go swimming on my bday because it was actually raining! But Janna and I made up for it by going today. My ultimate goal is to swim to the a big boat and back--I need to keep practicing but am actually way better at swimming from when I started. We decided we are going to stretch my birthday out this week--plus I am still awaiting packages from Mom&Dad and Jody&Jake! We are looking forward to going fishing on Saturday and enjoying our last 2 weeks here!