I CAN GET MAIL HERE!

So today I was sitting at lunch, and the doorbell rang and when Arlene came back she was holding 8 letters for me! Apparently the address that has been going around, which is quite possibly the most intricate address in existence, is for a PO box, and the family here doesn´t ever check the PO box, they have someone come and bring the mail when it´s full....clearly they don´t ever receive anything important via mail to that address... The point is tho, that unless it´s time sensitive, you CAN send me mail...talk to my mom (or apparently my brother...but i HIGHLY doubt he still has my address) in order to get the address, because it´s completely too long to type out, and the letters are all the way upstairs and I really don´t want to get up right now... BUT thank you to Mom and Dad, Lorraine and Glen, Cindy and Keith, Granny Jean, Krissy, the Shedlocks, Uncle Dave and Aunt Karen, and Grandma for the letters you guys have sent, it was really really good to read all of them today!

A couple weeks ago we had our WorldTeach Mid-service retreat, which was at a little private beach owned by the hostal we all stayed at, south of Puerto Lopez. This was an awesome experience, the hostal was more like a resort, with a pool, pool tables, ping pong (yes, we played beer pong AGAIN!!!), a bar, and instead of rooms it had three person cabins where we stayed. And the cabins had HOT SHOWERS! (for those of you who don´t know, there is no hot running water in Machala, or at least not in my house, so showers here are a bit like easing into the pool, where i first let the water touch my feet, then my legs, then my thighs....stop thinking about me naked...and then after mentally steeling myself for the cold....I jump under the water, moving my arms really fast over my chest with the idea that the friction will warm me up just a bit....i´m not sure it works really well) And they had mosquito nets!! (of course, Andrew kind of defeated the purpose by allowing a mosquito into the "safe area" before sealing himself in....he woke up the next morning with approx. 1500 bites) And I was paired with Andrew and Craig...which was one of the best pairings I could ask for...

The retreat was great because we got to see almost everyone, most of whom I hadn´t seen since the end of orientation in September. Out of the 40 volunteers, 37 came to the retreat (one had to leave for good because of medical problems, one was still in the states because of another medical reason, but she should be back any week now, and one was sick with pneumonia...ironically he lives in Vilcabamba, where legend has it everyone lives there until they´re 120, it´s supposed to be the healthiest city in Ecuador and he´s been sick more than anyone else in our group...) out of those 37, I had only seen 16 of them since coming to live in Machala, so it was really good to see everyone back in one group. Especially good was getting the mandudes back together, and we did very manly things, including hitting rocks with bamboo poles, playing football and ultimate frisbee, and making sexist jokes and belittling the weaker gender.

The retreat consisted of a couple classes on how to improve, as most of us are going into or are already in our second cycle of classes, other teaching strategies and suggestions for better and more fun activities. The most important thing about these classes was that they didn´t take up much time...and therefore we got to hang out at the beach, or in the pool, or do other things that were fun in our free time.

We also had the first annual WorldTeach olympics. We were divided up into our phone tree teams, meaning I was with the Coastal group, later dubbed "the monos" (there´s a pretty intense rivalry inbetween the Sierra and the Coast, and the Sierrans call the Costeños "monos", or monkeys, and the Sierrans are then referred to themselves as "longos", or hares...I dont know, dont ask.) The events were as follows: First event, the sandal on head relay, where everyone had to run down and back with their sandal on their head without touching it with their hands. This event was won by the Monos. The second event was "find a butterfly paper clip buried in the sand. This was a stupid event and was won by a different, insignificant team. The third event was the wheelbarrow race....which was a wheelbarrow race down the sand, but it was like 100 yards. This event was won by Quito North, the team who had Andrew, a ex wrestler, who did this for practice everyday for years....the competition was slightly tipped in his favor... The fourth event was "make the highest human pyramid"....we had the tallest guys, and the tallest girl BY AT LEAST 6 INCHES, and she stood on our shoulders....but somehow we ended up losing this event to the Quito North team...there were some seriously shaky measuring methods used here, and we feel still that we were robbed. The fifth event was the "who can hold the most ocean water in their mouth. Craig was a champ at this, and while everyone else was trying to kneel down in the ocean and daintily splash water into their mouths, Craig backflopped into the ocean, and came up with one huge mouthful....and the monos won this one by a landslide. The next event was the leapfrog relay, and lets just say we were robbed again and Quito North stole yet another event from us with the help of seriously faulty judging. Finally, we had to make a cheer, and ours was awesome but because we (I) were (was) obnoxious, no one gave us the points we deserved. We came a close second to the Quito North group in the final standings, but all us monos know we deserved gold...

Other than that, there was card playing, good food, good drink, one heck of a campfire where I may have surpassed my waterfall badass picture with one of me posing in front of the fire, and a lot a lot a lot of laughs. Mid Service was a complete success!

I´ll talk about Mom and Grandma´s visit in the next entry, but I´m in the process of uploading more pictures, so feel free to check out the photobucket site: and I´ll have up to 50 new pictures added tonight!

http://s390.photobucket.com/albums/oo350/brycechadwick/

Check them out and enjoy!