Maldonado

Hello!

We are in Maldondo, Uruguay right now, currently enjoying a home all to ourselves. We are here working with a group of families (that are here with a missionary organization called Avant) to help them with an English camp. The house that we are staying in belongs to a couple and their baby daughter who are from the USA and have gone back for three months to visit. It is truly a beautiful place. It has a thatched roof and high ceilings and a washing machine (!!!) and a kitchen and a double bed! Oh the wonders of it!

The camp we are helping with is just running in the evenings this week, so our days are free for swimming in the ocean and cycling around the city and whatever else we please. The families here have been so hospitable and welcomed us in for many meals and much fun. The English camp has also provided us with lots of laughs. We are responsible for running some welcome games at the beginning of the evening, and then we each lead a small group for the English lesson. Teaching English to a group of children under the age of eight without knowing their language has posed to be a challenge for me. I am enjoying it thoroughly though and often find myself standing up and acting things out, much to the amusement of the kids. We are just teaching simple things, like colours and numbers and fruits and elementary "get to know you" questions. Nathan has a group of kids that is a bit older and even though they do not speak much English they are keen and attentive. He seems to be very entertained by their antics and encouraged by their positive attitudes.

Our last post was sent from La Paloma, which is just up the coast from here, and we ended up staying their longer than expected. We left La Paloma for Punta del Diablo (another beach town, renowned for being laid back and full of hippies) on Sunday the 30th, planning to leave there on the second. We ended up camping outside of the hostel to save some cash, but were unfortunately kept up all night by men singing along to great Uruguayan beats at the top of their lungs... We decided to try and brave another night because we enjoyed our day walking through the ruins and forests of a Parque Nacional Santa Teresa. On the eve of our second night as we were preparing our dinner we noticed an unnerving amount of beetles scuttling around the kitchen. Then, as we were eating our dinner, a cockroach appeared on my left shoulder. Needless to say, I lost my appetite. Nathan (secretly delighted because then there was more for him to eat) found that a troupe of at least five small black beetles had infiltrated his last burrito. Then we both lost our appetites, and left promptly the next morning to head back to La Paloma and the care of Fernando at Ghitano's Hostel. We only spent one more night there before heading to Maldonado, but it was well worth the bus ride (which was not quite two hours and cost only three dollars and fifty cents each) to have one more night in our favorite hostel.

Now we are here in Maldonado until our departure on Friday morning on a bus headed for Montevideo, where we will transfer to a bus to Salto, where we will transfer to a bus to Concordia, where we will transfer to a bus to Puerto Iguazu. That will be a bit of an adventure because we cannot pre-book the third and fourth buses, but that is the most 'direct' way to get to Iguazu (save going through Brazil, which we aren't doing because we do not have the neccesary visas).

Thank you all for caring about us. We love many of you and miss many of you and think of many of you often. And to everyone who has emailed and kept us up to date with life back in Canada: Thanks!

Big love,

Chloe (and Nathan)