Older news: A few weekends ago, we decided to venture out of the city limits to a ‘national park’ called Chicáque where there would be fresh air, many hiking trails, some great sites to see! We were excited to venture out with some ECA staff friends. We wrote down the directions to get there and set off. The only problem was the directions were a bit vague with multiple options of how to get to the park. We could take two or three buses, depending on the route we would take. We were not sure where we would catch some of the buses, so we had our two most fluent Spanish speakers ask for directions. The random lady they chose to ask suggested that we take a taxi to a park where the final bus would pick us up. So, we all piled into two taxis and told the drivers the name of the park. The taxis took off fighting the traffic and heading the direction we came from! After a 30 minute taxi ride, with really nice drivers, we finally asked again if they knew were the park was for us to catch the final bus ride. We showed a written name of the ‘national park’ and the name of the intermediate park and his face dropped. He wasn’t headed toward the right park, if fact, he couldn’t take us to either park because both parks are out of city limits and taxi drivers are only allowed to stay within the city limits! Oh no! So the two taxi drivers pulled over to discuss where to drop us off to give us the easiest route to the national park! They even flagged down a public bus for us, talked to the bus driver and told him to tell us where to get off to catch, yet another, bus! We were blessed to have such nice drivers. The taxi ride turned out to be a $8 (per taxi) mistake that took an hour to correct. So, after 3 buses, a taxi ride, and a 45 minute hike, (4 hours of commute) we arrived at the gorgeous Chicáque Park. Now that we have been there and making mistakes along the way, we now know an easier way to get there. Next time, which I hope there will be a next time, we will arrive at the park in half that time and only use two buses. Pictures are already posted from our beautiful hike to a tall waterfall. Plus we had the neat opportunity to watch the clouds roll back from the mountain as the sun came out, which exposed the valley from the mountain we were on.
New news: This past week a work team from a co- staff member’s home church came to ECA to do a work trip and help out the school. A couple of the project included fixing the ceiling of the multi-purpose room, building a new playground set, and doing some maintenance to different apartments. We were so thankful to this group for fixing several things around our apartment, a leaking shower (which they had to replace a pipe), re- ‘plastering’ the toilet paper dispenser to the wall and re- anchoring our blinds into the cement ceiling. Furthermore, they noticed that the handle on our fridge handle had broken off which we had become so used to it being broken that we had forgotten to write it on our ‘wishlist’ of things to get fixed! But they noticed it and added little medal cabinet handle to the door! A small fix, but a wonderful fix! We, as a school, are so thankful for the work and help from the group, as the school continues to grow and reach out to the community, it is nice to have a more improved campus!
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