It's been since late May since we last posted on this blog so we've got some catching up to do. Here's a brief overview of what we've been up to in the interim:

June - kids studied hard for their finals at Santana and completed 7th grade with their classmates (a milestone year in Ecuador, equivalent to our completion of junior high school).

July - kids take an end of septimo grado class trip the Galapagos for 4 days, Mark's father (Jim) and sister (Sue) come to visit us in Cuenca for 10 days, Burden family summer vacation starts July 15th with a trip deep into the jungle out of Lago Agrio, after returning to Quito we went to the smalll city of Otavalo, the last week of July we took a bus to Milpe.

August - Milpe is very small town in the cloudforest near the better known small town of Mindo renowned for its great bird habitat. In Milpe we volunteered in a bird santuary for two weeks. After our volunteer work we spent three nights in Mindo and then went back to Quito to meet our friend Jennifer who would travel with us for about 10 days. With Jennifer we spent several days hiking and hostaling in the remote and mountainous Quilitoa region. From Quilitoa we all took a bus to Baños where we stayed for 5 days before returning to Cuenca. (Jennifer went directly from Baños to Quito where she met her sister and niece for a week of travel to the coast.) We are now back in our home in Cuenca. The kids return to school on Setember 7th and Sheilah and I are looking for English teaching work. That´s the snapshot. Read on for more details on a summer we spent getting to know a little more of Ecuador!

The trip to Galapagos

We went to the Galapagos for our school trip. It was really awsome but I wasn't really thinking about the fact that I was in the Galapagos. I was mostly thinking about how I was running out of shorts and I was desperate for something to wear. I was also thinking about all the boys in our class and how they were mostly complete losers. But I guess one of my favorite parts was seeing all the cute sea lions. I think if you are going to Ecuador, Galapagos would not be something I would recommend. Well, maybe if you did it the boat way. I saw more animals in the jungle. And personally for me I don't really care if this particular animal is only on these islands or not. I just want to see more animals. The coolest place we went was tortuga bay. It's beautiful. And really fun. The water is kind of warm and you can go swimming in it, really nice.

Ailish

When Ailish refers to doing a trip to the Galapagos the boat way she is differentiating from the kind of land based tour her class did. They flew to the main island and then took boat excursions from there. That way is a lot cheaper but you don't get out to the further islands and are really aware of the human impact on the islands.