5 x a big Thank You

Thanks a lot to friends and family who were helping out over the last couple of weeks to help people in need over here:

Project 1: My brothers family and my neighbors back home (Family Haller) financed the refurbishment of all bathrooms in Casa Hogar de Jesus. Basically all the houses where the kids live in have a big bathroom with urinals and showers which were disfunctional. Which made at hot days the houses smell like urin and showering for the kids kinda difficult. With the money given from my brothers family and Hallers we now have closed up the urinals (not needed anymore) and refurbished the showers of 6 houses.A big Thank you for that !!

Project 2: Maria and Hans who have been giving money before so we could afford more cutlery have given more to provide a family in need with a roof for their home. The family lives with 5 kids in a little "Casa" with one room of 15 sqm - the roof itself was made out of plastic foil and in a country where you got heavy rain seasons that is a hard circumstance. So we were able to put up a proper roof on the house as well as double the families living space and with a bit of more money the family will be able to put up a second room.

Project 3: A big Thank you to Shamim who donated money so we can provide a local family with 4 kids with a running water connection. Means as of now the family has to carry water to shower, cook, drink and flush the toilet from a relatives house to their own. By connecting the house to running water, the family will have a whole other level of living comfort. This will take a bit longer and therefore I dont have pictures for this project yet as we are dependend on the local water-department to set everything up. (two of the enclosed kids are kids of the family who will be getting the water connection!!)

Project 4: http://www.hogardejesus.org/ is finally finished and our homepage is online (check it out and let me know if you find any bugs). Markus has provided the server-space to host the webpage gratis - which is normally a running cost and helps Casa Hogar to avoid to increase running costs.

Project 5: Thanks to Richard and his football foundation we will be receiving new footballs over the next weeks. Casa Hogar de Jesus started a new project about 4 weeks ago: a football/soccer school - so our kids and kids from outside the orphanage can receive proper training (which does not exist in Ecuador other than for the big clubs). We were overwelmed by the receiption of offering the training and are now short on such simple things like footballs. Richard and his foundation are happily supporting us in that afford and will provide some footballs.

I guess this leaves me for saying a big THANK YOU to everybody who has helped out over the last 3 months to make a difference to the kids living here and local Families. It is great to have friends and family who support good affords over here and the kids as well as the staff over here are very very thankful as well as overwelmed by how much you guys were helping out. In totoal over the last 3 month you guys were providing support in all sorts of ways worth around 2000$ !!

Muchas Gracias !!

Ecuadorians !

I thought I gonna post a couple of close up shots I made from Ecuadorians over the last 3 months and that I like. They are mainly from my environment, means kids over here at the orphanage and students at my school. The black/white picture is a photo of pictures so I have not really shot that one. I hope you like them:

Cotopaxi pictures !

Hi everybody,

as promised enclosed the Cotopaxi pictures which I climbed up to about 4900 meters.
- First stop on 3830 meters to aclimitize
- Second stop parking spot up on 4500 meters
- Third stop Refugio on 4810 meters (we walked those 300 vertical meter difference in about an hour)
- fourth stop on about 4900 meters - those 100 meters took me about another 30 minutes. The air up there is really thin and your heart goes on 100% while you walk slowely.

The picture in the white Sweater is for my friend Markus K. in Shanghai - in memory of our Japan trip where we always had to take pictures that looked like the weather is nice and warm... well up on 4900m it is freezing cold :-)

The last time....

... in Quito. On Thursday I meet up with Natalie and Ben to encounter Quito and this time also with my SLR :-). Basically the first time I took the Camera on a trip outside gated areas like Casa Hogar de Jesus or other closed Events... and it went well I did not get mugged :-)

It was great to see some familiar faces again and have a flowing conversation in English. On Thursday we visited the "Virgin of Quito" a humongous "Statue of Liberty" like Statue and on the way back I started speaking German with Nat and Ben from time to time - do not ask me why !! For example when we got driven to town by a police officer as we could not get a taxi from the top of the Mountain where the Statue is, I spoke German while entering the car.
Then in the evening we took it relaxed and went for fruit-punch with sugar-cain-rum and fried bread in the old-town and we were lucky as we had some great musicians sitting right next to us singing latin-american songs. And to be honest, would they have started at the "X-Factor" they would have easily gone the whole nine yards !!

On Friday morning we then took on the Pululahua Vulcano (about 3800m) and in the afternoon the Equator Line - turns out - the Equator Line we visited was not the right one... but as nobody was around we could not find the proper "GPS" calculated Equator - who cares as long as taking the pictures was fun :-). As Nat and Ben moved on to the Galapagos Islands on Saturday morning, I visited Cotopaxi with one of my fellow volunteers which is a 5900m high vulcano close to Quito.
We got driven up to 4500m and than got to walk about 300 vertical meters, which took us about 1 hour as the air is so thin up there that you have to take a break about every 5 minutes to calm down your hear-beat and catch a breath... since this trip I got a different level of respect of professional climbers like Reinhold Messner who for example climbed up the Himelayas without oxygen support.
Saturday evening then was a worthy last night-out in Quito which ended at 5 a.m. in the morning and a little "borracho" how people say over here :-).
Enclosed some shots from Casa Hogar over here in Santo Domingo, from Quito and from the equator line... The Cotopaxi Pictures will follow in a different Blog Entry....

Thank you !!

This time a big THANK YOU to Suzy who donated 13 American Footballs for the Kids at Casa Hogar de Jesus !! And they LOVE them... they love them so much, that we had to take them away from the kids on the first day as they were constantly fighting over them... we will figure out what to do with them over the next days and than I am sure I am going to be able to post some pictures as well....

My last month has started and there are three more trips planned... next week Quito to meet up with Nat and Ben - than one to the Cotopaxi which is one of the highest Vulcanos in Ecuador and than one more to a Beach to round off the Ecuador experience.... I know already that I am going to miss Ecuador, the vibe here, the food, the people and even my non-English-speaking students (which is 99% of the ones I teach)..... Enclosed some impressions of my day to day life here and Santo Domingo (not the prettiest city in the world :-))