Ecuador Day 23

Let's start with the GOOD NEWS of the day!! WE HAVE A COURT DATE!!! YAY!!! It is this Thursday, though we don't know what time yet. Thank you for your prayers and continued thoughts on our behalf. Please continue to pray with us that all will go well for Thursday and we won't have any problems at court or after.

Today was a good day. We did our normal morning stuff and then decided to go to the El Ejido Park again as the kids had scoped out all the fun toys there on Saturday when we went, but we didn't have time to let them play on them then. We spent the entire afternoon there and had a great time. There is a lot to do. I'll let the pictures tell the story:

Oh this was this morning. I woke up to these two playing Memory with a rather interesting card arrangement. :)

And during school time. The Binda was not thrilled with us because we made her work on sorting objects (one of her IEP goals at school. Apparently not a favorite). She didn't do too hot. Better work on this some more.

A the park. It has oodles and oodles of toys. I must say that park toys here are much more fun than parks in the US, or at least near us. This is a swing zip line that the kids spent at least an hour on and would have stayed longer if we hadn't pulled them away.

And this huge family sized teeter-totter? Who can beat that! Fun until your husband starts bouncing you so high that you land roughly on your rear end each time up...and now someone has a sore butt...

They had bikes of all kinds for rent there. We totally wanted to get a three-seater tandem for me, Devin, and Mishell, but we had Flor's stroller and nowhere to leave it. Another time...This one was perfect size for Hallie. She pedaled the three of them all over the whole park. $3 for a half hour. Can't beat that.

Remember that thing about statues? Apparently this guy is someone really special. I have never seen such a huge statue in all my life.

Jace having a turn on the bike and Flor (rightly so) hanging on for dear life.

We then walked across the road to another park with the big wire ball. Anyway, on the way over, we spotted this huge house that looks totally out of place with Ecuadorian architecture (not a square concrete building). We looked closer and it appears to belong to the Egyptian government. Not sure what it is, but it's mighty nice looking.

Oh and we finally had Bon Ice for the first time today! Bon Ice for the win. Total Ecuadorian thing right there.

Then we made our way over to the ball. I must not be nearly as agile as I was when I was here 10 years ago as I could not make it to the top. Last time I did. I was also a bit more scared this time with Devin yelling to me from the ground that he wouldn't call 911 if I fell and died. Isn't he a gem?

There is a smaller inner ball that the kids climbed with no problems.

The best I could do (and Devin's awkward angle photography. Love him)

 

After we played at the park for hours, we walked to Plaza Foch nearby for dinner at a Mexican restaurant named Red Hot Chili Pepper that had a high rating on Trip Advisor. It was rather delicious, I must say. The meat on each of our plates was really good. Anyway, they had this lovely graffiti wall and if you look close at the top, by the yellow circle, there is a nice "Mormons Rock!" Yes they sure do. :)

I had a good conversation with Mishell tonight. I told her what is coming this week (court) and maybe what to expect. She has no frame of reference for what a court is, nor a judge, so I did my best to explain what they are and the judge's role in the process. After that, she told me that she misses her friends at SVP and then just started telling me stories about them. She talked for a good half hour, just talking, talking, talking.  I think we need to give her more opportunities to express herself. It's normally just day to day, do this, do that, what are we doing next, type stuff. She is an easy going girl generally that does not demand a lot of attention. Since we converse in English and our goal is to get her to understand English, she hasn't had many opportunities to just talk and say what's on her mind. I need to be better about asking her how she is doing and what's on her mind. She unloaded a lot tonight. It wasn't in a spirit of sadness, but rather just, oh, I have someone to talk to! I feel bad that the language is such a barrier. I want to be able to express some things to her too, that I can do on a surfacey level only when speaking in Spanish. This is one of our biggest challenges so far. I don't feel like she is picking up on English very well. She does understand every day expressions and commands that we say every day, such as "time for a shower" or "go brush your teeth". She does not retain the words we are trying to teach her very well, though. She knows basics like please & thank you, but that's about all she can remember without prompting. I am not sure what we should expect at this point with language comprehension, but I have to remind myself we are just 3 weeks in. It will likely come. She is trying (with a lot of prompting) and so we will keep at it.

Anyway, we are happy with today's progress and where we are at! Thank you, thank you for all your prayers on our behalf.