Ecuador - Street Kid's Project

To give you a summary of what I was doing, I worked with children that work on the street. We moved to a different market every day and held sort of a day care type thing where we taught them basic hygiene skills, read books, played with toys, played soccer, and sang songs.

The kids have so much love for you, it's just amazing. The moment you sit down you have five kids hanging or sitting on you. I also left the market extremely dirty with dirt and other food substances all over me, but it's weird because it really didn't bother me.

This last picture was of my last day in Ecuador. This little boy just crawled into my lap and fell asleep on me. It's crazy that a child will just go to a random stranger and fall asleep, but it was one of my favorite moments there.

Quito Ecuador

Traveling to Ecuador has been on my list of places to go for a few years now. I really wanted to go work with kids in orphanages but there wasn't a program in Ecuador that worked with my schedule so I picked a different program working with street children. I'll get to what that entails later on. For now here's what happened the day I got to Quito.

Currently I am staying with a host family and I wasn't really sure how I would like that but it is pretty great. The night I got here the host mom walked me up five flights of stairs showed me a room and then left the apartment. We are staying in this four story apartment type thing and all the stories have their own entrance and the volunteers occupy one of the floors. At the time I arrived I had no idea that anyone was even on the floor with me so I was a little freaked out. I finally got settled and went to sleep and the next morning I was shocked when seven other people started emerging from different doors. There is 8 living on my floor right now and I lucked out by getting my own room, we do however all share one small bathroom. I was relieved to know that I was in a full house though.

The second day all the new volunteers went out on a tour of Old Town Quito. The pictures below were overviews of the city. The city is so pretty and so colorful! I can't get over all these views.

Every Monday the President come out onto the balcony to greet the Ecuadorian people. While in office he declared himself president for life.

The soldiers outside of the president's house.  

Candid shot of an Ecuadorian boy. He followed us around most of the morning trying to get us to let him clean our shoes.

During the tour we went and toured a few old churches. The architecture and detail was amazing.

We were in the area where this little boy was for around two hours. It didn't move within that period and nobody was around watching him, he just sat there. 

Anyway, that sums up the first few days in Quito. The city was so pretty filled amazing architecture and so many colors, it still blows my mind. 

I Love to see the Temple

This is pretty far after the fact but on April 25th I went through Ogden temple. It was such an amazing day filled with so many wonderful people. I choose Ogden because I went through the open house and thought it was so pretty and it was also really convenient for all of my family coming into town.

Those that came were my parents, my sisters Erin and Emily, my brothers-in-law Todd and David, my aunts Heidi, Linda, and Karen, and one of my best friends Rachelle.

This was a really special day for me especially because I tried to go through when I was 20, but the handbook age is technically 24 and the stake president said I was too young to make an exception, but this time he felt I was ready.

Here are some pictures from the day, I wish I would have gotten one with everyone but most had left at the picture point.

Florida - Harry Potter World

Following the first two days at Disneyworld I finally got to go to Harry Potter World!

Wednesday we got to Universal Studios right when it opened and headed straight the the new ride Gringotts Bank. It was amazing it feels so lifelike, we were able to do that three times then we took the Hogwarts Express over to the other park to go to the other rides. We rode the castle ride a few times and that was phenomenal. Frozen butter beer followed which was amazing. After we did all the Harry Potter stuff several times we rode all the other rides at universal.

The goblins move and are all extremely life like.

Florida - Disney World

The last time I went to Florida I was 15 so it was very high on my list of places to go since I had never been to Harry Potter World. We figured going after graduation would be a good time to go since Emily and David were on a break from school too. My mom didn't want to go so it was just Emily, David, my dad and me. We left Saturday the day after graduation and flew for most of the day.

Sunday we woke up and hung around for a while then we went to church and to see the temple that morning. We were staying at a resort so following church we went paddle boating and played mini golf around our condo. 

Monday was our first day at Disneyworld we started at Magic Kingdom and did everything there then headed to Epcot then to Hollywood Studioes. We also lucked out because we managed to get 3 special fast passes for any ride at any time from different employees giving them out. 

Tuesday was another day at Disney and we did Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom, and Animal Kingdom that day. This was my first time ever going to Animal Kingdom and it was pretty fun! 

We took a lot of pictures with characters but we were in Disneyworld so I was just embracing my inner child. That about sums up those days.

Skipping ahead to Friday we spent our last day in Florida at Disneyworld again. This day was pretty insane we got there a half hour before it opened at 830 and stayed until 10 that night. We went to every park and rode every ride multiple times. We stayed and watched the parade, castle light show, and fireworks which were all amazing. 

I graduated!

On Friday May 8th I graduated! I received a bachelor of science is business management.

 

Right after I accepted my diploma two of my favorite teachers were there to congratulate us.

My family was amazing throughout the years and they have all shown me so much support.

I seriously could not have done it without these guys. We were all in the same program and had basically every class together, I'm going to miss seeing their faces everyday, but they will all go on and do such great things. 

This girl is seriously one of the best people in know. We both love to read blogs and we love the same shows. I wish we had became friends earlier on, we had so many classes together without even knowing it!

Cassie and I spent our entire last summer doing our internships at Macy's together. We aren't in the same program but we bumped into each other lining up. It's always so fun to catch up with her!

Scott and I have had a few classes together too, and have been on quite a few adventures.