So we started our day at our volunteer site, a local school for young children.  We were promptly handed paint brushes and placed in front of a long white wall and instructed to start repainting it white.  We dutifully obliged but were delighted to find out a few minutes later that we would be painting murals for the children.  We were handed pictures of Hello Kitty and some Winnie the Pooh characters and left to our own devices.
Luckily, Hello Kitty is super-easy to draw and we were off to a good start in no time.  The best part was that as we were painting, a few small children walked by and it was so fun to listen to them get all excited about the flying fairy pigs and characters we were painting.

By the time noon rolled around, we were just about finished with today’s work and happy with the results.  For tomorrow, we have been tasked with painting some more complex characters from Winnie the Pooh…pictures to follow just as soon as we figure out how to make them look good on a brick wall!

After lunch, we did something really exciting: we visited the equator and stood straddling it, with one foot in the Northern hemisphere and one foot in the Southern hemisphere. We learned about a tribe in Ecuador that used to shrink heads (look closely at the picture below, which depicts the process…it’s not pretty).  Thankfully, although they still use the head-shrinking procedure, it is now only done on animals (non-humans).

Here is the shrunken head of a ten year old boy from a long time ago.

Here we are standing on the Equator.  We learned that it is nearly impossible to walk a straight line there, that water does not drain in a circle as it goes down and that Ms. Mac is AWESOME at balancing eggs at the Equator and got a certificate to prove it (see video at bottom of page).

Fun fact: We were both really excited that you weigh over two pounds less here. (see sign below)

Not so fun fact:  It is just because there is less gravity at the Equator and as soon as we get home, it will be back…PLUS Ecuadorian food is delicious…so…

Who knows what other random skills we will add to painting characters and egg balancing by the end of our adventure…