Lots of airtime...

Today I had my biggest flying day yet. In fact when I finally got home around 4:30, I sat down to talk to Becca and the next thing I know I woke up a little after five. I went to work just before 7:00am because I knew our flight schedule was busy. Weather shut us down totally yesterday. With the flights we couldn't get done yesterday, on top of having a lot on the schedule for today, we all tried to arrive a bit earlier to get things going today. I flew a total of about 3 hours, and had 8 landings, which put me landing every 22 minutes or so. I had two flights to a village called Villano full of 4 Compassion International staff, plus their weeks worth of cargo. They have many things to accomplish on this trip. For those of you that maybe support a child monthly, or know someone that does, you have no dought seen the pictures and yearly stats of the supported child. That is the main purpose of this trip; to take pictures of the children, get current updates, and even have the children write something to thier supporters. My third flight was taking some missionaries from Quito to a village called Kusutka. They will be there about 5 days doing some construction work. Overall it was an uneventfull day, but it is sure strange how flying can make you so tired. Even my co-workers that have been doing this for years say that is doesn't end. But it was a great feeling to be flying so much today. The way things are looking at the hangar because of a "lack" of pilots, I will be flying more and more like I did today.


Usually I ride my bike to and from the hangar from our house. Along the way I pass the town "plaza" or center. EVERY afternoon there is a soccer game. It is fun sometimes to sit and watch and see the passion that the latins have for the game. It is also a good place to go and learn new vocabulary if you know what I mean. This picture of the plaza, and its poverty motife is basically how most of Shell looks. We are constantly reminded of the poverty that we live among, and in some cases the desperation that accompanies it. One of my co-workers usually goes and plays soccer here at the plaza about 3-4 times a week. In fact he was playing when I got there. I admire him, he has more guts than I do. One of the desires for the teams that show up to play is to wear thier shirts. They always play shirts and skins, and for obvious reasons, you don't want to fall and slide on this "field."