This is a link to an article I found on Huff Post.  There is also a good collection of photos at the end of the article.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/up-to-120000-kids-in-ecuador-out-of-school-after-earthquake_us_571fcd12e4b0b49df6a97137

We are all still in the Hostel in Quito and each of us is doing different things to stay busy.  Some have gone home for a few days but most of us are putting in  few hours a day at non-profits that are putting together packages of food and clothes to send to the coast.

A few of us have been told where they will be assigned.  No one knows when they are leaving for their new sites and most of us still don't know where we are going.

I have some photos below that will show a few of the places I have volunteered.  I went to a preschool yesterday morning just for fun.  It was hard work.

Since I started this blog entry, I have started working with another volunteer in her school located in the north part of Quito.  She teaches English to 10th graders...the classes are large and its the afternoon schedule..from 1 pm to 6 pm, so everyone is tired, but she does a good job and I am very happy to be able to spend this time productively.

I have posted a few more pictures of the relief effort but there is really no way to see it short of being there.  I do try to read a newspaper most days and recently I have learned about a lab that died of dehydration/heart failure after locating 7 people who were rescued alive.  Its hard for me to believe that she was being well cared for by her handlers if she got so dehydrated.  But, I guess I should not second guess people who are working under those circumstances.

The other good news is that a man was rescued two full weeks after the quake.  About 200 people have been rescued , over  600 have died and about 20,000 are homeless, living in camps and shelters.  Its also their rainy season on the coast so that makes a bad situation even worse.  Ecuador was struggling economically before this happened due to the low price of oil which Ecuador had based a lot of its spending on.  It was now relying on tourism to help the economy and now this quake has horribly affected that industry...the coast that has been so devastated was the center of the beach tourism industry.  The Galapagos were not affected and the jungle was not harmed.

 The quake was 7.8 and lasted almost a minute ( usually they last 10 seconds) and had its epicenter on the coast, about 200 miles from Quito.  Quito is high in the Andes, about 5000 meters high and far from the coast but the tremor was felt strongly here.  Today the other volunteer with whom I am working right now, told me that one of their computer labs in the school is not operational because it is on the third floor of the building and one of the walls was cracked during the quake and some cables that were running through it was cut.  Just something I would never thought of.

Because of some technology issues which I don't understand and cannot surmount, I am going to put all the photos on a separte blog post which will follow immediately.