Volunteering in Baños – 30 Kids and 100 Soda Bottles

Baños, Ecuador

What happens when you hand 30 kids 100 soda bottles?

Fun time and crazy creatures is what happens.

All of the stuff below were made during activity time at the Foundation in Baños – where we spent 3 weeks working with local kids and teaching English to adults.

Plastic Butterfly

Jack and his butterfly

Bottle Monsters

Adela and her bottle monster

This is one of our favorite bottle mosters

'Raaawr!!'

Bottle Fish

Sail Boat

Both Jack and I had never worked with kids before. Animals – yes. Kids – no.

I always thought of kids as little aliens – foreign, covered in mysterious bodily fluid, and unpredictable.

And I was mostly right, but somehow we still had such a great time interacting with them.

So much fun that even when we’re not officially volunteers anymore, we still stop by to read to them and play with them. Bodily fluid and all.

Our 3 week volunteering stint here in Baños made us realise 3 things:

1. Kids’ ability to think outside the box never ceases to amaze us. I mean, seriously – feathers as eyes and nose (see pic 2)? Why not?
2. You know you’re not supposed to play favorites, but there will be kids who tug at your heartstrings just a little harder than the others.
3. There’s a very serious soda addiction problem in this place. How did we end up sacks after sacks of these soda bottles?

By the way, if you’re curious, here is the organization we were volunteering for. If you’re interested in working with uber cute kids who will charm your socks off, in an awesome place (seriously, we’re going into week 6 here in Baños). Check them out.