So it’s been a while since I blogged. Sorry about that. In the time since my last blog, I believe
Christmas, New Years, the six month mark of my time in Ecuador, Carnaval, Ash
Wednesday, and Valentine’s Day have all passed.
Oops. I guess I have a lot to
enlighten you about.
Let’s begin at the very beginning of
2013. In Ecuador, instead of the ball
drop, we welcomed in the New Year at midnight by burning stuff in the
street. It was cool. Most people make or buy a big paper doll type thing called an “Año Viejo” (Old Year), fill it with explosives and light it on fire at
midnight. We celebrated with our guard,
Omar, and his family. We burned our Yogi
Bear Año Viejo along with his Hulk Año Viejo and the family across the
street’s all together. All the way down
our street you could see fires going on and hear firecrackers and fireworks for
an hour or two at midnight. I’ll say
that’s a pretty epic way to ring in the New Year. Here’s a picture of our fire:
We finally had our first retreat
groups in January and February. We have
now had three college groups come down to visit Sinaí: Villanova, Manhattan College, and College of Idaho. It’s been a lot of fun so far- I’ve really
enjoyed getting to know the participants and seeing Monte Sinaí through a
newcomers eyes and listening to all their questions and comments has been
helpful for us since by now we’ve been here for so long that it’s all pretty
normal to us. It’s very interesting
remembering how we saw it when we first got here and seeing how much has
changed for us since then. I haven’t
been in charge of any of the groups so far- my first one is in April- but so
far I’ve been doing things like bringing them to visit neighbors, giving them
the tour of San Felipe and having them play with the kids at recess, cooking
and eating dinner with them, and bringing them to mass and other parish events
with us. One reflection on that:
translating is really hard. I’ve gotten
to the point where my Spanish is pretty comfortable and I can carry a
conversation fairly easily, but translating is a whole other story. You wouldn’t think it would be that much more
difficult, but being able to understand something and being able to
rearticulate it in another language is completely different. A few highlights from our retreat groups so
far include having a late night music jam session with College of Idaho (I
learned to play Mary had a little lamb on violin) and doing “hot seat” with the
hilarious group from Manhattan College. Here’s
a picture of me, the Manhattan College group, and the first graders of San
Felipe doing the “chuchua” dance:
We had our second volunteer retreat
(at the six month mark) at Playas. My
goal was to sleep as much as possible because I was completely drained. I did a pretty good job at that goal. Other than that, it was a good weekend of
reflection on our six months that we’ve been here and on the six months yet to
come with a really great retreat leader, Jimmy Menkhaus.
Much like New Years, Ecuadorians
have a very unique and epic way of celebrating the coming of lent. Their version of Mardi Gras, “Carnaval”,
lasts from the Sunday until the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. It’s basically a three day water and paint
fight. I don’t think I can really
describe it well with words, so here are some pictures to give you a little bit
of an idea:
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| Us at Corpus Christi on Sunday |
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| Water fight between me and one of my third graders, Melany |
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| Me and Angie, our friend Mónica´s daughter |
Unfortunately,
getting paint in my face/ in my teeth/ in my ears/ all over my clothes is not
really my thing. On the second morning I
called it and spent the rest of the time at home getting some work done and
relaxing a bit. It was fun for a little
while; three days was just a bit much for me.
If it would have been just water I would have been fine because it was
super hot out and the water felt really good, but since paint was a part of it
I was not able to last until the end. My
community mates had a blast playing with all of our neighbors for three days
though.
School was supposed to end for the
year at the end of January (the Ecuadorian school year runs from May to January
with vacation from February through April) but near the end of January San
Felipe was told by the ministry of education that they had not yet completed
the 200 days of the school year that are mandated by law, so they added another
two weeks before finals. It was very
strange to all of a sudden have two random weeks thrown back in when I already
had my finals written and everything, but it worked out fine. It just meant that by the time finals
actually ended I was really ready for a break.
During the break from school I will
be teaching “cursos vacacionales” (vacation classes) at Corpus Christi, the
main church of our parish. I will be
teaching English, singing, ballet, and reading.
I’m really excited to be teaching some new subjects and just have the
opportunity to do something different for a little while before returning to
San Felipe for my last trimester there.
I just started teaching these classes this week and it is looking like
it will be a lot of fun: the kids seem great, and I’m really looking forward to
singing and ballet because they’re two things I really love and that these kids
wouldn’t necessarily be exposed to otherwise.
So I realize this blog covered a ton
of stuff and didn’t go super in depth about any of it, but that’s my update on
how my 2013 has been going so far. If
you want to hear about anything else, feel free to send me an email or a
letter. Chao!
