Merry Christmas: Our Food Chronicles

Due to the lack of mail system, the lack of post-cards, and our lack of winter, we created the following poem as our Christmas card.

Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas!
Without you all, we're rather listless.
Maybe you even miss us?

It's hard to find the Christmas cheer,
when you are not so very near.
Karli sheds the occasional tear.

We miss the winter and all the snow;
even if temperatures are way below,
at least Karli can feel her toes.

All day long we'd cross-country ski,
breaking for some very hot tea,
and eating all the cookies we could see.

Baking Mexican mocha balls,
we'd over-decorate the halls,
with wreaths and banners on the walls.

Then we'd sit by the fire,
listening to hymns sung by a choir,
late in the night, until we tired.

Yet of all the things Andy will miss,
lefse and lutefisk top the list,
guess he'll settle for Karli's kiss.

So without bells or sleighs,
in this semi-poetic way,
we're wishing you Happy Holidays!

How is Christmas celebrated here?  Well, from what we've gathered, there is a big feast of turkey on Christmas Eve.  On Christmas morning, we awoke to what sounded like a parade, but was in fact a truck with Santa and parents in the back pulling what looked like three caterpillar, carnival roller-coaster cars packed with ten kids each.  Ask my brothers or father for a better description.  We were chatting at the time, and they too heard it before they saw it, and then could hardly believe it, particularly when the little boy somehow fell out of the car and onto the street.  There were no church services on Christmas Eve or Christmas day that we were aware of.  We instead lived vicariously through Papa's yearly practice, an 11pm candle-light service, with an organ!  We could not find any of the Catholic church's services times online or in any guide book, so we settled for the previous Sunday's service at Guillermo's church.  It included a children choir, an adult choir, in pretty navy blue and white robes, which we've never seen or heard before, and dancing clowns.  Clowns.  I asked Guillermo at dinner last Monday, "Do you always celebrate Christmas with clowns?"  He proclaimed that people celebrate just about everything with clowns.  Also, these weren't just any clowns.  They were impressive.  Male and female couples in corresponding outfits, the French couple comes to mind, who danced in front of the adult choir as they sang one of their several Caribbean sounding songs.  We realized that South America simply does not do traditional, Christmas hymns.  At all.

Christmas Eve we planned to make yeast pancakes for breakfast.  Why yeast?  There is also no baking-soda or baking-powder in this country.  Except I used all the milk on hot cocoa so that was postponed to Christmas day—when we also made homemade syrup.  Except we used all the vanilla extract on cookie dough and of course there is no maple extract in this country, so it tasted of slightly-hardened corn syrup.

Thus, Christmas Eve breakfast saw more oatmeal, but dinner was delicious.  It resembled Thanksgiving with lots of butter, fish and a green bean, mushroom, carrot mix.  In an attempt to somewhat pay homage to Andy's typical white Christmas Eve meal of lefse, lutefisk, twice baked potatoes, and Swedish meatballs, we made mashed potatoes--the homemade kind, Mom, the ones where actual potatoes are used, not the flakes and malodextrin boxed stuff.

The next morning, after a Christmas Eve trip to the grocery store, our masterpiece.  Not actually a masterpiece but when all you've had for breakfast for a few months is oatmeal and bread pudding, it tastes good, or at least different.

Christmas dinner wasn't too planned out.  One year I remember having Italian with my traditional holiday crew: my family, my cousin's family, and Ommie and Papa.  I think that was the year we went for something "easy."  I think perhaps the only thing we cooked was pasta.  And maybe not.  Stew Leonards might have cooked ziti for us to accompany the chicken parmesan.  This was when it seemed my Mom hosted endless numbers of hockey pasta-parties for my brother's high school team, and used the services of Stews quite frequently.  Actually, the Italian Christmas might have been, in fact, the Christmas I was in Italy with the Erickson's.  I'd like to say my family resorted to Italian in homage of me, but really, Mom, I know you and your boxed potatoes too well to make that claim.  All of this, is a round about way of saying, there was a predecent for an Italian Christmas meal. 

Without further ado, I bring you Christmas dinner 2010, sphagetti and meatballs.

Now, seeing as our fancy breakfast plans were pushed back a day.  The Sunday after Christmas we made homemade English muffins.  English muffins, are one of the few breads that do not require an oven.  They turned out quite well for our first time around.  Sorry the first photo is disorienting, I must have held the camera crooked.  Also, you can see the blackberry jelly we bought special for the occasion.

We even achieved the browned, crusty bottom.  Even without a toaster.

In all fairness, our second round of English muffins failed.  We surmised the water was too hot when we combined it with the yeast.  Those were yucky, yet we ate them.  We even tried to turn the remaining dough, once we realized it made bad English muffins, into stove-top pizza.  Unfortunately, unleavened dough is unappetizing no matter what you put on top of it.  If flour weren't so expensive, we might have tossed it.  As it were, however, we were inspired by our new understanding of the yeast's needs.  Andy decided to try stove-top rolls.  Now, there is no recipe anywhere that suggests or describes stovetop baking, but they were pretty darn good.

Here are the rosemary-olive oil rolls made via the steam method.

The truth is, the reason I didn't post for the majority of December, was not because I avoided intimidating you with our movie-watching and food-eating abilities, but rather, because we were sad to be missing out on winter, the holiday season as we knew it, and of course, all of you.  The thought of having to sound cheerful was something I simply did not have the motivation for.  However, we hope you all had a wonderful holiday and have a fun, safe, New Year's Eve.

Since We've been Gone

You may have noticed there was a blog post drought.  Let's just say we were doing some under-cover spy work.  By which, I mean, we watched, with our legs under the covers, all twenty-two official and the one unofficial James Bond movies.  We progressed chronologically and ranked them the lot of them.  There was no method to this madness, we did not designate points for plot, Bond girls, villians, gadgets, or cars, which was often stocked with the aforementioned gadgets.  Instead, we simply laughed and cringed our way through the sexual innuendos and chase scenes.  Sean Connery is classic, I can't remember George Lazenby at all, and Roger Moore was quite good, but he should have stopped at three and not pushed-out seven movies.  We enjoyed Timothy Dalton very much and Pierce Brosnan is Pierce Brosnan, while Daniel Craig is raw in a good way.  Q was the most consistent and perhaps most beloved character, with the exception of the original Miss Moneypenny, Lois Maxwell.  In case you feared you'd never get the chance to accomplish this same feat, allow me to quote Mr. Bond with, "Relax darling, I'm on top of the situation."  Since I know you really don't care about our unscientific rankings and just wanted me to provide an inappropriate quote, voila.  Also, Andy perfected stove-top popcorn, which complemented this time in our lives perfectly.

Check it out.

Then we went to the wedding, and well, the day after the wedding we ventured to the Micro-Mercado to buy a new water tank and upon returning home, did not leave the apartment for the next week.  We just felt worn-out.  We slept until 11:30am each morning.  I spent a lot of time in the kitchen making bread pudding for breakfast each morning and rice pudding for snack time.  I consistently heated up whole milk for hot chocolate, and prepared raw cookie dough each night--except because I have no desire to see a hospital down here, I avoid the raw egg and use the poor substitute of water.  We tried to find a little Christmas spirit and attempted homemade peppermint patties, because, drat, without an oven, Christmas baking is limited.  Except, there is no mint extract in this country.  So we settled for vanilla extract. 

Our first round isn't pretty, but worked perfectly fine for a sugar hit.

A week and a day after the wedding, we left the house for pizza and ice cream.  Downtown there is a pizza place and an ice cream place with the same owner, La Fornace.  Ironically, it occurs to me that I think the name means something similar to an oven in Italian, precisely what we lack and long for, though that undoubtedly explains our eating there.  We've eaten there before, and conveniently, you can order pizza while sitting in the ice cream spot.  Andy had the salami pizza, which although he claims it tastes like spicy Canadian bacon, I couldn't help but recall the flavor as the same taste of the hot dog Max used to like microwaved and cut-up into his Stouffer's macaroni and cheese.  Andy had tiramisu ice cream, and I had chocolate, because I was too self-conscious to try pronouncing vanilla with Oreo in Spanish.  They came with a vanilla wafer with a delightful vanilla filling on top.  The ice cream tasted like a mix of ice cream and gelato to me, Andy can't discern any difference between ice cream and gelato period.  We watched the U-20 Ecuador and Chile teams square-off on television there.  Chile was up 2-0 at the half. 

On Monday 12/20, we had dinner with Guillermo and his family.  At the wedding, Jenny invited us over for dinner.  She asked if six was okay.  I answered, "Whenever."  She then asked if seven would be better.  I replied, "Whenever."  She affirmed seven o' clock and said Guillermo would pick us up.  Well, he called at 7:30pm.  We arrived at 8:00pm.  We ate at 8:30pm.  Jenny, who realized she lacked enough chairs for her family and ours, moved the dinner to her parents house.  Which, I did not realize when I told her she had a lovely home, and she replied, "Oh, it's my parents."  Or, when I handed her a hostess gift.  We made chocolate, non-peppermint patties that actually looked quite nice, and put them in one of our leftover containers.  Except, she set them on the table next to her, and we haven't seen or heard of them since.  We decided we'd try a new hostess gift next time.  Also, I made Christmas cards for the two couples, though it turned out there were three, but anyway, even though I lacked a red marker and anything other than a legal pad, they weren't half-bad, albeit terribly floppy.

Conversation went pretty well.  In attendance were Monica and Guillermo, Jenny and Henry with their daughter, and Guillermo's other daughter and her boyfriend Javier, who happened to be celebrating his twenty-seventh birthday.  The girls spent a year of middle school in the United States, so they generally understand English and can speak it fairly well.  Guillermo did an impressive job of both carrying the conversation and translating simultaneously.  They aimed to make us feel welcome here and like we had a support system, which was very nice of them.  Of course, I awkwardly showed my appreciation by launching into a ten minute discourse, in English, on the history of lacrosse, complete with arm motions.  It seems feeling that your face is beet red and burning is a good indicator for closing one's mouth, although, unfortunately I took the opposite option.  Andy and I are going to work on subtle or even not-so subtle attempts to pull the emergency break when one of us runs off track, and then particularly if we keep running.  For the record, because I have the slightest suspicion you would infer incorrectly, this has happened to both of us.

The food was delicious.  There was a chicken dish.  It reminded me of chicken marsala and Andy of goopy chicken.  So try to combine the two.  There was the same green rice we had at the wedding and still cannot figure out what the flavor is or why it's green.  There was a salad with lettuce, tomato, and green pepper.  There also was a surprising yummy dish that basically was a combination of deviled eggs and potato salad.  It was bite-size boiled potato pieces with hard-boiled egg and mayonnaise.  As I said, it was quite good.  For Javier's birthday we also had a cake which was ice cream surrounded by actual cake.  It was store-bought, but in actuality, Monica is quite the baker.  As of yet, we haven't been fortunate enough to try any of her baked goods, though we have bore witness to several delicious looking cakes, one being a pineapple upside down cake, which she sells.  In fact, on his trip back from the States, Guillermo brought me the ordered 72 oz. bag of chocolate chips and cocoa powder, and Monica, a KitchenAid mixer, which made for a heavy suitcase.

In other news, we read the third Chronicles of Narnia book in Spanish before we saw the movie on Wednesday the 22nd.  It's been partly-cloudy and consistently drizzly so much so that we've only done one round of laundry since Thanksgiving and the original scabies bout because surprise, Andy's scabies returned.  This country does not have the anti-parasitic oral antibiotic we need under any name, so we continued the cream treatment that thus prompted our laundry day.  (That, and our lack of underwear.)  Also, our Christmas spirit efforts continued by listening to carols and playing cards.

An Ecuadorian Wedding

Last Saturday (12/11) we attended an Ecuadorian wedding.  But I'm already getting ahead of myself.  One rainy night in November at about nine o'clock the phone rang.  Now, any time the phone rings we panic.  Similar to Pavlov's dog, all it takes is the ringing to make us anxious.  Whenever the phone rings it has been one of three people: Fabiola, Anita, or the internet company.  For 2/3 of those, we (meaning I) must attempt to understand and to speak Spanish.  But I don't think that's even the root of the anxiety.  I think it's a combination of heightened anticipation (me) and little need of social interaction (Andy), but I digress.

It was Fabiola, confirmed by the fact that she called out to us from the gate, which we can see from our bedroom window.  Now, it was late at night and we were in our pjs, not that we don't put our pjs on before we even eat dinner, and it was raining.  I threw on my raincoat and marched carefully down the stairs of our apartment, around the side of the building, and to the front gate where I was met by Fabiola and two strangers.  Two strangers whose wedding we ended up attending.  Her son, Vinicio and his fiance, Betty.

We were given the following--an invitation and a sugar statue, it seems to be a serving tower with a bird perched on the side.  The information about the wedding was this: in December, in Ambato.  Yes, we were perplexed too.

Here is the display I made on one of our kitchen shelves.

 

Now someone in the Erickson household, who wisely sent us with tools, foolishly told us we wouldn't need formal clothes.  The most formal clothing we have are our not-so-formal church clothes.  I wear a cotton black skirt and any random shirt.  Andy wears wrinkly, casual khakis and a holy, as in it has holes, faded plaid cotton shirt--the ones he wears daily.  Birkenstocks with socks for Andy and brown, black-rubber toed sporty Mary Janes or blue sneakers for me.  Forget the fact that we're a couple heads taller than everyone else, more than a few shades paler, and our eyes aren't brown--we weren't going to fit in.  Anita assured us the men would be in suits and ties, which they were, and insisted Andy at least get a dressy button down shirt and tie.  In the mall and MegaMaxi clothing is extremely expensive for poor quality.  Anita told us to go to the daily market in yada yada part of town.  When we called to get those details, she thought perhaps she could accompany us the following day.  (Oh, and don't even think about what having to make a phone call does to our insides.)  We found a shirt and tie for $18.  He may never wear them again (not exactly a wool bow-tie and tweed), but so be it.

The outing also provided us an opportunity to ask the time of the wedding and its location.  6:00pm, their church--the directions to which she texted me a couple hours before the wedding.  Not having any clue where we were going, we left the house at 5:25pm to catch a taxi.  We waited on the side of the street for ten minutes as it started to drizzle.  Finally, an empty taxi pulled-over and picked us up.  I showed him the text message with the directions.  Unfortunately, I think he needed glasses, so I read him the message.  Five minutes later we arrived.

Here is the church.  Note the lack of activity. 

We waited outside until 6:00pm, until it seemed only polite to be seated by the time the wedding was supposed to start.  Here are the outfits we pulled together.

 

Andy tried to camouflage himself in with the wall.

Ten minutes after the ceremony was supposed to start the church looked like this.

This was not our first experience with the Ecuadorian concept of time.  Back in the middle of November, we noticed that after we returned from the three-days off and thus five-day weekend of Andy's illness, no one asked where we were or what had happened.  It seemed, detrimentally for my sense of responsibility, that this may be due to the South American culture where sometimes people show up and sometimes they don't.  They have this saying about AM and PM time.  It's something like, AM means most-likely and PM means posiblemente, or possibly.

For example, in order to take a bus to the orphanage we first needed to learn where the right stop was, what buses we could take, and when they came.  Of course this information is not posted anywhere, so someone was going to escort us our first time.  Guillermo insisted he would get someone to take us, yet the next day he did not call by 11am, so we called him, another scary phone call.  When we did, the person he was visiting at the time, some man we had never heard of, said he would come take us.  That afternoon, we waited outside for an hour realizing that PM time had transitioned from possibly, to probably not, to no.  Funny enough, the next day we called Fabiola, who is always reliable, and asked her to take us.  On our walk to the bus stop with her, we told her what happened the day before.  Turns out, the man who didn't come was her son. Who, as it turns out, was the same son whose wedding we attended.

The ingrained notion of Ecuadorian time also extends to one's ability to be on time.  Here, being on time is not prized like it is in the States or Switzerland, for example.  Rather, depending on the scenario, there is an accepted amount of tardiness that is expected.  For business meetings, it's something like fifteen to thirty minutes of leeway.  For a party, thirty minutes to an hour late is expected.

What we did not count on were people being late for the wedding.  Perhaps, we should have, but we didn't.  We took the opportunity to take one of many blurry pictures of the night.  Terrible lighting, but not dark/rude enough for flash.

This is the front of the church.  The second figure to the left, the only woman, is Anita.  She wore a full-length black dress, a black shrug over her shoulders, and a diamond-like necklace, earrings, and hair clip.  The other people on stage were the musicians.  Except, they didn't play songs.  It was like we had stumbled upon their jam session.  One was in blue jeans, another black sweatpants.  They wandered around the stage, off the stage, and behind the curtain--where we imagined they had a couple drinks waiting.  Anita had told us earlier in the week that they were trying to get a balloon arch for the front of the church, but it cost $26 dollars.  So, for less, they got the following arch, except it seems they never got the balloons on it.  The flowers were quite pretty though. 

For the first forty minutes of waiting, we were privy to the aforementioned jam session.  Though, honestly, there was less jamming than joking.  Then, Anita sang with a band from 6:40-6:50.  She sang a couple songs we had heard in Guillermo's church down here, which Andy just described for me as Christian-pop.  We didn't know she could sing, but she had a nice voice.  After another ten minutes of waiting, the pastor greeted the church.  Then we waited another ten minutes.  At 7:10, the pastor announced the members of the processional and the service officially began.

There were four main differences between their wedding and the American weddings we've attended.  First, godparents, who are non-relatives, processed down the aisle.  Vinicio's, who were not in attendance because it seemed like they were American, sent an email that Anita read to the congregation.  Second, in the middle of the service, the bride delivered a thank-you speech to her Mom and handed her a bouquet of flowers.  Third, the vows were orchestrated with literal symbols including a Bible, a small, treasure chest of coins which they had to pour through each other's hands as they recited several verses, and the rings.  Fourth, and most noticeably, guests were still arriving at 7:40pm.  In fact, Guillermo's daughter and son-in-law, Henry and Jenny, did not even take a seat because they showed up at 8:00pm.

 Here are the vows.

The sermon was interesting.  I was happy that the pastor spoke slowly and clearly enough that I was able to understand him.  Plus, if I hadn't been so sure I was understanding him, I wouldn't have known what to think about the snippets I would have caught because the wedding address was on abuse.  It was a warning to husbands not to physically, psychologically, or emotionally abuse their wives.  Because children learn that behavior, and if they see at home, they think it's okay to repeat it.  Men should not abuse their wives to not treat the children bad behavior, but also to create a better society.

Then the pastor spoke about how Vinicio had many women, which generated an uncomfortable laugh in the church.  But what he meant was that he had many options for a wife.  The pastor quoted the highly suspicious figure that there are seven women for every one man, yet Betty was the best woman for Vinicio.  He had the men in the church raise their hands to show who thought they had the best wife.  Andy's hand was a little slow and not much above his shoulder, but I'm pretty sure that's just because group participation in church is awkward for us.

Then came all those literal symbols, before the church finally let out about 8:00pm, with the pastor announcing the reception site.  We were happy to see Henry and Jenny, since we knew no one other than Anita and Fabiola, the sister-of-the-groom who nearly single-handed organized the whole affair and Fabiola, the mother-of-the-groom who spent the week before the wedding in deep grief that Vinicio was leaving home.  They asked if we were going with someone to the reception.  We said no.  We said we didn't know where it was.  They asked if we had a car, we said no.  We tried to hint and hint that we had no idea what we were doing.  Finally, they offered us a ride, though Andy had to sit in the back of the pick-up truck, which brings me to another wedding-day anecdote.

We had gotten a late start on showering, dressing, and eating before the wedding.  I was in the middle of blow-drying my hair, for the first time down here, when Andy walked into the bedroom with an enormous bouquet of white lilies.  The thoughts that passed through my head were, "Did Andy get me flowers?  Did Andy get me lilies?  We haven't been apart at all for him to do this.  He certainly didn't order them over the phone."  But the puzzled look on Andy's face meant he was as confused as I was.  Apparently, while I was drying my hair, the neighbors knocked on our door and handed Andy the enormous bouquet.  He asked, "De quien?," but didn't understand the reply, so he simply thanked them only to get a quizzical look and something about the flowers being for his wife.  Andy insisted I attempt to figure out more, so with half-dry hair I went out to the rooftop where they were doing laundry and asked, "De quien?"  Only to understand a single verb "dejar"= "to leave."  So, I too said, "Muchas gracias," and entered the apartment.  Thus, we had no idea where the flowers came from.  "Maybe we're supposed to bring them to the wedding?" I thought aloud.  But alas, we concluded that our neighbors had given us an outrageously expensive looking bouquet of flowers.  "Guess we're getting them something for Christmas," we concluded.

Back to the wedding.  Andy is riding in the back of the pick-up truck, I'm squishing in the front with Henry, his wife, and their young daughter, Joyce.  Jenny says to me, "Did you get the flowers?"  Uh-oh.  I'm now thinking we were supposed to bring them with us.  But instead, she says that they sent us them to welcome us and make us feel included.  I told her we were confused but told her how thoughtful it was.  We were speaking in English, so I'm not sure how much of that she understood.  At the same time, Andy noticed that in the back of the truck he was riding on many leaves and many flowers.  He thought, "Shoot, maybe we were supposed to bring the flowers with us after all."  He and I resolved the matter after the car ride.  Later in the night I returned from the bathroom to find him telling Henry about our six liter water jugs.  Turns out, Henry asked if we had a vase.

Here are the flowers that caused so much confusion.

Guillermo and his wife, Monica, were at the reception place when we arrived.  We shared a table with them and Henry and Jenny, and also with the second director of the orphanage.  There was also another couple.  Ramiro, the man who drove us from the Quito airport, this was either his son and his wife or his son and his wife.  There was a little girl with them too but we couldn't figure out the relationship.  Unfortunately, it was so darn loud in there, we couldn't really talk about the orphanage with Guillermo and the former director.  We've been feeling a little out of the loop in terms of how things are run and when events take place there.  Regardless, Guillermo introduced us to her as the couple providing a good model for relationships.

Here are the blurry photos taken at the reception site.

The box for your envelopes with money is to the left.  We failed to find an envelope, so just put our cash in the box.  They had a reception line where you greeted the bride and groom and then deposited your money.  The thing next to the cake tower is actually more cake.  We left early with Guillermo and Monica.  Fabiola cut them some cake, I told her I'd just take the whole layer.

The flowers on the head table.

We decided that the reception site itself was decorated in the style of The Godfathers meets Spain.

Guillermo and Monica.  The farthest table you can see on the right was a table of fruit.  Then, that window was where the reception site announcer controlled the music.  The music was a cd on repeat.  The notable song was Butterfly Kisses in Spanish.

The woman closest to me is Jenny, then her husband Henry, then their little daughter, and at the head of the table, the second orphanage director, Jolana, I think.

The bride and groom making their entrance.

Fabiola is the woman to the left.  The girl in pink was the maid of honor/sole bridesmaid.  The rest of the bridal party was under the age of ten, and that's not even all of them pictured.

 

The bride and groom had their first dance.  Jenny told me that everyone dances to the same song.  The song could be described as elevator music meets 90s pop meets big band.  Maybe.  But then the mariachi band showed up and performed for twenty minutes.  We learned that there is no volume control in the country.  Rather, there is one setting, really loud.

 

Earlier in the week Anita told us food would be served at 8:30pm.  In preparation, we ate dinner before the wedding, which proved to be a very good idea when the food finally arrived at 10:45pm.  For most weddings you elect a main course--chicken, beef, fish, whatever.  Here, they just heaped each entree on the plate.  Lying on top of everything is a steak, the yellow stuff is the skin of the chicken, above the chicken is a sort-of-meatloaf with hard boiled egg/ham/carrot/pea in the middle underneath the mushroom cream sauce.  Buried are potatoes, though the green rice is peeking out the right.  Immediately on the bottom of the plate are carrots, corn, and green beans cooked and covered in mayonnaise.  Fabiola went around the room distributing doggie-bags.

 

We turned the meat-loaf into a meat-sauce for pasta, the steak became beef stroganoff, and the chicken turned into fajitas.

Guillermo and Monica drove us home.  They explained that brides always make the groom wait.  Turns out, Guillermo had waited an hour and a half for a bride to show up at a wedding in his church that morning.  I told him I was early, he said that here, that translates into desperation.  Before we left the car he asked if we'd be in church the following day.  Andy said, "Yes."  I said, "Maybe."  It ended up being no.  Maybe we're getting a hang of Ecuadorian time after all.

Here's the cake we ate at home.  It was chocolate with chocolate filling.  Yum.  No, the hole is not from my finger, how could you even think that?

Our display case has added the two-bags of turquoise rice we didn't have a chance to throw.  Much to my shock it was thrown inside the church by those lining the aisle.  We also have a basket from the table that held the hors d'oeuvres.  Guillermo's granddaughter gave it to him, he gave it to me.

And they lived happily ever after.  

The End

Volcano Update

Recall the picture posted below of the smoking volcano from our field trip.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11920406

Addendum: For those of you who were concerned for our safety, we are eight-ten miles away from the volcano.  Additionally, the lava would not flow in our direction because we are separated by a small valley.

No Mailing the Census

Every ten years, perhaps ideally, Ecuador administers a census.  However, unlike in the United States where the forms are delivered directly to your home, residents of Ecuador do not have mailboxes.  Rather, in some of the major cities you must buy/bribe for what I believe is the equivalent of the P.O. Box.  Yet, this "official" system is not really a national system.  It seems in order to mail a letter or a package within South America or internationally, you must solicit a private mail company such as FedEx, DHL, or UPS.  Even then, it seems the safety of your mail is not guaranteed.  And it costs a bundle.  I remember when I was in Barcelona (January-March 2008), Kate sent me a handmade, pop-out Valentine's Day card complete with chocolates inside.  My host mother was horrified that it had been previously opened.  In Ecuador, it seems its delivery at all would be miraculous.  From what we've seen, most people do not waste their money on having a mail box that requires traveling to a major city to attain its contents.

Now, a couple days ago the internet company called.  I had no idea what the woman was saying even after asking her to repeat what she said.  The phone call ended with me agreeing, "Okay, okay" and her responding, "Muchas gracias.  Muchas gracias."  Well, I hung up, looked at Andy, and wondered aloud, "What did I just agree to?"  Yesterday, Anita went with us to the internet office to figure out what they had called about and to pick up our contract.  As it turns out, we were supposed to have received in the mail, an invoice from Quito.  What mail?  Anita explained that we lived, like everyone else, beyond a locked gate.  Furthermore, we lived on the third floor with a back entrance.  The woman protested, "But did they not see something under the gate?"  It just made no sense.  Our gate is shared by seven or eight apartments, which mostly seem to be families.  If some envelope was slid under the gate, no one would know which apartment it was meant for.  There is no listing of names and apartment numbers.  For that matter, most of the apartments are unnumbered.  Needless to say, we insisted we had not seen anything, and the woman handed over the invoice that should have been delivered.

Now, I suppose that some businesses or someone with clout, like Guillermo, might have a mailbox of sorts.  We are trying to figure this out to see if we can be mailed things (not that their security would be, well, secure).  Which, brings me back to the fact that the census forms are not mailed to individuals.  Rather, Sunday (11/28) the country shut-down.  No, seriously.  It was illegal to leave your house before 5:00pm.  There were police-men on foot, motorcycle, car, and truck, patrolling the streets.  Students and teachers, in khaki uniforms, visited each apartment.  We had a young guy who administered our census form.  He filled out the first section about the condition of our home.  Then, he asked questions like, "Have you used a cellphone, the internet, or a television in the last five months?"  A sure guarantee of modernity for the country.

The 9:30am church service was previously re-scheduled for 6:30pm.  It was a little less unattended, but a very nice change of pace.  In addition, no sooner had the service began than it started to rain and lightening, which provided a neat setting.  The four English-speaking missionaries we had met on our field trip the day before were there lined up in the front row.  We always sit near the back, but Guillermo "suggested" everyone move closer since there were fewer members in attendance.  So, we found ourselves seated, uncomfortably blocking those behind us, in the second row.  Lindy, who had given the message on her experience of adult baptism the day before, also provided the message for the service.  Lindy is in the Dancing Ministry.  Which meant that while the other Church of God missionaries raised their hands, fists, and voices to the Lord, she brought flags to dance with and to distribute to the congregation to be waved during the songs.  It also meant that her sermon comprised both a message and a dance about purification.  As she danced to the music, she eventually stripped off her colored skirt and flags until she wore only white.  It was something new for us, but it was a very heartfelt dance.

A photo after church, since we went through all the trouble to take off our pjs for it.

Oh yes, we also had our make-shift Thanksgiving meal before church.  It was delicious.  The theme was butter, though truthfully that theme isn't new for us.

The Menu:
 -pumpkin, brown-sugar, cream cheese dip and caramel dip for apples (as an appetizer?)
-carrots, mushrooms, and green beans, with um, butter
-boiled, mashed fresh pumpkin with brown sugar, and um, butter
-tilapia a la meuniere--which is, um, butter sauce

Field Trip

The pastors invited the congregation to Rio Verde.  We were to meet in front of the church on Saturday (11/27/10) at 8:30am.  We arrived at 8:30am.  There were no people.  There was no bus.  We were perplexed.  We wandered down the street and saw Fabiola in the driveway of the compound.  She expressed concern that we had not called her for anything as of late, then she pointed out the bus behind the church.  Two hours later we had descended over 7,000 feet, passed through the touristy-town of Banos, and found ourselves in a small village alongside Rio Verde.

There the church members gathered, sang a couple of religious songs (the only song I could have remembered was, I am a C, I am a C-H, I am a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N...), an English woman named Lindy provided a brief message on her experience as an adult who received baptism, the adults who came to be baptized in the river expressed their testimony to God, and then they were baptized.

There were two distinct sections of the river.  One involved climbing over and on-top of enormous rocks down into the water.  The other required walking down a sand-like dune into the water.  Guess which one the pastors' chose?

Here is the first baptism.  Pastor Guillermo is on the left.  Pastor Juan Pablo (the keyboardist and soloist) is on the right.

The second individual, a woman whom we chatted with later in the day.  Her daughter is learning English. 

The pastors praying after the fact.  Guillermo's tee-shirt has an image of bloody, whipping marks down Jesus' back.  The shirt states, "Read between the Lines."

Getting some fresh air pre-baptisms.

Afterward the group split up to hang out as they pleased.  Andy and I went with Guillermo, his wife, and the English-speaking missionaries to do, what could aptly be named, The Jungle Walk, which culminated in the Pailon del Diablo (the Devil's Cauldron) Waterfall.

Here is the boa-constrictor.  You can pay $2 to wear it and have a picture taken with your camera.  You can pay $3, and they'll take a photo of you and hand it to you.  With my long-time fear of snakes and having just seen Nagini in Harry Potter 7, this photo is as close as I wanted to come.  (Those are Pastor Guillermo's legs).

The entry to the 1 km hike down to the waterfall.

Me on the path down.  It was basically built-in stairs the whole way down.  My calves were wobbling in no-time.  Also, I checked the trees overhead for any unwelcome animals.

A pretty nifty rock formation.  You can tell how far down we've walked because the entrance to the path is above that rock.

This is the bridge we crossed to get a view of the waterfall.  It has a maximum of five people at a time.  As a suspension bridge, it swayed, creaked, and felt entirely likely that your foot just might go through.  Pastor Guillermo, who walked behind me, said if I fell through he would pray for me.

 The waterfall.  Andy took the shot on the bridge.

For $2.00 we paid to climb up alongside the waterfall.

Then, we climbed up and went behind the waterfall.  There was no cave or anything, we just stood behind the cascade.  To get there, we had to crawl on our hands and feet between a 2.5 foot crack in the rock up for about 100 feet.  It's as close to shimmying on my belly as I'll ever get. 

This is me coming down from behind the falls.

This photo's from that high.  You can see the bridge we crossed down below.

We were that close.

This is a shot of the part of the town we were in.

The name of this volcano is Tungurahua, which is also the name of the province we reside in.  It has been active since 1999.  It has had major eruptions on August 16, 2006, February 6, 2008, and May 28, 2010.  Check out wikipedia for more information.  Anyway, yes that is a smoking volcano and Rio Verde is just past the base of it.