re-entry

So now I'm back in Goshen and working at re-entry. I was ready to return and the 30 plus hours in transit helped increase my relief at seeing my house. The laundry is done, the mail is all opened, tomorrow I deal with the few bills that need paying and other such fun. Two months, of course, flew by, even though I was ready to return by the end. Returning home is often an unpredictable experience for me. at times I'm resentful of home, and want to return from where I came. sometimes it is an intense relief and reunion. this time, it was almost nonchalant. a kind of, heh, home, this is normal. 

Right now, I don't miss things about Ecuador, or Paraguay. I'm guessing that stage will come. Probably once I get around to organizing photos. And maybe once I'm feeling overwhelmed by work I'll be ready to be free and traveling again. All in all, it was a wonderful summer. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to do this, and I'm already making plans for future summers and ways to return to South or Central America again, maybe to Colombia next time. I am hopeful that I will keep working at learning Spanish but I also recognize what a challenge it is to keep at it, especially with what will surely be a crazy schedule for me this coming year. 

Thanks for reading along with me, whatever amount you did, and this will be the official end to this blog, at least for now. Perhaps I'll pick it up again when I am 'viajera-ing' (as Jana puts it) once more.

red soil, trampolines, dialects and more

As promised, I would like to reflect a little bit more upon my experience of visiting my family in eastern Paraguay. It was one of those life experiences where it's really incredibly fascinating and important but at times, from moment to moment, also incredibly boring! The challenge for me of course was language where the majority of the conversation was in low German and my mother and I traded roles as translator and one in need of translation. The most interesting aspect of the language piece for me was finding that, not surprisingly, the men were the ones who spoke Spanish while the women had little opportunity to learn Spanish because their lifes were centered in their German colony with little interaction with Spanish-speaking Paraguayans. So here I was in a culture that still separates the men and women more than my own culture, only able to communicate with the men. I really enjoyed my conversations with my cousins, especially the sons of the cousins we were staying with, but it felt really strange to be cut off from direct communication with the girls. Although I think I managed to still bond with the youngest cousin through games and random faces!

while on the gender theme, one thing I noticed here in the Paraguayan Mennonite communities, as well as in the indigenous communities in Ecuador was how women were the ones who maintained traditional dress. The men in most of these communities showed the most signs of westernized dress. And while the Old Colony community had started to allow things like cars and cell phones, as far as I know, nothing about the position of women in the colony had shifted. I'm sure there are essay length reflections in here so i'll just leave it at this basic observation.

I learned quite a bit more about how the colonies work and they certainly are much more communal than we are. Dairy farming and cattle are primary vocations in this region and we got to see one of my cousin's yogourt/milk processing factories - yummy! 

Our visit to Iguazu Falls was fabulous - a wonderful day. We started the day with a boat ride that took us to both sides of the falls and at the end took us 'into' the falls. Needless to say we got soaked but it was a great time and we got to see the falls from views that wouldn't have been possible from anywhere else. Along with various trails and lookout points, the park has a long, long walkway that you take to the point where you are literally feet away from the top point of the falls where the water begins to rush over the edge. Phenomenal. That section is called 'Devil's Throat' although it's more dramatic in spanish I think. 

We were hit by an incredible cold spell our second night in Brazil so I was ready to get back north to get warmed up! Since most of the buildings don't have heat we had two night of layers of blankets and staying curled up to keep warm. Once we were back in Paraguay the temperature almost hit freezing! Apparently this is very unusual even for their winter.

new kind of mennoland

Hello everyone! Since I last posted, my mother and I made it safely to Paraguay where Mennonite World Conference has come and gone and now I´m writing from just inside Brazil at a hostal close to Iguazu Falls. MWC was a pretty good week. I will admit that it was not as good as I was hoping. I really enjoyed getting to see a variety of people that I have not seen in a while and live a world away (literally for some), I attended some fabulous workshops and enjoyed seeing some of the Paraguayan Mennonite context. However, the plenary sessions were disappointing and at times just downright boring. Part of this was due to translation challenges, part was due to what I thought was an excessive amount of talking and quite frankly, not very good preachers - although I found 3 speakers to be very excellent. The biggest issue that came to the fore for me at MWC was the imbalance in attenders. There were almost 2000 North Americans and not even 200 Africans in attendance which is in opposition to the number of Mennonite living in these continents, respectively. I am hoping to reflect on this further with other participants and consider how we might work at changing this for next time, if there is another world gathering planned.

I am now visiting my mother´s cousins in one of the Old Colony Mennonite colonies in Rio Verde, Paraguay. My uncle, aunt, mother and I are staying with cousins for our final week here. It has been quite fascinating so far. The majority of the family is still a part of the Old Colony church and we have spent the last two days hopping from one home to another, meeting people, eating good food and me listening to a lot of low German and observing what life is like here. The family we are staying with is no longer a part of the Old Colony group so this has also been very interesting. They are the ones we are here in Brazil with. I am really enjoying getting to know them. An example of the many paradoxes of life here is last night at dinner when one of my cousins pulled out there laptop and I found out that they have wi-fi set up in their house! So in addition to everyone having cell phones, here we were in a home with pretty basic hydro with women still in traditional dress checking our email and adding each other as friends on facebook.

I will reflect on this experience more once I am back in the States. For now I will stop here to let others use the internet. We are headed to the Argentinian side of the falls tomorrow and I´m pretty excited to have another day of hiking and exploring the jungle around the falls. Friday we head back to the colony for one more night, then into Asuncion for our final day before heading back to the States. I look forward to seeing many of you soon!

lap of luxury...take 2

hi again,

I just realized that I titled my last entry 'lap of luxury' and then proceeded to not write about that. After coming back to a $5 a night hostal here in Quito (which wasn't terrible....just frustrating at times - but with a lovely view from the rooftop terrace), my mother and I changed over to the local Radisson for one night. Hah! So it's been a bit of shameless luxury for the last day here. Obscenely expensive breakfast buffet, really fast internet, and over the top service at the door. I have to confess that I was loving the english movie options last night! Certainly not the way I like to travel usually, but for one night, it was fun.

Starting tonight though, I'll be returning to host family land. My mother and I will be staying with a German Mennonite family in Asuncion for our time at Mennonite World Conference. I'm starting to get excited about all the people I will get to see, and meet, at MWC. I'm expecting lots of surprises. After conference my mother, aunt, uncle and I will be visiting cousins who live in the Chaco region of Paraguay. This will be a fascinating visit as this family is from the Old Colony Mennonite tradition (although not all of them still belong to that church) and while I know a lot about this side of my family history in theory, I have very little experience with it myself. I'm looking forward to learning more about my family.

ciao!

lap of luxury

Today marks the six week anniversay of my time here in Ecuador...and also my last night here. My sister and bro-in-law left for Peru this morning and my mother and I head to Asuncion, Paraguay tomorrow night. I am increasingly amazed by many of the friends I have made here who are on long term travel treks - I have enjoyed my time immensely, but I'm starting to get tired to traveling and am starting to look forward to being back in my own house and with a kitchen to access food when I want, and what I want!



Our week at the coast was disappointing weather-wise - it was cloudy all week except for a 40 minute sunny spot one day. And of course as we were leaving on Friday, a full blue sky greeted us when we awoke. Alas. But by far the highlight of our time of traveling as a family, at least for me, was our day at sea whale watching and visiting la Isla de la Plata that I wrote about briefly last time. Phenomenal. We followed one humpback whale in particular for a while and she was really playful, slapping her fins and jumping out of the water quite a bit. But the birds were just as fascinating. The frigatas in particular where incredible - they´re the birds with a red throat-pouch thing that expands like a huge balloon during mating season in order to attract a mate. Wow.

We flew back to Quito on Friday and headed for Otavalo yesterday. It was a great day weather wise so we actually had wonderful views of Cotopaxi and Cayambe (another volcano nearby) and the rest of the mountains all the way north to Otavalo and back again.

We have discovered what a small tourist world Ecuador is as we have run into someone we 'know' at pretty much every site we've visited. Starting with our fellow guests at the first hostal in Saquisili, we have run into our hostal-mates at every point of the journey. Atests to the power of the Lonely Planet itinerary. My favourite run in though was when I ran into Aaron, a student from the school who lived with my host family as well for one week. I was just strolling down the street in Montañita after my last blog post and there we Aaron and his friend he is travelling with! wild. but somehow not surprising.

So my time in Ecuador has come to an end. I have enjoyed it, learned a lot, seen a lot and feel so blessed to have had this opportunity. I am happy to be heading into the home stretch of my journey and look forward to seeing lots of people from home in Paraguay. My next post will be from the southernmost point that I will have been thus far! Until then, take care.

internet free zone

Lo siento amigos-as! I apologize for the long pause in communication. My last few days in Quito were spent sermon preparing and then the 'end of visit see everything' craze began. And since the family trip began we've had next to no internet access. So there´s my excuse. Now for catching up!

Last days in Quito:

By the end of my four weeks of studying, I was feeling ready to be done with school. So much more to learn, well really, practice, but I had had just about enough of the subjunctive case. En serio! On the last Friday of my time at the school, a group of us headed out to check out la Mitad del Mundo, or the middle of the world. That´s right - the equatorial line. Woo! It's actually turned out to be a pretty great trip. You take a bus out of Quito and suddenly you are at this massive touristic disneyland of the equator. They've got a huge monument built up with shops and the usual tourist trappy activities but the entertaining part is that 12 years ago, thanks to GPS, they confirmed that the line is in fact inaccurate and that the indigenous marker for the equator had been correct all along (duh. turns out indigenous knowledge is actually pretty brilliant....who could have known? insert sarcasm if that wasn't clear). So in addition to disney-equator, there is also a museum built along the 'real' line, not far away.

But the highlight of the trip was taking a tour up to the crater of the volcano nearby and learning about a small farming community that is based in the crater. People live in the volcano! The village houses about 40 families - the primary way in and out is a steep climb that takes half an hour going down, and an hour up. The school teacher commutes in from Quito via. this path every day in order to teach the 15 school children. It was a fascinating visit.

Saturday in Otavalo:

My last Saturday in Quito we headed out of town to the north to visit Otavalo, one of the largest Saturday artisan markets in all of South America. We had some great views on the way there, including my first, and probably only, full view of Cotopaxi (a volcano - one of the largest in the world I believe....closest point to the sun....). The market was great, especially the food section. I bought a lot of great stuff including a hammock (I'm very excited about this...), a sweater and a nice wall hanging.

Sunday at church:

Sunday I preached at Quito Mennonite - it was actually quite a lot of fun being translated but I think it definitely made for a boring time at points. 40 minutes in all! I enjoyed getting to know the church a little better and a few of the members will be at World Conference next week as well. Mom and I will also return to church this Sunday when we´re back in Quito.

Family time:

Monday I moved into a hotel in the old town and spent some time with friends until it was late enough to head to the airport to pick up my mother. It was a late night but everyone arrived safely and we headed into our time of traveling together as a family (my mother, sister, bro-in-law). We spent a day in Quito, then headed south towards the Quilotoa loop via the avenue of volcanoes. The views from the buses have been great but we didn´t get to see any of the peaks due to clouds. It's cloudy season here so that's a little disappointing.

We went to a market in a small town called Saquisili which was much more everyday than the one in Otavalo. Fewer tourists, more interesting foods, and second hand items. Unfortunately, the animal market was closed due to an illness in some animals - that animal market is supposed to be incredibly fascinating but what can you do! We JUST made the bus we needed to our next destination and we were off into the mountains.

We had a good time in the moutains - we did a 5 hour horseback ride...yikes!....a hike to the lake of Quilotoa volcano and then headed to the coast where we still are. On the coast we´ve been staying at a beautiful lodge right on the ocean and today we´re in Montañita, a surfing town, for some time in the waves. Yesterday was our best day so far - we went whale watching and saw some incredible humpback whales really close up. Yay for being here during mating season! We toured the Isla de la Plata and saw blue footed boobied (really interesting birds), fragatas mating, and other cool animals. We snorkeled a little and saw more whales!

I need to head out to the beach now but there´s a quick and dirty update. We head back to Quito tomorrow, and then we part ways - Mom and I head to Paraguay for World Conference.

Until my next internet access....take care!