The finca

Sunday the "youth" went to go pick guavas (at least that's how I think it's spelled!) at Tannya's parents' finca.  A finca is what they call any land you own outside of town that stuff is grown on. :)  Basically a farm, I guess, although most people don't live on theirs.  I'd gone with Tannya and her husband, Iván, the weekend before and we had fun walking all around, eating a bunch of different fruits; guavas, caimitas, lemons, and I think a few others, but I don't remember their names!  They were all yummy and pretty ripe, so they invited a bunch of friends from church to go Sunday and hang out, eating fruit.  Sounds pretty boring, but it was hilarious!!!! :)  We all crammed into the back of Tannya's dad's truck to for the 10 minute ride to the finca where the entertainment started.  Her dad has it fixed up amazingly, my reaction the first time I saw it, was that it looked like Paradise, or the Garden of Eden!

The truck couldn't make it all the way to the guava trees, so we walked for a bit and got to them.  A couple of the guys had found hooks attached to looooooooong poles and brought them with us.  They started trying to pull the guavas down, from the ground.  A couple others had a different technique.  They started climbing up into the tree.  The guava trees didn't have very large limbs and the guavas were all really high up in the air, but nobody fell out, so that's good, I suppose! :)  Meanwhile, most of us were just hanging out, on the ground, watching them and picking up the guavas that fell, to eat.  One of the guys, Petete, starting a running commentary similar to the commentaries on nature channels.  It was hilarious!!  Unfortunately we didn't start taking video until after he'd mostly stopped, and I don't know how to put video on here. :)  Oh well, I'll just have to show people when I visit. :)

We also went swimming and hung out some more, then went home and changed, because we were all full of bug bites (I stopped counting after 20 on 1 leg!!!!)

Carnaval

Nope, it doesn't mean one of those school carnivals that we used to have when we were little (or was my school the only one that did that?).  Carnaval is Ecuador's take on Mardi Gras, the party before Lent starts.  I'd never celebrated it before, since Oregon's not one of the major Catholic states!  All I knew was that it was the beginning of Lent, but I didn't know anything more.  I'd heard bits and pieces here and there, people saying, oh just wait until Carnaval or that's something we do at Carnaval, but I didn't know what it was really about.  Little by little I started to figure it out and by the time it came around, I knew that it involved tossing water on people and getting everyone wet.  It sounded like the perfect kids' holiday, especially in a tropical country, where it's warm-hot year round! :)

So Carnaval weekend was coming up and I still didn't know what it was about, other than lots of water.  It was one of our 4 day weekends so I was looking forward to being lazy at home and catching up on sleep. :)  Saturday I managed to do that, then Sunday came and about a block away from my apartment, the owners of the building saw me walking to church and offered me a ride.  I accepted, I didn't really feel like walking 14 blocks, since I knew that I'd end up walking home, too. :)  They invited me to eat iampacos with them after church, so afterwards I hung out at their apartment most of the afternoon, then headed downstairs to clean.  I didn't get a picture, but this is me eating an iampaco a couple years ago, along with a close up of one. :)

During church Mayra, a friend of mine and close neighbor, had asked what I was doing Monday and Tuesday.  I told her that I had no plans and she invited me to hang out with her family for Carnaval.  So Tuesday I hung out with her family most of the day.  The original plan was to go hang out at the river, I think, but since it was raining most of the day (I joked that God was playing Carnaval, too), we stayed at their house.  I really enjoyed getting to know my neighbors some more. :)  They only live a block away from me and both Mayra and her older brother Byron go to the same church that I do.

Impressions
So, going into Carnaval I thought it was a day or two where people played with water.  After Carnaval I realized that I was partially correct. :)  It's a weekend, but starts about a week or so before and lasts for a couple weeks.  In houses it meant that kids were constantly filling up squirt guns and water, but they weren't confined to use within the house or yard. :)  Since most of the houses here have a flat roof that's used like a patio, kids (and adults) would stand on the roof, or on the balcony of the house and launch balloons at pedestrians, cars, whatever happened to be under them!  But that wasn't the extent of it!  I was sitting in my living room when I heard a truck pass by along with a lot of laughter.  I looked out the window and saw a large truck filled with people in the back.  That's not that odd of a sight here, an empty truck will often stop and pick people up on the side of the road.  What struck me was that every single person in the back was soaking wet and had buckets of water and glasses that they were using to throw water on people as they drove the streets!  Definitely a fun holiday and I almost wish I were a kid here to have huge water fights!  It reminded me of a family get together about 10 years ago and nearly everyone from my generation running around.

Cuenca

One of my good friends, in Macas, invited me to go to Cuenca with her and her husband for the weekend. I had been wanting to go, so that I could buy a modem for my computer, the only way to have internet at home, since the waiting list for a home phone is several years long. I was able to get the modem Saturday (how I'm able to post, since I'm still in Cuenca and on my own laptop!) and then today, Sunday was for playing. :) Ivonne's brother had gotten tickets for Cuenca's soccer game, finals against Quito, so we all went along. Unfortunately, we got to the stadium too late to get seats, but were able to find a spot along the fence, so we were able to see the game pretty well. I enjoyed my first ever soccer game. I'd seen games on TV before, rather inevitable in Latin America, but never in person. The game is much more entertaining in person, although, I still enjoy watching the other people's reactions about as much as I enjoy the game itself. Then, we went and watched a movie in the theater, a rarity, since Macas doesn't have a movie theater. And tonight I go back to my little town on the edge of the jungle. :) I love visiting Cuenca, it's an amazing city, with Incan ruins, buildings hundreds of years old and thousands or millions of red roofs and adobe walls all over, but it's too big for me to live in. For living in a place, I much prefer a smaller town, like Macas. Well, I was going to post pictures, but for some reason it won't let me right now, so once again, I'm without pictures! Hopefully soon.

Youth Group

Saturday I went to youth group for the first time in several weeks. The past Saturdays I had either been out of town, sick or I didn't look at my watch until after 7:30, when the service starts at 7:30 and it takes 20 minutes to walk there! I'd been wanting to go for the past few weeks because they started something new. In the past, the youth group service would consist of some singing and then someone talking, with people anywhere from 14 on up to mid-30s. There weren't many my age who went because it was a bit awkward being included in the same group as teenagers, especially for those who worked at school, since many of the kids in youth group are also students at Emanuel. Well, a few weeks ago, the church leadership decided to, after the singing time was over, to split the group into 2, the teens stay in the gym and those 20 and up have their own group time. Last night there was about 20 of us in the jovenes adultos' (young adults) group and I know of others who fit into that age category, but who weren't there last night! It was neat to have that time to share a bit of life with people around my age. :) From what I understand, it took a number of young adults talking with the church leadership for it to come about, but it's happened. :) So that was fun and I was getting ready to walk home by myself, since the 2 people that live near me weren't going to their houses when several guys started convincing everyone to go hang out in the park. Nearly everyone agreed to go to Parque Proaño, which is more of a scenic paved path in between 2 streets with some benches than a park like I'm used to in the States. It was really funny to turn around and watch the group come, because there was nearly 50 of us, in a loooooong line of groups of 2-4 people, so the line lasted about 2 or 3 blocks! When we got to Parque Proaño, the guys organizing it said that we should go to the main park, the plaza in front of the cathedral, instead, so off we go again. We got to the park and found an open area that had a knee-high cement wall running around most of it and everyone sat down and started talking. Well, then one of the guys, Petete (not a clue as to how he got that nickname, but that's what everyone calls him), decided to organize an impromptu theater production of David and Goliath. Basically he would tell the story and whoever he indicated had to act out that portion. It was very much a comedy because the first person he chose was to play David and happened to be the tallest and oldest (I think) guy in the group. David was supposed to be watching over a couple adolescent sheep, with the help of a palm branch, which I think doubled as a shepard's staff and a flute, which led the sheep to start dancing around. :) The next scene had Goliath come onto the stage. He chose a quite small and young teen to be Goliath, at which everyone, including the poor kid, doubled over in laughter. :) At this point I was really missing my camera!! Although it was pretty dark, I don't know how well the pictures would have turned out, but it was hilarious! The rest of us got into the drama now, with half being the Philistines and the other half the Israelites. Then David got called back, to come fight Goliath and ended up with a baseball cap for a helmet, a shirt for armor and the palm branch again for the sword. At first he forgot that it was supposed to be heavy, but after a few reminders, he started drooping under the “weight”. Then we had to go to a commercial break because “David”'s phone rang. :) David then got rid of the armor and started looking for the small bag and slingshot and ended up using my purse and sweatshirt. It was hilarious to watch Goliath become more and more dramatic as time went on, in the production, and he ended up dying quite dramatically. After the theater was over, they took up a collection and bought crackers and pop and played Pinocchio dice (Simon Says) Extreme, although it wasn't that much more difficult than what I torture my students with. :) Although, instead of getting out, and having a winner, if you mess up, you have to pay a penance, which in this case, ended up usually being some form of barking (again, not a clue as to why). My stomach hurt, as we were walking home, from laughing so hard! I'm rather curious, though, as to what the other people in the park were thinking of us. It must have been quite a sight, to see 40 some odd teens and young adults making fools of themselves and putting on a comedy based on the Bible! :) I would see people walk by, look at us and hang around for awhile before walking off. There was even a truck that parked behind some of the kids, with some gradeschoolers in the back, who proceeded to sit on the cab roof to watch the performance! It was definitely one of the more fun nights I've had! :) I'm really going to half to remember my camera all of the time, because I never know when something random like this will happen.