Day of the Dead

What a gloomy title for what was once really a delightful holiday - honoring the saints of old. It's been so interesting being back in a Catholic country but one with really different traditions than I grew up with. The people here are so much more into their traditions for traditions' sake. Whereas in Austria on any given Sunday you might be lucky to find 20 attendees in an enormous church meant to seat 400, here the churches are actually packed. Granted I'm attending an evangelical church, but they have a room of 300 chairs, 5 services each weekend, and still people are standing in the aisles. On Sundays, here, you go to church.

Back to the Day of the Dead. In Austria, it was All Souls and All Saints Day, and people flocked to the cemeteries to light candles and lay flowers on the graves of their loved ones. Papa and I used to love walking among the eerily lit tombstones partly because it was a beautiful sight and partly because it reminded us to pray for the spiritual darkness of the land. God isn't dead. He's alive, and we can pray directly to him!

I have yet to discover exactly how they celebrate here, but so far, I know they drink Colada Morada and eat Guaguas (pronounced "wah-wahs"). Colada Morada is a berry drink made of blueberries, strawberries, pineapple, and some other unfamiliar ones. It's terrific! The guaguas are basically little bread loaves in the shape of peolple, usually with some kind of filling, and frosting decoration on top. Here was HCJB's little celebration this morning. We had dancers, a music group, and free Colada Moradas and Guaguas. They even had a giant guagua on the wall. I'm also trying to include a video - we'll see if it works.

Initiation or Outright Hazing?

At the beginning of last week, I started hearing whispers around campus about a baptism. I got really excited because baptisms are one of my favorite things in the world, even though I've never made it through a single one without crying, but that's a different blog entry. As it turned out, they weren't talking about real baptisms, but the traditional initiation the upper classmen do to the 1st years. I thought, "This could be fun," so I made sure I brought my camera on Friday. It was nothing like I could have ever imagined! If anyone had watched from the outside, they would've been on the phone with the Geneva Convention human rights activists. It was torture!

First, they told all the 1st years that they had a huge all-subject comprehensive test in the library at noon. And they really did hand out a mock test and let them sweat for about 20 minutes. Then they ambushed them and duct-taped their hands and plastered over their faces.


Here's Sara setting up and a shot of all their shoes tied onto the balcony.


After the ambush n the library, they dragged them along a plastic slide that was covered in water, oil, and other goop and into a bucket at the end full of icky water. Then, as you can see, they threw pieces of paper all over them, smeared orange food coloring on their arms and continued to occasionally dowse them with water and talcum powder while they read them "their rights." Then came the line up, so they said, for a picture, but really they dumped more buckets of water on them, during which, I must say, I got a great shot of my poor student Jaime getting it full in the face.


It was hard to watch because I have almost all the 1st years, so they were MY kids! Here's my student David with his face still plastered.

Fortunately, they all took it with much more grace than I ever could have, and when all was said and done, and the duct tape was removed, they were apparently still friends. Here are Angie and Carolina.

Crazy stuff!!!

Cheater cheater, pumpkin eater

My friend thinks I'm cursed. I taught three semesters of freshmen at Northwestern College and had one plagiarized paper each semester. Of course, all three of them vehemently denied it, and I'm such a push-over that I let them off the hook easy, and they all still passed their classes (even if they failed that paper). Well, here I am, still at a Christian college, and I got two word-for-word identical homeworks yesterday. It's just not fair. Don't they know how absolutely sick they make me feel when I have to confront them and punish them? I seriously will lose sleep over these cases (well, not yesterday's homework so much as those plagiarized papers), but I just don't get it. I cheated one time in 5th grade, and the trauma of being caught has stuck with me for the past 17 years!

I did have a helpful conversation with a missionary today who's taught this class before as a sub, and she said it's cultural. They honestly don't view it as cheating but as "sharing." She said, in fact, some students argued with her that it was the Christian thing to do. Flabbergasted, she asked how lying could be the Christian thing, and they'd never considered it like that. They saw it as helping out your fellow man in need. Oh well, I still have so much to learn.

On another note, I really like to eat pumpkins. I'm missing pumpkins right now.

The CCC

The school I'm working at is called the CCC, short for Christian Center of Communications. There are 6 full-time staff (2 admin and 4 admin/profs) plus a whole handful of part-time profs, some of which I see and some of which are only names to me. Currently, the enrollment is 28 students, divided into 3 classes (they graduate with an Associate's degree)., and students get to choose from 3 majors: journalism, TV, and radio. In the first picture, you can see 8 of the 10 freshmen, most of whom I have in my classes - though some are in Beginners, some in Intermediate, and some in Advanced. The second picture was from graduation. I actually didn't know any of those students, but I still got to be in the student-prof picture. Scary! I'm a professor!!!



The Northwestern College president and his wife were down for graduation, so I got to tag along on all the fun field trips they made, exploring Ecuador. Mary (standing next to me) is the interim director of the CCC and a great friend already, even if she's also my boss. Here we are in a hideaway garden at an old resort that used to belong to the president of Ecuador.


On Sunday of that weekend (seems forever ago already), we went to a place called Mindo which is smack dab in a rainforest, most famous for containing every species of hummingbird known to man. But I found the vegetation to be just as spectacular. Here are some pictures of some of the cool things we saw, of which I don't remember a single name. The beetle was the only gross thing.

I really wanted to take one of those shelter leaves with me, but the tour guide wouldn't let me. He was picky like that. Guess that's all for now. Ciao chicas!

Exploring Quito and volcanoes

I'm so behind! But I guess that's good for you because you'll only get highlights rather than my babbling on and on. First picture: this is what I fall asleep to every night and wake up to every morning. The airport is so close and the planes so low that I can often read the company name on the tail. Fun fun!

This last Friday was a holiday. Actually, Thursday was the real day, but the government gave everyone Friday off. I thought it was a good idea. My friends Serene, Adeline, and I went hiking down Pululahua Crater. It was like a lost world down there, completely cut off from the rest of the world other than via the steep path we hiked down. Those who live down in the crater (it's extremely fertile farmland) have to use donkeys or horses to bring all their supplies in and their goods out. In the second picture you can see a man we passed heading out, and look at the steep cliffs ahead of him. That's what we hiked down.


Melon patch growing on top of a roof:

Of course, hiking down wasn't the hard part. After lunch at the only restaurant down in the crater, we had to hike back up! Serene (in the red) is pretty used to hiking, but Adeline and I had to stop about every three minutes and catch our breath. That incline plus the altitude just didn't make for ideal hiking conditions. Well, Serene thought so, but we don't ask her anymore.


These pictures go back to the previous weekend. Adeline took me downtown to the historical center of Quito. There are tons of hidden courtyards, nooks, and crannies that are going to make it one of my favorite old towns, I can already tell. In the second picture, you can see the two towers of the Basilica, Quito's biggest church. They only have about 100 ornate Catholic ones. The picture that has me with the view was taken from the restaurant where we had an afternoon snack before the rains hit. (They come almost without fail every afternoon.)



Finally, here are more pictures of Quito from the top of Mt. Pichincha. Look at that wind! (No, I didn't grow antennas out the side of my head.) We took the cable car up to the top around 12,000 feet for a gorgeous view of the entire valley. In the second picture, you can see not only part of the mountain but half the antennas. HCJB Radio owns the two tallest, but unfortunately you can't see them in this picture because they're also the two skinniest and don't show up. The clump of "whiter" clouds in the distance is hovering over Mt. Cayambe, which is much higher than Pichincha. I know because it has snow on it.


Anyway, I'm at work and should probably get back to it. Anyone convinced they need to come for a visit yet? I'm ready!