AWOL! Em and Chris in South America

More parade and Christmas pictures: click me!

This Christmas season has been an interesting one. We missed seeing many of you over the holidays, but we enjoyed being here.

We both love real Christmas trees. They make your whole house smell christmasy and wonderful. I thought we might have to break down and get a fake tree this year because they don’t sell pine trees here. I had seen some little fake ones before Thanksgiving, but when we went back to the store, they only had really big trees or small sparkley blue and silver ones. Both of our families have had some pretty “Charley Brown” style trees in the past, but a tree made of neon blue tinsel was a little too much for me. So, I asked around and was told they sold little Christmas trees at the flower market down town. We arrived to an abundance of roses and all kinds of tropical plants and shrubs, but nothing looked particularly like a Christmas tree except one little tree.

Could this have been what he meant? And yes, once I asked, that was the tree the lady pointed to. While it didn’t exactly have the pine aroma, it was certainly better than a fake one or even a tropical palm frond which was my second choice.

We brought it home and invited Karen (from England) and Gretel (from Australia)over to help decorate the tree and make sugar cookies. They are both teachers at the language school I work at. We all showed up the same week and have become pretty good friends. We had a great time making the cookies and giving them away. It was a perfect excuse to go over and spend time visiting some people we have met here in Cuenca. Sugar cookies are not a common treat here though, so most everyone was a little confused how to eat them. They were especially concerned with what to drink with them, coffee, tea…?

The ninth day of December celebrates the end of nine days of prayer. Our little neighborhood had a block party to commemorate the event. We live in a nice neighborhood. They had a priest come over and hold a mass in our neighbors driveway. After the mass the police marching band showed up. I think it was probably organized by the mayor who lives in the same cul de sac as us. But, all of us marched all around the neighborhood after the tubas and trumpets. People from the other houses came out to see what was going on.

After we got back we had a delicious Ecuadorian meal of chancho (a whole pig roasted over coals), rice and mote (hominy), salads and a flan type dessert. Then Papa Noel (Santa Clause) came and gave all the little kids (and some big ones – me) bags of candy and cookies. It was quite a do. We enjoyed meeting some of the neighbors we hadn’t met yet, practicing our Spanish, and teaching the neighbor kids to play Frisbee with Thandi.

In the States everywhere you go it looks, sounds and smells like Christmas. Here, they do a little bit, but not nearly so much. They don’t deck every single store out with Christmas decorations, and the most obvious difference is the lack of Christmas songs playing over and over every where we go. So, I was pretty excited when we got invited to sing Christmas carols. Linda knew me when I was a baby. She was friends with my parents. Then we moved to South Africa and she moved to Ecuador and we haven’t seen her very much since then, but she has been really great about helping us get settled here. They had many of their friends come over and practice singing Christmas carols a couple Fridays in a row and then on the 23^rd we all went to a couple of hospitals and recovery centers to sing carols to the patients there.

The whole thing was quite the cultural experience for many reasons. One problem is that no one shows up on time. So we started practicing, but then someone new would show up and we would start over again. I guess it was good for me because all the carols were in Spanish, so even if they had the same tune, the words were completely new to us. I think Chris missed his family a lot because only he and the leader of this project, Li, were able to really sing in parts. Li is Linda’s house mate. She is a therapist and runs a hot line from their home. In the middle of our practice the phone rang, so she went to answer it. She talked for a while and then came back and told us that she was just speaking with a woman named Sophia who lives alone and is suffering from severe depression and is considering suicide. Li asked where the woman lived and discovered they were in the same neighborhood. So, Li, and another man who works with her, went to Sophia’s house, picked her up and brought her back over to their house to sing Christmas carols with us. I thought, well, that would never happen in the States! I’m sure it was a struggle for her to be there and a little awkward, but at the same time the house was filled with very nice people, and singing, and dogs chasing cats and skidding down the stairs, and children beating off tempo on the drum, and brownies. Afterwards, I think her and Li had more of a chance to talk and I hope Sophia is able to start the long process of healing.

The day we actually sang was again very typical. People showing up late, going to one place and then being sent somewhere else. There were eventually about 20 of us standing in the hallway at the hospital. I felt like we were probably in the way there, but the nurses were really nice and just tried to walk around us. It was fun, but Chris and I had to leave before they were finished to go to our host families house for dinner.

In Ecuador, Christmas Eve (Buena Noche) is more important than the 25^th. They have a really big Christmas dinner that starts late in the night (around 10-11) and continues to about 2 or 3 am. The family we lived with back in September had a modified version of that on the 23^rd in Cuenca before they left to go to other places to visit other family members the next day. We were invited over to share the early Buena Noche with them. Our mama de Cuenca is an excellent cook and everything was delicious. Nothing was too unusual. The food was very similar to our Christmas or Thanksgiving dinners. They tend have a more international perspective, so I’m not sure what interesting foods might find their way to the table in a more traditionally Ecuadorian setting.

People from all over Ecuador and even the world come to Cuenca for the Pase del Nino. It is a 6 hour long Christmas parade. The highlight is a statue of baby Jesus that has been blessed by the pope and has traveled to the Holy Land. But, there are all kinds of floats and processions of local organizations and children dressed up in a variety of costumes and cultural attire.

Click here to see pictures of the parade

The culmination of our Christmas season was hosting our first Christmas dinner. We invited over all of the teachers from the school I work at who weren’t off traveling else where and a few of their Ecuadorian significant others. About 15 people came. Chris is loving that he has more time to cook here and has been experimenting and making a lot of delicious things from scratch. Everyone pitched in and brought over or helped cook their favorite side dish, so we had quite a spread. We also made stained glass cookies as per Chris’ family tradition. No one had ever made them before, but a couple people were pretty creative.

So, now we are left with some great memories and a pile of dishes in the sink.

I hope all of you had a great Christmas and that you will have a great New Years!

This has been our first post in a while, so we haven’t really told you about life in Cuenca, so after New Years I will back track a little and explain what we are doing here and how things are going other than Christmas

The Falls: Iguazu means “Great Waters” in Guarani, an indian tribe in Misiones, Argentina

Pictures of various aspects of the falls can be found here.

The last stop on our trip was Iguazu Falls in Argentina. We had been thinking of not even going there, but it turned out we had a little extra time in our trip. At this point we had decided that we were going back to Cuenca, Ecuador after all and so instead of running around trying to find work and whatnot we had a few days leisure time to spend in Buenos Aires and were also able to fit in a trip up to the falls.

It was pretty hot and muggy when we arrived. Iguazu is subtropical and it was a big change from the temperate Uruguay and Buenos Aires. There’s not much to speak of about our first day there, we just arranged tours for the next day, wandered around a bit in the town, gambled away $2 at the casino because there’s not a whole lot else to do, and then hit the sack for an early start in the morning.

The sun rose and then we were off to see the falls. Like I said before, we were considering not going to these falls since we had already seen Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. Seen one huge waterfall, you’ve seen them all right? Hah. No way. It wasn’t like Victoria Falls at all. Victoria Falls is the biggest single curtain of water in the world so there are basically one or two trails (one scenic trail and another trail that took you ‘close’ to the falls—close is a couple hundred meters and even there you get absolutely soaked, lots of fun). Iguazu Falls is very different, there are many, many, many waterfalls that all make up “the falls”. Since there are many different cascades within the park, you have to walk around quite a bit and at one point you even have to take a train to get to the top of the biggest falls. Another difference between the falls was that in Iguazu the trails themselves did not take you super-feel-the-thunder-get-soaked close to the falls. We were definitely close and it was very beautiful but we didn’t get the FEEL of the falls like we had in Zimbabwe.

Well, that’s where the boat tour comes in. We jumped into our raft, donned our life vests, and then they took us zooming up the river into the Devil’s Throat Canyon. In the canyon the falls were pounding all around us. We had found what we were unconsciously looking for, the impressive weight and majesty of the falls. We could have stayed and stared up into the roar of water for hours. The boat crew, however, had other plans. They had warned us about a shower, and so we thought oh (tee hee) we are going to get a little wet. Well. After we had seen the falls from a safe distance, took our pictures and then stored our stuff in the waterproof bags provided, they then nudged up close to one of the smaller falls. Water came pouring down on us and we all got properly wet. Thinking, well that was kind of fun and now the shower was over, we sat back, ready for the return trip. Not so fast. The boat revved up and headed into one of the coves with some of the bigger waterfalls. The pilot hit the gas and we roared straight into the biggest waterfall! The water came down so hard you could hardly breath or open your eyes. The boat was no match for the current, which quickly pushed us out back into the cove. When we had caught our breath, our pilot spun back around and headed right back in with everyone cheering the whole way. Now that’s a shower you don’t get every day.

Also, we saw a creature that I have always wanted to see ever since I read Bill Peet’s “The Wump World” (one of his books I like the best). Who would have thought that here, some twenty years later I would finally see a capybara ? (yay!) Em had read that they lived in the national park, so we had been keeping our eyes open the whole day to try and see one. But, no luck. At the end of the day we were on the train to take us back to the entrance, my capybara hopes now dashed. Suddenly, Emily grabbed my arm and I turned around to see one just sitting there, munching on some grass by the side of the tracks, calm as you please. It was also a bit of a Wump World moment, here we were steaming along in our Pollutian train that is breaking up their now greatly reduced natural world, while it is trying to just get on with its life despite the noise and bother. Sorry, little capybara L In addition to our rodent friend, we saw our first toucan. This was a great relief because we felt like such frauds with our Costa Rica toucan ornament. In every country we go, we try to get a ‘Christmas ornament’ that is representative of our experience in that country. Somehow this toucan was the only thing we came up with in Costa Rica even though we had yet to lay eyes on one. But never fear, now everything is okay, and I’m sure the toucan that we saw has family in Costa Rica….so…..close enough.

Iguazu turned out to be quite a fulfilling trip! It was a great way to end our tour in South America. We felt both sad and somewhat relieved to be completing that part of our journey and returning ‘home’ to Cuenca. Going for such a long period of time with no real place to call home can be pretty taxing. But it was oh so worth it. It is a real satisfaction to be able to look at a map of the world and have memories, images and experiences that fill and enrich an otherwise static set of lines and colors. South America isn’t just another continent to us anymore. Even though we often skimmed the surface, there are people, places, cultures and history that we can now carry with us even if we never have the chance to see visit some of the places again.

So, that’s it for now and this is the last post about the traveling/tourist portion of our trip (so sad). Crazy that’s it over! A big thanks to all of you for your encouragement and comments. We will be sure to include an update soon about our life in Cuenca: how things are going here, what our vague plans are for the next eight months and so forth. Until then, ciao!