This will be the final post in my Colombia series. There will be no real connection between all these little blurbs, and it will irritate me that I can’t organize it, but I’ll have to get over that. These facts I’ll be sharing are relevant only to the areas we worked in, unless noted otherwise.
Ice cream is huge there. Almost every little store that sells food (and some that don’t) sells ice cream. In the mall, you can stand in any given place and spot at least one ice cream place. At the bigger mall, you can always spot at least two. And it’s good ice cream, too.
The garbage trucks and not the ice cream trucks play the music we associate with ice cream here in the U.S.
There are two ways to rank the affluence of a person by their home: their roof and their walls. Very well-off people have concrete roofs. Everyone else has corrugated metal. Fiberglass panels with the metal serve as sky lights in nicer houses. Bolts hold the roof tight in better houses, while bricks and rocks serve the purpose in worse houses. The best houses are made of bricks covered in concrete and painted bright colors. Minus colors is worse, then minus the concrete layer, and the worst is a house made of boards or corrugated metal tacked and tied together with tarps over the gaps.
Black coffee is sometimes referred to as “la tinta,” which literally means ink.
The most commonly eaten meats are chicken and beef.
Complex carbs are responsible for most of their diet. Potatoes, plantains, yucca, and rice are the most common, but pasta can also be found.
Fruit typically comes from street vendors who bring in their goods from their farms every day in trucks that we would consider valuable antiques.
Their hot chocolate is stronger and a touch more bitter than ours. I like it a lot more.
When they make fruit juice, they take the fruit, remove leaves or stems, stick it in a blender, add a bit of water, and blend it all up. It adds a whole new dimension of texture to your juice experience.
There are stray dogs all over the place. You can walk one block and see a dozen. They ignore you if you ignore them. From what I can tell, they live off of garbage and the occasional rat. At night they like to bark endlessly.
At church they have a few customary question and response things they use at the beginning of a service or whenever they need to get people's attention. It goes like this: "Que vive?" "Christo!" "Y su nombre es?" "Gloria!" It translates to this: "Who lives?" "Christ!" "And what is his name?" "Glorious!" It's neat to hear everyone shout the answers.
The day starts when the sun comes up. At 5:30 am there are already people up and about, mariachi music playing from windows, and stores open.
Few people have cars, but the ones who do drive aggressively. As do the motorcycles, taxis, buses, and trucks. Traffic is insane down there. Only the brave can manage to get anywhere.
Nobody has room for a garden, but house plants are popular, especially geraniums.
When someone can afford to paint their house, they use bright colors and patterns. Most of the patterns feature diamonds, sometimes with circles.
All doors and windows have metal gratings to reduce theft. These gratings come in all sort of designs and patterns from rectangles to rays to flowers. They add charm to any home.
Their Coke is made with cane sugar and is therefore superior in taste to American Coke. Even I, who am not well acquainted with any sort of pop, recognized this.
Chickens roam the city, like the dogs, but in lesser quantities. They can be found on roofs, unlike the dogs, and are noisy in the morning rather than at night.
It is common for friends, especially females, to greet each other with a kiss on the cheek.
When you say hello at church, "Dios bendiga" is the key phrase. It means "God bless you."
Saturday, July 31, 2010
I'm back!
Today marks the end of my semi-internet fast. As you can see, my blog has undergone some aesthetic changes. There's no guarantee that I'll keep the current layout. In fact, I can almost guarantee that it will changing fairly frequently. With so many new options and none that strike me as absolutely perfect, I'll be cycling through various backgrounds depending on my mood and whatnot. At the moment I'm thinking I will loosely tie the blog's feel to the seasons, but there will probably be days or weeks in there when I choose something completely unrelated.
Tomorrow I will start posting one entry a day of things I typed while I was off the blog. I currently have five book reviews, three question-based entries, and seven descriptions of travel adventures lined up for sharing. It is important to note that I will be dating them based on when I would have posted them, so you'll have to scroll past this entry to get to the new ones until I catch up.
Tomorrow I will start posting one entry a day of things I typed while I was off the blog. I currently have five book reviews, three question-based entries, and seven descriptions of travel adventures lined up for sharing. It is important to note that I will be dating them based on when I would have posted them, so you'll have to scroll past this entry to get to the new ones until I catch up.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Colombia: Tourist Days
Our three VBS and construction days were flanked by two days of touristy stuff. On Monday we visited Monserrate and the largest mall and South America, and on Friday we went to the Salt Cathedral and a smaller mall.
For those of us who went on the trip two years ago, this was our second time at Monserrate. Monserrate is a chapel perched atop the highest point in Bogota. It has beautiful gardens, charming architecture, and a spectacular view of the massive city of Bogota. I loved it last time, and it was no less exciting to me this time around. To get up to the chapel, you ride the Funicular, a cable car sort of thing that you stand in as you head up the steep mountainside. At the top, we were given free rein to wander as we wished. I looked around at the scenery for a while and then headed to the alley full of vendors. I bought three pairs of earrings and a purse. I’ve decided to downgrade purse sizes. My old purse consistently weighed about ten pounds. I couldn’t carry it at Purdue along with my book-bag, or it would give me back and shoulder problems. My new purse is less than half the capacity. It holds the bare necessities (from my point of view) from my old purse. I still have the other one, and thanks to the fact that I kept its contents compartmentalized into pouches I can quickly switch back to it if the occasion calls for my characteristic Mary Poppins purse. We got a group picture, rode back down in the Funicular, and waited for our bus. We were waiting next to a man with a saddled llama. He could tell that we were amused by his llama, so he let all of us who were interested take turns sitting on the llama. We finished right about when the bus arrived.
The mall wasn’t terribly exciting to me. I don’t much care for malls in the U.S., and this one wasn’t much different. It was well-designed and decorated though, I must say. My dad and brother weren’t too excited by it either, so after I helped Bill and Keri order from Dunkin’ Donuts and ordered ice cream for the three of us, we went back outside and sat near a fountain until it was time to go.
After our three days of work, we took another day off to leave the city and visit El Cathedral de Sal in the neighboring city of Zipaquira. The Salt Cathedral is built into a salt mine. Everything is carved into the salt and is completely made of salt (except for a few places where granite or marble were used to reinforce the floor). It is comprised of fourteen “chapels” representing the fourteen stages of the cross, according to Catholic tradition. At each stage is a sculpture involving a cross and the surrounding salt symbolizing the events of that stage. We were led through the cathedral by an English-speaking Colombian man who seemed to have learned his English from someone from Australia. He was not only informative, but also incredibly entertaining - even more entertaining than he intended to be. It was a beautiful place. While some stopped at the coffee shop at the end of the tour (after all, there is no other coffee shop in the world farther beneath the surface than the one there), I set off to take pictures.
After the Salt Cathedral, we drove to another mall smaller than the first. We ate lunch there, and then I sat down and read. I had become very dehydrated and was starting to feel dizzy with an insanely fast pulse. Fortunately I had brought both a book and a water bottle in my purse, so once I sat down and drank some I started to feel better. The drive back was long, but we passed through some beautiful countryside areas and colorful urban regions. Colombia is a beautiful country.
For those of us who went on the trip two years ago, this was our second time at Monserrate. Monserrate is a chapel perched atop the highest point in Bogota. It has beautiful gardens, charming architecture, and a spectacular view of the massive city of Bogota. I loved it last time, and it was no less exciting to me this time around. To get up to the chapel, you ride the Funicular, a cable car sort of thing that you stand in as you head up the steep mountainside. At the top, we were given free rein to wander as we wished. I looked around at the scenery for a while and then headed to the alley full of vendors. I bought three pairs of earrings and a purse. I’ve decided to downgrade purse sizes. My old purse consistently weighed about ten pounds. I couldn’t carry it at Purdue along with my book-bag, or it would give me back and shoulder problems. My new purse is less than half the capacity. It holds the bare necessities (from my point of view) from my old purse. I still have the other one, and thanks to the fact that I kept its contents compartmentalized into pouches I can quickly switch back to it if the occasion calls for my characteristic Mary Poppins purse. We got a group picture, rode back down in the Funicular, and waited for our bus. We were waiting next to a man with a saddled llama. He could tell that we were amused by his llama, so he let all of us who were interested take turns sitting on the llama. We finished right about when the bus arrived.
The mall wasn’t terribly exciting to me. I don’t much care for malls in the U.S., and this one wasn’t much different. It was well-designed and decorated though, I must say. My dad and brother weren’t too excited by it either, so after I helped Bill and Keri order from Dunkin’ Donuts and ordered ice cream for the three of us, we went back outside and sat near a fountain until it was time to go.
After our three days of work, we took another day off to leave the city and visit El Cathedral de Sal in the neighboring city of Zipaquira. The Salt Cathedral is built into a salt mine. Everything is carved into the salt and is completely made of salt (except for a few places where granite or marble were used to reinforce the floor). It is comprised of fourteen “chapels” representing the fourteen stages of the cross, according to Catholic tradition. At each stage is a sculpture involving a cross and the surrounding salt symbolizing the events of that stage. We were led through the cathedral by an English-speaking Colombian man who seemed to have learned his English from someone from Australia. He was not only informative, but also incredibly entertaining - even more entertaining than he intended to be. It was a beautiful place. While some stopped at the coffee shop at the end of the tour (after all, there is no other coffee shop in the world farther beneath the surface than the one there), I set off to take pictures.
After the Salt Cathedral, we drove to another mall smaller than the first. We ate lunch there, and then I sat down and read. I had become very dehydrated and was starting to feel dizzy with an insanely fast pulse. Fortunately I had brought both a book and a water bottle in my purse, so once I sat down and drank some I started to feel better. The drive back was long, but we passed through some beautiful countryside areas and colorful urban regions. Colombia is a beautiful country.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Colombia: Vacation Bible School
We did three days of vacation Bible school, one in each of the churches we helped at. The fun would commence around 9:00 AM and go until noon when we would send them off with a lunch of noodles with chicken, and then pick back up at 2:00 and go to 5:00 when we sent them off with some sort of snack. All of these times are very approximate, of course. We would start with singing, move to the lesson, disperse for crafts, games, and face-painting, and then reconvene to close and give out food.
El Paraiso
Day one was at El Paraiso. A woman named Vivian sang some songs with them, and then my dad and I taught them the Hallelu song. Jonathon taught the parable of the lost sheep, and then Raqchell helped them memorize a verse from the relevant scripture passage in Spanish. Then they split off to go play games outside or do crafts or face-painting inside. The craft for the morning was making sheep with paper, cotton balls, and googly eyes. We only had six bottles of glue, so getting glue to everyone was a challenge. Eventually Angela (July and Didier’s mom) went upstairs and got some communion cups to put glue in. Then the kids just spread it around with their fingers. It was messy, but it worked. Everyone came back together around 11:30 to close out the morning session. We sang some more songs, did the memory verse a few more times, and then fed the kids lunch.
A few hours later we repeated the process, except that the lesson was about storing your treasures in heaven and the craft was decorating treasure chests and the snack was ice cream. It took a while to track down all the markers and glue, but the craft seemed less chaotic than in the morning.
Overall, this was our most hectic day. It was at the biggest church of the three and the kids didn’t have school that day (it was Colombia’s independence day), so we had a lot a lot of kids. This group also had a wider and older range of ages than any of the other churches. Combine older kids with relatively good living conditions, and you have more energy than you know what to do with. Since there were older kids there, we got to interact with them on more of an individual basis. I sat with some of the 8-10 year old range girls and learned a hand game and got to know a good number of them well enough to know their names and personalities.
Los Alpes
The activities of the day were much the same on the first and second days. Again we started with songs, a story, and a Bible verse and then split off for games, crafts, and face painting. There were a lot of younger kids, so we had to help more directly with the crafts. We only gave glue to the school age kids. We went around with the other bottles to add glue for the preschoolers. We added bubbles to the mix for kids who weren’t big enough to go around the corner to the playground where the other games were happening. After sending them off with lunch, a handful of the oldest kids stuck around for a chalk war. The boys were sort of vicious, especially the one who claimed to know karate, but it was good fun.
After lunch was the second session about treasures in heaven. I added “Yo Tengo Gozo” to my repertoire of Spanish VBS songs. They didn’t need nearly as much help decorating their treasure chests as they did making their sheep, so I got to roam with my camera. Fredo was present this time and sat himself over by the face painters to irritate Rachel. She and Brooke got pretty good at disappearing without him noticing. At the end we sent them off with some juice and a slice of pound cake for each.
VBS at Los Alpes was relatively calm but busy. It was calm because about half of our attendees were preschool-age daycare kids from around the corner, and a lot of those little kids were malnourished and lacked energy. They were adorable and easy to work with, but it was very sad to see how lethargic they were. They didn’t even make much of a sound (except for the few that cried), let alone move often.
Luciera
And now for something completely different. At Luciera, we only had VBS in the morning, but we still did both lessons. We did the lessons and crafts in a room with little plastic tables and chairs. First we sang and learned about the lost sheep. Then everyone did the craft all at once. Once they finished their craft, they could go out in the hallway and get their face painted. When everyone had finished, we all walked to the playground a block away to play for a little bit. We had bubbles, chalk, frisbees, and beach balls. When we came back inside we sang some more songs and did the second lesson and craft. We fed them lunch, and that was all.
At Luciera it felt like we were running a pre-school for the morning. All but one of the children were in the three-six year age range. We all sat at colorful plastic chairs at colorful plastic tables while each adult worked with a small table of cheerful, chatty little children. We held hands in long chains on the way to the playground and giggled and laughed at bubbles and beach balls. It was a relaxing way to end our VBS week. In the afternoon, I got to wind down even more sitting around reading and playing cards.
El Paraiso
Day one was at El Paraiso. A woman named Vivian sang some songs with them, and then my dad and I taught them the Hallelu song. Jonathon taught the parable of the lost sheep, and then Raqchell helped them memorize a verse from the relevant scripture passage in Spanish. Then they split off to go play games outside or do crafts or face-painting inside. The craft for the morning was making sheep with paper, cotton balls, and googly eyes. We only had six bottles of glue, so getting glue to everyone was a challenge. Eventually Angela (July and Didier’s mom) went upstairs and got some communion cups to put glue in. Then the kids just spread it around with their fingers. It was messy, but it worked. Everyone came back together around 11:30 to close out the morning session. We sang some more songs, did the memory verse a few more times, and then fed the kids lunch.
A few hours later we repeated the process, except that the lesson was about storing your treasures in heaven and the craft was decorating treasure chests and the snack was ice cream. It took a while to track down all the markers and glue, but the craft seemed less chaotic than in the morning.
Overall, this was our most hectic day. It was at the biggest church of the three and the kids didn’t have school that day (it was Colombia’s independence day), so we had a lot a lot of kids. This group also had a wider and older range of ages than any of the other churches. Combine older kids with relatively good living conditions, and you have more energy than you know what to do with. Since there were older kids there, we got to interact with them on more of an individual basis. I sat with some of the 8-10 year old range girls and learned a hand game and got to know a good number of them well enough to know their names and personalities.
Los Alpes
The activities of the day were much the same on the first and second days. Again we started with songs, a story, and a Bible verse and then split off for games, crafts, and face painting. There were a lot of younger kids, so we had to help more directly with the crafts. We only gave glue to the school age kids. We went around with the other bottles to add glue for the preschoolers. We added bubbles to the mix for kids who weren’t big enough to go around the corner to the playground where the other games were happening. After sending them off with lunch, a handful of the oldest kids stuck around for a chalk war. The boys were sort of vicious, especially the one who claimed to know karate, but it was good fun.
After lunch was the second session about treasures in heaven. I added “Yo Tengo Gozo” to my repertoire of Spanish VBS songs. They didn’t need nearly as much help decorating their treasure chests as they did making their sheep, so I got to roam with my camera. Fredo was present this time and sat himself over by the face painters to irritate Rachel. She and Brooke got pretty good at disappearing without him noticing. At the end we sent them off with some juice and a slice of pound cake for each.
VBS at Los Alpes was relatively calm but busy. It was calm because about half of our attendees were preschool-age daycare kids from around the corner, and a lot of those little kids were malnourished and lacked energy. They were adorable and easy to work with, but it was very sad to see how lethargic they were. They didn’t even make much of a sound (except for the few that cried), let alone move often.
Luciera
And now for something completely different. At Luciera, we only had VBS in the morning, but we still did both lessons. We did the lessons and crafts in a room with little plastic tables and chairs. First we sang and learned about the lost sheep. Then everyone did the craft all at once. Once they finished their craft, they could go out in the hallway and get their face painted. When everyone had finished, we all walked to the playground a block away to play for a little bit. We had bubbles, chalk, frisbees, and beach balls. When we came back inside we sang some more songs and did the second lesson and craft. We fed them lunch, and that was all.
At Luciera it felt like we were running a pre-school for the morning. All but one of the children were in the three-six year age range. We all sat at colorful plastic chairs at colorful plastic tables while each adult worked with a small table of cheerful, chatty little children. We held hands in long chains on the way to the playground and giggled and laughed at bubbles and beach balls. It was a relaxing way to end our VBS week. In the afternoon, I got to wind down even more sitting around reading and playing cards.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Colombia: a Few Key People
I didn’t know whether to group Mark and Theresa with the team or with Colombia people, but I’ve decided to put them here. Theresa is a Colombian, so that works, and Mark lived there for a while, and they weren’t exactly part of our NHCC team, so I think they fit here better. Without further ado, here are some of the people we were around the most. They are listed in alphabetical order by first name.
Alejandra is the middle daughter in the preacher’s family. She is reserved, and polite, unlike her younger sister. Her goal is to learn English well enough to move to America. She hopes to go to school here at the very least, and hopefully find a job and live here permanently.
Andrew is an interesting character. He’s 27 (not 22, like he told us on the shuttle ride away from the airport) and is well-versed in American music. It seems that every time we go, he will pick a new American girl to be attracted to. Last time it was Katie Zalar (who he called Jessica). This time, once he realized “Jessica” wouldn’t be there, I was chosen. That was rather awkward.
Ashlee the red is a little girl with bright red hair. Her mom helps with the kids at church, so she was around us a lot. She is adorable and she knows it. She knows exactly how to act to catch and keep attention. She’s a lot of fun.
Ashlee the not so red is a girl from El Paraiso who does not have red hair, but she is friends with Ashlee the red. Her mom sings at church. Last time we were in Colombia, I sat next to Ashlee during one of the church services, and she taught me some words in Spanish and laughed at me for not being able to roll by rr's.
Didier is quite the little stinker. He is 12 years old, I believe, but he acts like he's eight or nine. He likes to annoy people. He called us fat, ugly, and stupid in English and Spanish, and added a gwop every now and again. I got to drop an insect on his head and make him squeal. That was pretty fun.
Francisco mostly worked with the guys at the construction site, so I didn’t get to know him well. He took a while to get comfortable with us, but by the end of the week he was laughing and joking with us. He constantly helps at the church. Part of his motivation is the fact that his wife had left him without explanation a few months before, and he is trying to keep himself occupied to avoid going insane.
Fredo is a kid we spent a lot of time around last time we were in Colombia. He asked us to call him Freddie. He was a sort of shy, active kid, probably 11 or 12 years old. Now he has grown up, and asks people to call him Sebastien. Who knows why. He took a liking to Rachel, much to her embarrassment. Instead of running around playing games with us like last time, he had his hair constantly slicked back and avoided getting dirty.
Gloria was one of our returning cooks. She’s a sweet, emotional, older woman with a huge family. And she cooks fantastically. It was a joy to be around her all week again.
Joanna is one of the moms in the church. She helped cook for the kids and VBS and organized almost all of our basketball games. Despite the fact she is only about 4’ 5”, she is quite skilled at basketball. She has an adorable little daughter named Valentina who we called Luna.
July is a girl at El Paraiso. She’s probably 15 or 16 years old. Last time we became very close friends, but we didn’t see each other often enough this time to get far past the awkward getting-used-to-one-another-again stage. She made the two bracelets I always wear now. Last time she gave me a ring, but this year I passed it on to another girl, much to my immediate regret.
Liana is close to my age. She mostly sticks around Los Alpes, but is sometimes found at El Paraiso. She sings and plays guitar and piano at church. She is learning English and likes to try to talk to me in English. She was the first of the Colombian girls to find me on Facebook, so I’ve been in touch with her since this past winter.
Mark is a CCU graduate who was a missionary in Bogota for fifteen or twenty years. NHCC was one of his sponsor churches, and that’s how we got the link to Colombia. When he worked in Bogota, he helped plant and preach at two churches, but his goal was to eventually put them in the hands of the native Colombians. Five years ago he and his family went moved back to the U.S. and he has visited a few times.
Martha was another returning cook from last time. She’s younger and full of vigor. Her kids are Fredo, no-nonsense Paula, and the energetic but shy twins Brandon and Johann. She’s a fun person to have around.
Oscar is the preacher at all three churches we worked with. He is extremely tall for a Colombian, or for an American, even. He is not incredibly talkative until you get to know him, but from what I can tell he leads his congregations superbly. He is also the head of a wonderful family.
Patricia is Oscar’s wife. She teaches the women and children at church. She also does lots of crafts and sewing to sell and give to others. She is trying to learn English along with Alejandra. She is a lively, loving, and enthusiastic woman, and I love being around her.
The other Particia was the new cook on the team. She is quiet, but always in a good mood. At the end of the week, we learned that she was born with Down Syndrome, but had been cured. Given that Down Syndrome is a genetic anomaly, I can see no explanation for this short of a miracle. She still has some problems and will probably never learn to read, but looking at her you would never guess she had had this disease.
Samuel is Oscar’s grandson. His mom is Yennifer, Oscar's oldest daughter, but we didn’t see her enough for her to get her own blurb. Sammy is one-and-a-half, and he’s one of the most adorable kids ever. He even blows kisses when he says good-bye. He had us all wrapped around his finger for the entire week.
Teresa is Mark’s wife and a native Colombian. When she left Colombia, her goal was to avoid going back, but you see how that worked out. She helped Mark with the churches and led the women down in Bogota. As our only team member who speaks Spanish as her native language, she was an invaluable help, especially at VBS.
Valentina is Oscar’s youngest daughter. She’s Allison’s age and causes a good deal of mischief. We taught her enough English to insult people, and she’s an expert tickler. She and Luke picked on one another quite a lot, but it was in a friendly way. She hasn’t learned much English at all, so even though we spent the entire week around this crazy kid we did very little talking with her, and yet we had no trouble communicating.
Alejandra is the middle daughter in the preacher’s family. She is reserved, and polite, unlike her younger sister. Her goal is to learn English well enough to move to America. She hopes to go to school here at the very least, and hopefully find a job and live here permanently.
Andrew is an interesting character. He’s 27 (not 22, like he told us on the shuttle ride away from the airport) and is well-versed in American music. It seems that every time we go, he will pick a new American girl to be attracted to. Last time it was Katie Zalar (who he called Jessica). This time, once he realized “Jessica” wouldn’t be there, I was chosen. That was rather awkward.
Ashlee the red is a little girl with bright red hair. Her mom helps with the kids at church, so she was around us a lot. She is adorable and she knows it. She knows exactly how to act to catch and keep attention. She’s a lot of fun.
Ashlee the not so red is a girl from El Paraiso who does not have red hair, but she is friends with Ashlee the red. Her mom sings at church. Last time we were in Colombia, I sat next to Ashlee during one of the church services, and she taught me some words in Spanish and laughed at me for not being able to roll by rr's.
Didier is quite the little stinker. He is 12 years old, I believe, but he acts like he's eight or nine. He likes to annoy people. He called us fat, ugly, and stupid in English and Spanish, and added a gwop every now and again. I got to drop an insect on his head and make him squeal. That was pretty fun.
Francisco mostly worked with the guys at the construction site, so I didn’t get to know him well. He took a while to get comfortable with us, but by the end of the week he was laughing and joking with us. He constantly helps at the church. Part of his motivation is the fact that his wife had left him without explanation a few months before, and he is trying to keep himself occupied to avoid going insane.
Fredo is a kid we spent a lot of time around last time we were in Colombia. He asked us to call him Freddie. He was a sort of shy, active kid, probably 11 or 12 years old. Now he has grown up, and asks people to call him Sebastien. Who knows why. He took a liking to Rachel, much to her embarrassment. Instead of running around playing games with us like last time, he had his hair constantly slicked back and avoided getting dirty.
Gloria was one of our returning cooks. She’s a sweet, emotional, older woman with a huge family. And she cooks fantastically. It was a joy to be around her all week again.
Joanna is one of the moms in the church. She helped cook for the kids and VBS and organized almost all of our basketball games. Despite the fact she is only about 4’ 5”, she is quite skilled at basketball. She has an adorable little daughter named Valentina who we called Luna.
July is a girl at El Paraiso. She’s probably 15 or 16 years old. Last time we became very close friends, but we didn’t see each other often enough this time to get far past the awkward getting-used-to-one-another-again stage. She made the two bracelets I always wear now. Last time she gave me a ring, but this year I passed it on to another girl, much to my immediate regret.
Liana is close to my age. She mostly sticks around Los Alpes, but is sometimes found at El Paraiso. She sings and plays guitar and piano at church. She is learning English and likes to try to talk to me in English. She was the first of the Colombian girls to find me on Facebook, so I’ve been in touch with her since this past winter.
Mark is a CCU graduate who was a missionary in Bogota for fifteen or twenty years. NHCC was one of his sponsor churches, and that’s how we got the link to Colombia. When he worked in Bogota, he helped plant and preach at two churches, but his goal was to eventually put them in the hands of the native Colombians. Five years ago he and his family went moved back to the U.S. and he has visited a few times.
Martha was another returning cook from last time. She’s younger and full of vigor. Her kids are Fredo, no-nonsense Paula, and the energetic but shy twins Brandon and Johann. She’s a fun person to have around.
Oscar is the preacher at all three churches we worked with. He is extremely tall for a Colombian, or for an American, even. He is not incredibly talkative until you get to know him, but from what I can tell he leads his congregations superbly. He is also the head of a wonderful family.
Patricia is Oscar’s wife. She teaches the women and children at church. She also does lots of crafts and sewing to sell and give to others. She is trying to learn English along with Alejandra. She is a lively, loving, and enthusiastic woman, and I love being around her.
The other Particia was the new cook on the team. She is quiet, but always in a good mood. At the end of the week, we learned that she was born with Down Syndrome, but had been cured. Given that Down Syndrome is a genetic anomaly, I can see no explanation for this short of a miracle. She still has some problems and will probably never learn to read, but looking at her you would never guess she had had this disease.
Samuel is Oscar’s grandson. His mom is Yennifer, Oscar's oldest daughter, but we didn’t see her enough for her to get her own blurb. Sammy is one-and-a-half, and he’s one of the most adorable kids ever. He even blows kisses when he says good-bye. He had us all wrapped around his finger for the entire week.
Teresa is Mark’s wife and a native Colombian. When she left Colombia, her goal was to avoid going back, but you see how that worked out. She helped Mark with the churches and led the women down in Bogota. As our only team member who speaks Spanish as her native language, she was an invaluable help, especially at VBS.
Valentina is Oscar’s youngest daughter. She’s Allison’s age and causes a good deal of mischief. We taught her enough English to insult people, and she’s an expert tickler. She and Luke picked on one another quite a lot, but it was in a friendly way. She hasn’t learned much English at all, so even though we spent the entire week around this crazy kid we did very little talking with her, and yet we had no trouble communicating.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)