god with us

in Ecuador Christmas Eve is the big day.  Christmas itself, not a big deal.  Christmas eve you have to go out early if you need to buy anything because shops will close and no one will be around, but Christmas day the stores were open when I went out to buy eggs for breakfast. 

Christmas eve at 7:00 we went over to our friend and neighbor Elizabeth´s for dinner.  her husband Omar is one of our guards and he´s working nights this month so he wasn´t home and she would have spent christmas alone if we hadn´t gone over.  we had baked chicken (baked in the panaderia oven as she doesn´t have an oven in her house, the panaderia rents out their oven for people who want to bake things) and rice with cream and corn and a salad which had mayo on it which I managed to eat.  for dessert we had pan de pasqual (people refer to christmas as pasqual, which I don´t understand cause I thought that was easter) and hot chocolate.  Elizabeth is our age and is very  nice and has a lot of good stories about her life and I like her. 

at 9 we went to christmas eve mass.  we had to stand in the back because we got there right at 9 and it was packed, obviously.  everyone goes to mass on christmas eve and they bring their baby jesus out of their nativity set to be blessed by the priest.  Jesus is dressed in really fancy clothes, jeweled or sequined satin or velvet, and is in a really nice bed or lying on a bed of flowers and often wearing a fabulous crown.  not realistic.  most of the time, he´s blond.  I do know some ecua christmas carols now though from our Valdivia Christmas program so I can sing along. 

after mass we went home and wished that we hadn´t made plans for a second dinner at 11 because we were still so full.  However, we had.  We went over to Wellington and Soraya´s house for dinner and we ate with their family and it was fun.  we´re really good friends with them and it was great to share christmas with them.  we had roast pork and cola rice and mote and corn and tomato and onion.  and aji de queso.  for dessert there was hot chocolate and really good chocolate cake (though we literally could not fit more food in for fear of throwing up so we took the cake with us and had it for breakfast the next day).  we left their house at 2, right when they were moving the tables to the side of the room for the dancing.  we were too full and tired to dance. 

I wasn´t hungry for two days afterwards.  and we´re doing it again tonight for new years!  today I didn´t eat lunch though so I think I´m ready.  Christmas was good though.  I really enjoyed spending it with the three women in my community and with our neighbors.  On Christmas day we had Arbolito over for brunch and made coffee cake.  We went caroling at Damien House for the patients and spent time there, and then Sister Annie had us over to her house for a big italian meal which almost made Lauren cry because that´s what Lauren´s family does at christmas.  After dinner we sang christmas carols together and it was fun. 

so merry christmas!  happy new year!  I´m going to upload pictures from Cuenca as soon as I can, who knows when that´ll be.

christmas!

we are travelling over christmas break; Lauren and I are in Cuenca doing Cuencay things and the other girls are in the rainforest being smelly. 

our hostel has free internet and water and hot water and free breakfast for $11 a night, which is pretty awesome.  it´s also centrally located so whenever we need to run home for more water or a bathroom we can easily, since we´re not really leaving the historic district.  later this week (tomorrow) we´re hoping to do this hiking through indiginous communities thing and maybe camp.  or else we´ll go to Cajas a nature preserve and do hiking there.  we´ll see. 

I needed to post though, as my sister sent me fingerless gloves for christmas and at the time I wondered why, considering duran is never cold, but I packed them for this trip as in the mountains it is cold (Lauren and I basically slept outside the first night in Ingapirca and it felt like fall camping weather).  I was wearing them around last night when Lauren and I were walking through the market of crafty items, people in the mountains make scarves and gloves and coats and such warm things.  One woman stopped me to tell me that my gloves were tan bonita, and another woman stopped me and asked to see one.  She examined my glove for a good while and told me it was super neat, so any day now fingerless gloves could show up in the street market in Cuenca.  I´m sure they´re the next big Ecua thing, so thanks Cali!

so much!

first of all, cousin John, I´m actually doing a one-year program in Ecuador, though for your purposes I´m not sure it matters.  just don´t be surprised when I show up at Thanksgiving next year. 

then, one of our community members went home on friday.  She´s been having a wide variety of illnesses and has gone back to the states to seen a million doctors and hopefully get sorted out.  it was all very sudden, and we´re still trying to figure out what it all means.  my house is now four people instead of five, we have to change the way we do everything and now community suddenly looks very different though.  Our community meeting after she left, we sat around and looked at each other, now sitting at different seats around the dinner table, and made a commitment to work even harder to build community and challenge each other more and like it or not we´re not giving up.  so we´re challenging each other more, which may be more than I´ve bargained for.  we´ll see. 

One of the patients at Damien House died.  I couldn´t attend the services as I was working with a retreat group and I didn´t want to make someone else stay home, but it´s really ok.  I knew him, he was an amazing person and an amazing testament to life, but I´m so happy for him now.  His death will change our Damien House experience with retreat groups, as we always made sure to visit him and sing him a song and visits to him have change countless lives, but I know that change is good and we´ll find other ways to show people the problems that arise with Hansen´s disease and the reasons why Damien House exists.  there´s a lot of reflecting going on, as per usual.