An Awesome Church Experience

Yesterday I had the coolest experience. Someone told me that if I went to church with Yoan (my Venezuelan roommate) in the afternoon, there wouldn’t be another gringo for miles. That sounded perfect. We drove with his friend Raul to a rough area on the other side of town, using progressively less traveled roads. Finally we turned on a dirt road and went down one of the steepest hills I’ve ever seen. (Afterward, we had to walk so Raul’s car could make it back up.) At the bottom there were shacks dotting the hill along with chickens and stray dogs running around. The actual church was just a dirt floor with lawn chairs and a structure made out of plywood. It’s an outreach for youth in the area that Yoan and Raul help with, and it’s a tough area with a lot of drug problems. But there was a strong sense of community there and it was eye opening for me.

Afterward the pastor invited us into his home, which was made out of cinderblocks and instead of doors there were rugs hanging. It was a lot of fun visiting with his family and seeing a way of life I hadn’t ever seen. During the visit his wife pulled out a big jug of murky liquid and offered me a glass. I realized it was chicha, a sweet homemade drink in Ecuador that is fermented from a woman’s spit. It had a weird sweet and sour flavor, but it actually wasn’t too bad. I decided that that this is the real South America I want to see, one that tourists rarely get to observe. (Afterward I was told that instead of spit the drink was fermented from a parasite that grows in corn. I really don’t know what’s worse.)

One thing I love here is that food can be found for so cheap. Yesterday there was a lunch fundraiser at a nearby church, and for two dollars I got a bowl of ceviche (a citrusy shrimp soup) and a big plate with rice, egg, lettuce, avocado, and cau cau (stew made from potato and cow stomach). It was really good, and they also served popcorn, juice, banana chips, and bowl of dessert flan. I realized that not everything is cheap though; at the mall there are many American shops that charge close to what they do back home. A new MacBook at the Apple Store still costs over a thousand dollars, but that doesn’t stop South Americans from jumping on the bandwagon. In the mall everything seemed westernized until we came across a guy performing traditional music on an Andean pipe flute. The western influence immediately came back when he played the theme from Titanic (which Yoan instantly recognized.)

Today was the first day of classes and the grammar class turned out to be really fun. We expected to be drilled with verb tenses, but instead the teacher began by teaching us all the local words and slang that come from Quechua, a common indigenous language. There are a lot of funny words like cushqui (money), ñaño (sibling), and ayayay (expression for pain). But things are going well and I don't have too much homework (yet). Hasta luego!