The End of the Beginning

Well, as of Friday night, I'll have been here in Quito for 3 weeks. I'll be 20% done with my semester, which seems crazy when I think of all I still want to learn and still have to do. But, I definitely have a start.

Thursday night, we had our Bible study...in the dark. The power went out not long after we got to Jen's house, so we lit a few candles and continued with our Bible study. As I was saying in my last post, Jen was going to cook us monkey bread. Now, people here have never heard of that, and when you tell them that you're going to eat "Pan de Mono" they give you odd looks, so we had to share. After our Bible study, we took some monkey bread to Lucy and Solomone and to Dan and Mabel (some of the NILI Professionals), where we talked for a while. Dan an Mabel are have lots of good stories to tell.

Friday was the quincenera of one of the girls who lives on the campus with her family. A guincenera is a girl's 15th birthday and it's a huge deal. It's kind of like sweet 16 in the States. So, on Thursday at Midnight, a group of us gathered by the gate to the seminary to wait for a taxi full of a Mariachi Band to arrive. When they got here, we all went to the girl's house and the band started playing. After she woke up, we all crowded into the house to celebrate with her. It was a lot of fun. The Mariachi Band played several songs and we had cake and just had fun. The party lasted for over an hour, so I was very tired the next morning.

Fridays, our Spanish class in the morning is shortened. Instead of 9:30 to 12:30, it only goes til 11 so we can go to chapel. Well, chapel ended up being canceled because only 3 students showed up. Now, this isn't because they chose not to go, there were 2 major conventions going on at the seminary and most of the students were helping in some way with those. The seminary rents out part of its property for conventions and other things to pay the bills. Also, my New Testament class in the afternoon was canceled, so I ended up with a very free day. It was great. Kevin and I took advantage of this and headed to Carcelen with a few seminary students. Kevin needed to mail a few letters. I wanted to look at the DVD store and I ended up buying 3 DVDs for $5. We also stopped at a bread shop (they have great bread here and it's cheap).

Saturday, there was a big soccer game between Ecuador and Colombia. A group of us watched the game at the house of one of the pastors that lives on campus. The projected the game onto the wall of one of their bedrooms. It was a lot of fun to watch. Colombia won in the last 10 or 15 minutes, to the excitement of only one person in our group, who screamed as loud as she could, for what seemed like a very long time.

Sunday was a crazy day. Normally, I get on a bus with Carla and one other seminary student to get to church. But this Sunday, our church was meeting at the seminary with somewhere around 30 other churches from Ecuador. Talk about a lot of people! I have a few pictures of the service that you can see by clicking on the title of this post, "The End of the Beginning." And here's a video of the worship:



One of the most interesting things about the service is that some of the Quechuans (the largest group of indigenous people in Ecuador) were there with their churches and the sang and danced for us. Here is a video of them singing:



Kim informed Kevin and I on Monday that we needed passport pictures. We were going to go get our Censos the next morning before class. Censos are Ecuadorian IDs for people who are going to be in the country for a long time. When we have them, we don't have to travel around the country with our passports, unless we're flying, which is very convenient. So, when I got out of class in the afternoon, we headed to Carcelen to get our pictures taken. We also bought some bread while we were down there. We then went to get our Censos on Tuesday morning. We process was pretty simple and it didn't take us very long. We got a number and waited for our turn while gluing a passport picture and writing some basic information (name, residence in Ecuador, nationality, etc.) on a large envelope that contained copies of our passports. When our number was called, we went and gave them our stuff, they took our picture, paid them $4 and they printed out our Censos. They kind of resemble non-drivers licenses in the States.

Tuesday night, the NILI professionals wanted to order pizza for dinner and they invited Kevin and I to join us. We had fun eating Pizza Hut pizza, drinking Pepsi and 7UP! with ice, and just talking in English. It was a lot of fun.

Today, we headed to Colonial Quito for our Wednesday field trip. For pictures, click on the title again. We were supposed to go to a Ballet tonight, but they are out of town so we are going to go in a few weeks. Colonial Quito has some very old and beautiful buildings. We saw the outside of the President's house while we were there. In Colonial Quito, we went to a church, a bread shop, and a museum.

The name of the church we went to was "La Iglesia de la Companera de Jesus" or "The Church of the Companion of Jesus." It is called this because a woman named Mariana de Jesus prayed there every day. Personally, I think this woman was a bit fanatic, but she is very respected by Ecuadorians. She came from a rich family. When she turned 15 she decided to dedicate her life to Jesus. She changed her name to Mariana de Jesus because she was not going to marry. She only ate honey. Any food her family provided her, she gave to the poor people of Quito. Now, here's the weird part. She wore a shirt that had spikes sticking out of it on the inside and beat herself on the back to share in the pain of Jesus. The church itself was gorgeous. I was very sad that I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside. Almost everything is covered in a layer of gold. The church is designed so that it is symmetrical. While a painting or sculpture on one side of the church may not be exactly the same as on the other side, they closely resemble each other. Also, in the back, there are "2" spiral stair cases. On a closer look, there is only 1 real staircase. The one opposite, is an optical illusion painted on the wall. There are also 2 famous paintings in the church. One is a graphic portrayal of the punishments in hell for different sins. The other is of the day of judgment when the righteous join Jesus in heaven and the wicked are taken by demons away from heave to be tortured.

We then took a break in a bread shop. Everything looked very good. We all got different things and everyone liked what they got. I got a piece of chocolate cake that was "muy rico" (very good).

We then went to "El Museo de la Ciudad" or "The Museum of the City." This museum showed the history of Quito. It was very interesting and we had a very knowledgeable guide. Again, I wasn't allowed to take pictures when I was inside, but the Museum had some courtyards that were very pretty that I took pictures of.

After the museum, we headed back to Optimus Prime or Optimus for short (our nickname for the Sprinter, the large vehicle we take everywhere) and headed for lunch. We ate at a place called "Pollo Campero" or "Chicken Farmer." After lunch we headed to El Jardin, the mall. I bought a few snacks at SuperMaxi before leaving.

This is going to be my last post for a little while. On Friday, we're headed out of town! We are going to 2 other cities in Ecuador, Riobamba and Quayaquil. There are 11 of us going. The 2 NILI classic students (that's Kevin and I), the 4 NILI professional students (Dan and Mabel, and John and Jill), 3 NILI staff (Kim, Jen, and Lucy), and 2 seminary students (Harrison and Carmen). We are leaving after lunch on Friday and coming back the following Sunday. Some of the things we get to look forward to are climbing Chimborazo (a volcano), ministry work in Riobamba, and sightseeing in the costal city of Quayaquil! It's going to be a great experience!