Category: Good Stuff

Bus Buddies (or Tuning Out and Tuning In)

This is going to be a long one, but it’ll be worth it to read all the way through. Trust me.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It blows my mind that I can go literally weeks without unexpectedly bumping into someone in Elizabeth City, a town of 18,000 people, and yet in the 2,000,000-person city of Quito, I can’t walk down the street without running into multiple people I know. This phenomenon has resulted in being accompanied by friends on every single one of my bus rides for three days straight.

First Miguel rode with me back from Guajaló to my neighborhood, which resulted in another unexpected meeting with Roberto. Then the next morning I got on the Metro instead of my usual Trole adventure, and as I was standing in line, Jorge walked up. That one was definitely a God thing, because he explained to me that on the North-to-South route there is potentially more bus-changing involved than on the reverse trip. I wouldn’t have felt quite so much the master of Ecuadorian public transportation finding myself at the total opposite end of some random route I didn’t know I was on.

At the end of that ride, I walked into the tienda and just behind me was Maria Jose (who had apparently been chasing me… I need to take off my headphones when I get off the bus). I had just been wondering when I’d get to see her, having already run into her brother and sister more than two weeks before, so it was just another bit of amazing timing. And then at the end of that same day, I was thinking it strange that I still hadn’t run into her mom, Maggi. But after hanging out upstairs with Adrian that afternoon, I “happened” to choose the 30 seconds that Maggi was downstairs to leave. Lo and behold, Maggi became my third consecutive Bus Buddy for the week, as she was taking the Ecovia almost as far North as I was.

There are several reasons that it’s fun to have someone to ride the bus with, especially since I take these long rides on a regular basis. Not the least of these reasons is that if you are talking to someone, you are much less likely to get asked to give up your seat (being a young, male, gringo, I’m at the very, very bottom of the pecking order for seats on the bus, regardless of the fact that I’m riding it literally from one end of the city to the other). But more than that, you just get to have some real conversations and find out what’s going on in people’s lives. I thought I was tired the other day until Maggi mentioned she had been off one job just long enough to go home for a bit, but now it was 5:30ish PM and she was heading to her other job at the hospital until 6:00 AM (Oish!).

Now we’re getting to the reason that this post has such a Tolkien-esque title: because it’s almost two separate trains of thought. Just pretend it’s a Family Guy episode, where the second half is always completely unrelated to the first.

Anyway, The time that I’ve spent on the bus/Trole system this week has remnded me a lot of the time I spent on it last year. And I spent a lot of time on it last year. In fact, as I was fond of saying, I spent my life on the Trole. And in one of my meetings with Brad (director of Youth World, and one of my supervisors last year) we were talking about that. He said something that I really took to heart, which was pointing out that I wasn’t exactly driving for my commute to and from the office. I was not, in fact, doing anything other than sitting (or hanging on to the “‘Oh, crap!’ bar,” before I figured out how to get a seat that old ladies wouldn’t take from me1). The point was, especially since the Trole isn’t really book- or laptop-friendly for various reasons, it was (is) a great opportunity to take some quiet time.

“Quiet time” is, of course, a very relative term here. The Trole is never quiet. Aside from the honking and squealy brakes and the recorded voice telling you the next stop (which I now have memorized thanks to hearing it so much), there are people talking, and generally someone selling something or singing. And when I say they are selling something or singing, I don’t mean in an unintrusive way. It’s generally at the top of said someone’s lungs, and prefaced with a long story, and ends with them shoving their way through the way-too-crowded space collecting money. You can’t possibly hold a conversation while this is going on, or even attempt to ignore it without headphones. So even as easily-distracted as I can be, that was why I started taking my iPod on the Trole.

I know I can probably sound a little cynical when I talk about “ignoring” people and “tuning out.” And I certainly don’t want to seem that way, either to the two of you who read my blog anymore, or to the people I’m talking about. But that is an entirely different post, so suffice it to say that it’s on my mind, both as a topic to write about and as a conscious effort in my life. So back to the “quiet” time.

After the multiple times I’ve been pick-pocketed and held up in Quito, taking my iPod on the Trole is probably slightly stupid. But I figure if I’m actually listening to it, I’ll know if someone messes with it when I suddenly go from listening to “The Sound of Silence” to the literal sound of silence. So I throw on some Hillsong or Jeremy Camp, cram my earbuds in to the point that I’ll have no sense of hearing by my 32nd Birthday (I picked a number more random than 30 so people wouldn’t think I was implying that that’s old), and bask in the lack of overly highly-pitched sales pitches.

Sometimes it’s still pretty hard to shut things out. There might be somebody leaning on me (we’ll come back to this example momentarily), or making out directly in front of me (and I do mean directly, and not far enough away), or I might see something out the window that sends my A.D.D. mind in another direction, or I might just get too caught up I the words to the song that’s damaging my eardrums so. But the goal is to tune all of that out. Because as Quito Quest reminds me, I don’t ever want to waste a day when I can be growing or just worshipping. And as Mrs. Dwan taught me, having God time is less about taking the time you have, but about intentionally making time and setting that aside just for Him. Because there are tons of other things Brad could have suggested I do in all that commute time. And sure, God doesn’t function on my schedule. But when was the last time I made time for something other than a song and a half of Taylor Swift between Winfield and Ehringhaus Street back in Elizabeth City? I can’t think about ridiculously long bus rides now without having the positive thought of “Hey… God time” now, and that is a great thing.

So I’ll round this one out with a return to the “Bus Buddies” subject and the aforementioned potential somebody leaning on me.

I’ve been super unlucky with the Trole rides since my string of bus buddies that I actually know ran out on Thursday. I accidentally hit on a girl on the Trole today (Si estás leyendo esto en Español por Google Chrome o algo así, el frase “hit on” en Inglés significa “coquetear,” o “flirtear,” no “golpear”). But still much worse than that was the guy who sat down next to me yesterday afternoon.

This guy took the seat next to me when its previous occupant got off the Trole. The previous occupant was a rather large woman with a baby. I don’t know how, but this single old man took up literally twice as much space as two people, one of whom was twice as wide as him. I guess it’s just one more way that the Trole is not real life. Conventional physics do not apply. So aside from the fact that this guy was leaning on me and had no “bubble” whatsoever, he had a briefcase of sorts with him, which he felt the need to open. This necessitated throwing his elbows out to either side. The side I cared about, obviously, was the side that meant his right elbow was basically up my left nostril. And my right ear was already up against the window, so it’s not like I could have done anything to rectify the situation short of saying something to him.

Now, something that I learned from my dad (despite my mom’s best efforts) is that you never ever ever ever ever complain to someone, no matter how obnoxious they are or how uncomfortable they are making you. And I also recognized the war going on in my heart and my head between his culture and mine. My culture has large personal bubbles his culture has very small bubbles. In his particular case, no bubble. Now the fact that he was old could have pushed me either way. Because I think you should just be nice and respectful to old people. However, you know how some old people are just cute? This guy… Not so much. The words that come to mind were more like “chapped” and “oozing.” (Aren’t you glad you’re still reading at this point?) So while agedness was pushing me not to say anything to him, gnarliness was pushing me to say something. Gnarliness won out, but it won out in the sense that I didn’t say anything for fear of his potentially gnarly reaction. But at this point I was quite simply seething and I had to do something.

So I started praying. And it might have been the most selfish prayer of my life. Rather than asking for patience or some other virtue that would mean I had to continue putting up with this situation while I learned that patience, I asked God to impart the knowledge directly into this man’s brain that gringos have bubbles and he was all up in mine. I truly believe that God was listening and answering, because a few seconds later, oozey geezer man put away his briefcase, and fell asleep. On me.

So God taught me some patience after all. And fear. Because the old man got really still for a while. And I started thinking, “What if this guy dies right here on the Trole… on me?!” It may sound like a leap of logic, but you didn’t see this guy. So there I am frantically praying that God’s sense of humor not be as sick as those of a couple members of my family, and scanning this guy for any movement at all. His fingers twitched a couple times, but that just made me worry that these motions were really tiny death throes. Finally, as it was becoming more and more likely that I’d be the one having a heart attack or something, he grunted and titled his head to the other side, and from there on out he’d open one eye and check our location out the window every time the Trole stopped, so at least I knew he was alive up to the point I had to climb over him to get off at La “Y.”

All that to say, he became my most recent Trole Buddy to encourage my relationship with God. And extra 25 cents or not, I’m sticking to the Ecovia route from now on.

 

 

1You try properly punctuating that parenthetical sentence on an iPad!

Laughing and Crying

Part of the culture of Youth World is transition. There are always people coming and going, but lately it seems like there’s just a lot of going. Quito Quest officially ended yesterday afternoon. The last of the summer teams has been gone since last week, and our summer hosts started disappearing yesterday. Even knowing the calendar dates and all of their flight schedules doesn’t really help that to sink in, though, especially with the range of emotions and activities that have taken place over the last 48 hours.

Saturday evening, after a day of games, debriefing, encouragement, and a brief frightening moment when we thought we had nowhere to sleep, we went to the famous (for good reason) hot pools in Papallacta, Ecuador. For three hours, we just got to relax and hang out in a way that just doesn’t happen very often in the craziness that is Quito Quest, and in stark contrast to the hectic schedule after we returned to Quito. We had just over two hours to prepare for our Youth World Picnic with all of our in-country staff (a strangely low number right now) and groups from some of our partner ministry sites.

I planned on making a dessert for the picnic, but on the way I to pick up some ingredients, I ran into Juan Miguel, Jose Luis, Alejandro and Alejandro, four of the guys from Casa G. One of the things that I’ve learned here is that you don’t just wave to someone you know from across the street as you continue along your merry way. You stop and talk to them, no matter where you’re going, what you’re doing, or how late you are. Especially the Casa G boys. They were trying to get into the girls’ house, but apparently nobody was home. Fortunately, nobody in the entire building was home either, because instead of giving up and going home, they were just hanging around buzzing every doorbell at the gate and hollering at the building. I stopped and hung out with them for a while, and discovered they thought the picnic was an hour earlier than it actually was. They were bored and starving, so I took them to McDonald’s. For those of you who don’t know these guys, you can’t imagine just how scary and hilarious that statement should be.

Rene Bryans told me one time how many funny looks she gets driving the guys around. People stop and stare as if to say “Why does that gringa have 10 black boys with her, yelling and hanging out of her SUV?” I’m at least around the same age as some of the guys, and I’m a guy, but still, being a gringo with a pretty feo accent, we did get some strange glances. Nevertheless, it was pretty great to hang out with the guys, most of whom I haven’t seen much of this summer since teams started showing up. We talked about guitars and language and how things are different here than in the U.S. Alejandro M. sang Miley Cyrus songs and asked me how to say phrases in English (a couple of which I refused to tell him for fear he’d say them to some unsuspecting teenage girl on a team). It also always impresses me that these guys are completely ridiculous 90% of the time, but will jump at any opportunity to share their faith with the people around them, and I love listening to these guys pray1.

Juan Miguel, Alejandro, and I eventually headed back up the hill to hang out at my house and help watch the girls finish making their dessert their before heading up to set up and welcome people at the Picnic, which Quito Quest was hosting. It was really fun to hang out and say hi to everyone as they showed up: the Short-Term department staff that I know really well, the El Refugio interns that I’ve maybe spent a total 20 minutes with all summer, friends from Carmen Bajo and Emaús. It was also incredibly weird knowing that as much as this was a celebration of everything that God has accomplished in and through all these people this summer, it was also a good-bye to many of them, including me.

I’ve said a lot of times this week that I’m really tired of despedidas2, and this new round would already have done me in if I hadn’t had to talk. We said farewell to the El Refugio interns, most of whom are heading out at the end of the month, and then to Quito Quest summer staff, who for the most part only had hours left in the country. Then it was my turn, and my brain wasn’t functioning well enough for me to even express my plans and prayer requests in English, so I have no idea how Cameron managed to make in coherent as she translated to Spanish. We broke up and prayed in groups for the QQ staff afterward, and then the party was over. All of my friends from ministry sites came over and hugged and talked to me before they left, and I managed to stay emotionally shut off, fake smiling and laughing until Queña from Carmen Bajo came and gave me a hug. She whispered her good-bye and a prayer in my ear, and something about that made me realize “Wow… this is done…” And even though I knew it already, it really sunk in right then that I wouldn’t be seeing any of this crew for a while. I was really glad that I did get a chance to talk and say goodbye to her and Rosa and Rocio and Rueben and Esperanza and everyone else, but I’m choked up even writing this just thinking about the past year almost that I’ve gotten to spend with them (and knowing that I’ll say my real goodbyes at Emaús this Wednesday and Sunday as well).

I was glad to have a few minutes to pull myself together after that, but then we headed over to Christy’s house to spend some final official Quito Quest time together and get our traditional QQ team photo, which turns out to be super-cool this year: Jose Manuel3 from Carmen Bajo made all of the picture frames for us (and if there’s one footnote out of this you want to read, it’s that one). Definitely a cool touch. There were some really funny moments, especially Rachel’s downhill string of comments starting when she took until 3/4 of the way through passing them out to realize that all the gifts were the same. We watched a couple of episodes of Friends (the oddly super-popular TV show in Ecuador) and hung out with each other until the chiva arrived.4

A chiva is an Ecuadorian party bus that you can rent, and which drives all over the city and plays music at decibel levels that would warrant a citation for disturbing the peace in the US. We piled in, and although there were seconds where you would think “how bipolar I’ve been today…”, we had an absolute blast singing, dancing, blowing whistles, drinking canelazo4, and generally being total high-profile gringos for our last ridiculous night together.

When we finally made it home, we were totally exhausted, which didn’t stop some of us from staying up several more hours, watching movies and talking, until one by one the guys had all crashed. This morning when I woke up, three more of my friends were already on airplanes heading home, and the rest of today has been a smaller-scale version of the same thing: shopping, hanging out, laughing, talking, hugging, and airport runs. I’ve gotten to talk to some friends who are in the States and in the jungle, and tried to figure out what I’m supposed to be feeling as I enjoy the little time I have left with each of my friends here and mourn each of their departures.

The culture that we’ve developed here necessitates all these despedidas. And again, I’m really really ridiculously tired of them. But, like the friend I jokingly hollered at least night to “pick an emotion!”, I’m thankful for the opportunity to celebrate each one of the friendships that I’ve gained here, and I’m thankful for each of those people having been and continuing to be a part of and an impact on my life.

1Especially with Spanglish phrases like “Thanks for Danny, porque tuvimos full hambre.”
2Despedida is a Spanish word for “goodbye” or “farewell” or “goodbye/farewell party”. It’s a tradition at Youth World to do a despedida for anyone at the end of their time with our team, to celebrate them, to hear a little bit about what’s next, and to pray for that person.
3Jose Manuel is an awesome friend and a part of the community in Carmen Bajo. He has been confined to a wheelchair for a number of years now, and has to do all his work from home. He is an incredibly gifted carpenter, and makes beautiful and intricate wooden doors, among other things. I was really glad to know that our frames had his personal touch and that Quito Quest was able to support his work. Ours also have the distinction of being the first picture frames he has ever built.
4I stuck with the non-alcoholic version.

This post originally published at www.dannypeck.net

First Adult Team

I knew going into hosting this team that it was totally made up of adults and that that would be something different for me. I’ve always had youth teams before, and it’s been interesting to observe, before we’ve even had a scheduled ministry day, how very different certain aspects of our time together have been.

The first thing that has really stuck out to me has been their tendency to wander off. For the first hour or so at the Basilica today, it drove me nuts, but as I told Dario later on, I realized that to some extent that’s something I need to let go of. With youth teams, the teenagers might not necessarily want to be right with the whole team all the time (or any of the time), but they will at least stay withing seeing distance, because they know if they wander off, they’ll be in trouble with somebody later. Every time I did a head count today (which is something I do pretty constantly), someone was missing. More often than not it was the same person, who always quickly found his way back to us.

The questions this group has asked me have had their own twist to them, they follow the rules really well and drink lots of water and wear their sunscreen, we take lots more bathroom breaks, they’re quiet on the bus and at meals but animated at debrief, and they sing. Let me repeat that. They sing. I love groups that sing. I hosted a summer team once which whom devotions including music was like pulling teeth, so I appreciate it when groups actually participate vocally. Not that worship has to be musical, but personally, a devo wouldn’t be devo if it didn’t include either writing or music, so it means a lot to me when they choose to throw in songs at the end of a debrief and it’s a way that I can really worship as well.

The great thing about a team of only 10 is that you actually know everyone’s names at the end of the first day. I’ve gotten to spend at least a little bit of time already with almost everyone on a one-on-one or smaller group basis, and I feel like we’ll know the team really well be the end of their time here. There’s only one or two I have hesitations with about their level of flexibility, but we are working at Carmen Bajo this week. Not that you can help falling in love with any ministry site here, but speaking from experience, you really can’t help but fall in love with Carmen Bajo and I think after a few hours getting to know people there and seeing how things are done the South American way, I have no fear that will melt quickly away.

With only one person’s luggage lost and no other disasters on the first day, I’m looking forward to working, serving, and worshiping alongside this group.

OH! And I ordered food on the phone in Spanish for the first time today. That’s always been something that has terrified me. Possibly because I’ve heard what a nightmare it is to order pizza in this country (fortunately we were calling in for chicken), but mostly because speaking your second language on the phone is exponentially more difficult. But I ordered twelve boxes of chicken, two salads, and three drinks… and half an hour later, the order showed up exactly right and in the correct place. The senorita on the other end didn’t even ever have to ask me to repeat anything, and when I gave her a non-standard answer to “what room are you in” at the hostal (I responded “I’ll be there to find the driver” because I could think how to say that much faster than “there’s a common room at the top of the stairs”) she rolled with it and wasn’t confused by what I said. I’m a little proud. Probably a little too proud, but there you have it.

Virus Fixed

As far as I know, I’ve wiped out the virus. Please let me know if you are still having problems.

As far as the new theme, it’s an indirect result of this whole process. I was reminded of the fact that my website has looked exactly the same for over two years now, and I couldn’t find the original source code for my theme anyway. Rather than going through every single file in the theme to manually wipe out the virus (I actually think I manually destroyed the only occurrence, but would have wanted to be sure), I just installed a new theme. It was probably just as much work to re-crop, re-size, and re-upload all the images for my randomized header, but be that as it may, I’m still pretty pleased with the time and effort that went into it, and the final product.

For those of you who are just reading this on facebook or anywhere else this gets imported via RSS, I’d encourage you to cruise on over to dannypeck.net and take a look around. If you haven’t actually been to the original source of my blog before, you may find something interesting. If you have, hopefully you’ll like the new look.

Socks, Sickness, and Breakfast

As Cameron said tonight, “There might be some truth to it, but…” Every time anyone gets sick here, it gets blamed on the temperature and your awareness and preparedness for it.

Kelsey and I constantly joke around about wearing socks. For instance, after having been seriously sick last week (which was 100% due to dehydration, though Lourdes blamed it on my not having on a sweatshirt that day) I have had a small cold for the last two or three days. I feel perfectly fine, but I’ve just been coughing a lot, and it’s going away now. But I came home to Lourdes’ house yesterday afternoon just in time for it to start raining as I was walking from the Trole station back to the tienda. If it had started raining while I was on the Trole, I would have stood around and waited for the bus, but the bottom dropped when I was almost exactly halfway between the station and the house. No sense turning around, I ran for it, but go drenched anyway. Jose laughed at me a little when I walked in the tienda, but concernedly made sure he told me to go upstairs and change. I did just that, but having taken almost all of my clothes back to the intern apartment in the north in preparation to move back there, I had no socks in the house. I walked out of my room barefoot to fill up my water bottle in the kitchen, and Lourdes came upstairs at just the same time. So of course, I immediately got the “You’re sick because you’re not wearing socks” lecture and went to put on tennis shoes.

The next story won’t seem related at first. Be patient.

I tend to be late for morning meetings because of breakfast. Breakfast with the family is both non-negotiable and a bit of an ordeal. In the US, if I had an 8:30 meeting with an 60-90 minute commute to get there, I might grab a Pop-Tart on the way out the door, or more likely just skip breakfast or hope the meeting was finished before Hardee’s stops serving Cinnamon & Raisin biscuits at 10:30. That’s not an option here because (we don’t have Hardee’s, we don’t have Pop-Tarts, and mostly because) nobody in the house, from abuelita down to the kids, is going to let me leave without sitting down and eating with me. One morning I had to be at Youth World early, so I made myself coffee so I could honestly tell Lourdes I had breakfast already (coffee is always the main component of breakfast and dinner). I should have left the dishes out so there would have been some evidence, but since I washed them, Lourdes asked me all that day and literally all the next if I was sure I had made myself breakfast that morning.

Today I was in the kitchen helping Marta when Miguel (my friend and both Lourdes’ and Marta’s nephew, therefore Adrian’s cousin) started frantically looking around the house for some things. Adrian came out of his room a minute later and I realized he was not feeling good. Miguel told me he was taking Adrian to the hospital. As Miguel was running around the house, Marta started asking him about food. It went something like this (though it was, obviously, in Spanish):

Marta: Have you eaten breakfast yet?

Miguel: No.

Marta: Are you going to?

Miguel: No.

Marta: You have to eat breakfast!

Miguel: Well, not this morning.

Marta: I have the water boiling already. I’m pouring coffee right now.

Miguel: I don’t believe we can right now.

Miguel then proceeded to run downstairs to hop in the car, Adrian stumbling along with him, clutching his side like it was going to explode any minute. Marta scoffed at them under her breath until they were long gone, bemoaning her ridiculous nephews, skipping breakfast.

Tonight, Cameron and I had talked about Adrian, and before she dropped me off at my apartment, Cameron called Lourdes to check on the situation. Turns out Adrian had pneumonia. He’s doing much better, but he’ll have to stay in the hospital for three days due to a torn membrane in his lung, which is what allowed him to get the infection. Lourdes’ theory, however? “He works in a restaurant over a hot stove, and then they go in and out of the freezer all day. Hot, cold, hot, cold.” Again, as Cameron said, maybe there’s some truth to that. Maybe. Some. At least he was wearing his socks.

This post originally published at www.dannypeck.net

Ecuadorian Thanksgiving

I can’t imagine a much more memorable Thanksgiving. For several of us, today was our first Thanksgiving in Ecuador. For several more, it was the first Thanksgiving they’d ever celebrated. We had people from (at least) the United States, Canada, Ecuador, Japan and Peru, speaking (at least) English, Spanish, French and Japanese. In fact, three of those countries and all four of those languages were represented at our table alone.

Somewhere around fifty of us got together on Laura and Jorge’s roof to celebrate as traditionally as possible. There was the traditional turkey and gravy and potatoes and cranberry everything and salads. There were also tropical fruits and Marlo’s pesto dip and sushi. The kids all played in the rooftop hot tub and we listened to Andean music interspersed with country and the Black-Eyed Peas.

I have to say it was cool to celebrate such a holiday estadounidense so cross-culturally. I’m also glad we escaped those “let’s go around the table…” exercises that I really should appreciate but just tend to seem cheesy to me. I do, however, have tons of things to be thankful for. The most obvious to me today was the people in my life. There were people there today from so many different backgrounds, and even among the gringos at Youth World, we have different traditions and cultures from different parts of the United States (and elsewhere). I love learning from people, from their backgrounds and perspectives and individual knowledge and stories. I can think of so many people who blow me away constantly with things they’ve done or scripture they know or the ways they practically apply their experience in missions. I love having people to laugh with, people to share ridiculous moments with, people who think sushi on Thanksgiving should continue to be a tradition, people to learn from and grow with, people who love God, and people who are just as eager to teach with their experience as they are to learn with their lives.

I certainly missed my family today. I missed my brother’s goofy (but sincere) prayers, my dad’s laugh, and my mom’s insight (and potato salad… and gravy… and apple pie…). But I got to see several people who I’ve not run into in a long time, including several friends who have been out of Quito, and my friend John Andrew who I met at IT training in Illinois and who has been working in Guayaquil since this summer. And not that my friends here in any way replace the people with whom I’m used to spending Thanksgiving, but I was glad to be surrounded by so many awesome people and to have a chance to spend the day in such a unique way and be able to share that.

Great Success

I’ll just go ahead and apologize for that title right now.

I’ve known since last November that I was going to be coming back to Ecuador to teach guitar. In Spanish. Since the last time I was here I’ve had two more semesters of college Spanish and I’ve taken everything English off my iPod. The main (and almost only) goal of my first three weeks here was to do intensive language classes, and then there’s just trying to function normally in a Spanish-speaking country, so I’ve had a lot of practice.

The thing is, I’m still a worrier. I even know exactly where I get that from, and that most of the time it’s totally unfounded. It’s still really hard for me to keep up with normal conversations in Spanish, even though when people slow down and treat me like a little kid (which I actually totally appreciate) I’m totally trackin’ and for the most part I can express my ideas.

So this morning I was awake at the crack of dawn because I was both totally excited at my first “real” day back at a ministry site and because I was completely nervous about having to function all day in Spanish and communicate some pretty specific ideas. It did, at least, give me a chance to study (for the bazillionth time) my music theory terms in Spanish. It’s funny the other things you have to learn as well. Even planning out how I was going to explain and demonstrate things, I realized I needed to know more than just how to say “Treble Clef” in Spanish. For instance the names of specific fingers (Dedo pulgar, índice, corazón, anular, y meñique, thumb to pinky, in case you were wondering).

I headed down to the office pretty early, studied a little more, discovered Cameron was going to be late, and got a pancito con leche from Gusta Pan next door (yeah. Gusta Pan. Be jealous, Beechwood). Eventually Cameron got to the office and I threw two guitars into Demo (their car) and we headed off on a bit of an adventure. We basically followed the Trole route so I’d have some sense of where I was headed.

Where I was headed was Lourdes’ store. There’s some minor drama going on with some of the Episcopal churches in South Quito which I won’t get into, so for now, at least, the Tienda is our ministry site. When Cameron and I got there, we hung out for a little bit with Lourdes, her husband and Nancy, another Episcopal priest. Turns out Nancy was my first student.

It was a little weird that my first official guitar student ever was older than me, but I got over it pretty fast. Probably mostly because it was also a little weird that my first official guitar student ever doesn’t speak my native language, and now we’re back to what I was originally worried about. But even though I’d been thinking for weeks that I was going to crash and burn (no matter what I’ve been telling everyone else, that’s what I was thinking) it turned out to be an absolute blast.

I went from Nancy (who blew through exercises like a machine) to Omar (who already plays a lot of guitar, but with whom I think I’ll be doing a lot of music theory) to lunch to Maria José (who’s been my buddy since the first time I came to Ecuador and who never seems to get discouraged with anything I throw at her). I’m definitely going to have to get better about staying within my scheduled time, but with only three students (I didn’t realize at that point that Lourdes was going to give it a go as well) each one went well over an hour.

Turns out I apparently had the ability to have some conversations with each one of them, and to explain some music theory at least to the point of playing E, F, and G (or Mi, Fa, and Sol in Spanish fixed-Do Solfeo music theory) on the primera cuerda. That whole thing about using Spanish you didn’t know you had? Been doing it all day. And somehow I was still smiling and not totally shot at the end of the day. There are definitely some detail words I need to look up for the guitar-playing aspect of it, but for the teaching and fellowship and ministry aspect, I had a blast and I feel like I accomplished something today, and enjoyed being with really cool people and seeing my students really get to learn something.

Other adventures from the day include bad country music (which is, por supuesto, any country music), hanging out with Roberto y Miguel at the mall, dinner and book study with the other interns (we’re up to 3!) at Matt and Marlo’s, and watching hilarious YouTube videos. It’s been a busy day, but what I can’t stop happily thinking about is being out teaching guitar, and that’s a really huge relief.

A Pair of Insignificant Achievements

(^No pun intended^) J.K. Rowling always posts her high scores in Minesweeper, so I am posting my online card-playing achievements.

I’ve been playing a lot of FreeCell lately. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. This image is actually a little behind now. I’m up to 103 or something. But here is my 100-game perfect winning streak in FreeCell:

FreeCell 100-Win Streak

To follow that up, my mom doesn’t understand my Hearts strategy whatsoever. That’s probably because there are times when it fails miserably. But when it works, I pull off feats like this one, displayed below. You’ll notice that I shot the moon to start and to finish the game, with a total of six hands where I took 0 points, and almost a third time shooting the moon on that eighth hand (one card short).

Hearts

Yes, Honey, They're Brothers

Colin and I should be on HGTV.

Brothers can be completely different, get on each others’ nerves, and be super-competitive. All of that can describe Colin and me at some point past or present, if not in an ongoing sense. But brothers- in this case we– can totally be on the same wavelength sometimes.

Colin’s drums have been in the FROG1 for several weeks now, to give him more room to jam with his friends. With about half of my guitars and both of my amps up there for roughly the same reason- just to get them out of my room- and Daniel’s and Jacob’s guitars and guitar cases sometimes present, it’s been a pretty hazardous place to be lately.

So between a general desire to be able to safely navigate the FROG and complaints from everyone in the house, Colin started cleaning it up yesterday. This was also motivated by the addition of a powered mixer and two speakers.

For those of you not really into sound equipment, that’s basically a small, portable all-in-one PA system designed with microphones and instruments in mind, but with enough cables and adapters, you can hook anything into it: TV, Xbox, iPod, computer… you get the idea.

Without asking what the vision was or the plan of action for getting there, I joined in the cleaning. It was obvious to anyone that the room simply needed to be cleared out, rearranged, and organized if even a fraction of its contents were to remain and the room was to become easily traversed. But it was obvious to the Peck boys the potential this room now had to become what Kelli would call a “man cave.”

First order of business, pack up the instruments. Fortunately there was only one guitar present at the time that did not belong to me, so all the cases were handy. The air hockey table was pushed against the window and all guitars placed underneath. The Foosball table was pushed against the daybed by another wall and the chairs pushed up against that. Amazingly, this caused a sudden hole in the middle of the room from which to work against the remaining chaos.

While Colin set up his drums (and I think he finally has all his drums and cymbals set up together, which takes quite a bit of space) I began clearing off the computer desk, mom’s drafting table and the shelf behind the drums where the VCR2 was located. We finished at roughly the same time, with a net result of extended the open space and having two more surfaces to work from.

Before I knew it, Colin was pulling an old TV cabinet out of the closet. We have these two huge closets in the FROG where the roof slants down on either side of the dormer where the daybed is located. One is used to store camping and sewing equipment and the other is used to store Christmas decorations and old toys so that any of the above are accessible at shorter notice than they would be if they lived in the cubby3. The particular TV cabinet that Colin was pulling out is a pretty small, cheap, black shelving unit and formerly where the family TV downstairs lived. It is only a couple feet tall and the TV sat on top with the shelves underneath storing movies and Super NES accessories. When my parents replaced it with a nicer piece of furniture, I talked them into keeping it in case I ever finish college and leave and want it.

Colin got the powered mixer set up on top, with the Xbox 360 on top of that, and I set up the VCR and Gamecube underneath, running all the cables and putting four generations’ worth of video games into their respective cases as I went. Colin set up the speakers and with a couple of really useful adapters, I set up my laptop on the drafting table and connected it to the mixer, thus enabling me to stream music from my desktop in my room over the wireless network and play it through the newly-re-erected sound system.

With the furniture back in place, I thought we’d be finished. But Colin mentioned a general desire to have his computer up there for recording purposes. I figured we might as well get that done while we were on a roll, so with some quick thinking and some maternal advice, the drafting table was folded up and moved to the corner where the computer desk was. The computer desk was taken downstairs and placed in my van for transport to Albemarle Music (more on this below). The other closet, this time the one with the Christmas decorations- including tree- was accessed, cleared completely out, and a folding table removed from the very back, from behind about two dozen boxes and really heavy wooden shelving unit.

The folding table was erected, fitting perfectly against the wall between the end of the TV cabinet and the door, and about this time, Daniel showed up intending to pick up his laptop and leave, but staying to help move Colin’s (monster) desktop computer from his room to the FROG. This was quite an adventure because though Colin’s room and the FROG share a wall, you have to go from Colin’s through the upstairs hall, down the stairs, through the foyer, den, kitchen, and back hall, then up the other set of stairs to reach the FROG.

With the computer set up and the chairs replaced, we transported ourselves, the desk, and our moving and staging skills to Albemarle Music. We initially moved the couch in the office, then moved it back when we realized its new angle made the room feel much smaller. With the desk placed against the back wall, we moved the office computer off the counter and now have a much more professional-looking space and enough surface area for three people to eat lunch at once.

In summation, we’re awesome and so is the new man cave. Pictures are forthcoming, and if anyone wants an air hockey table, let me know.

 

1FROG is a real estate term in this region that’s become pretty ubiquitous in tidewater area vocabulary. It stands for Finished Room Over Garage and is what most of the rest of the country would refer to as a “Bonus Room.”
2Yes, believe it or not, we still have a VCR. It wasn’t that long ago that it got a lot of use for watching Disney movies with all my female friends- one in particular- and now mainly serves to extend the coaxial cable from the wall to the TV and as an extra set of RCA inputs for gaming systems.
3The cubby is an eccentricity of our house. Despite two attic access doors, one in the FROG and one in the upstairs hall, because of their precise locations the attic is still pretty inaccessible, and the cubby serves as our attic. It is basically a crawl-space-sized hall stretching from an access door at the top of the FROG stairs back over the rest of the house.

The merits of small-town life

When I first moved to from Lawrenceville, GA (suburb of Atlanta and home of the Gwinett Braves) to Clarksdale, MS (suburb of nowhere, home of the Delta Blues Museum: what a level of excitement for a 12-year-old who’d never even heard of Lucille) I basically thought I’d descended to the first circle of pre-teen hell, mourning my separation from movie theaters and shopping malls.1

Although it was in my first small-town experience that I learned valuable lessons like what it feels like to be a minority, how to properly cross the street,2 and Native American pronunciation, it was not those things that I began to appreciate while I was there. Those were ones like Freedom, Self-confidence, and how to properly toilet-paper someone’s house.

On days when I had marching band practice, I would walk the two blocks from Oakhurst Junior High to the downtown storefront of the J.C. Penny Co, Inc. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I was a pre-teen and I was entrusted with transporting myself from one place to another. Plus, I got to leave school in a slightly cooler fashion than hopping in my mom’s minivan. It also necessitated the learning of the second of the aforementioned then-unappreciated lessons.

I’d walk past Marty’s barber shop and wave to the grandfatherly man, sometimes armed with scissors, sometimes fast asleep in his own chair. Once in a while this guy that worked for my dad and went to the high school that shared my junior high’s campus would pick me up on the bridge over the Sunflower River. I’d feel even cooler for the 45-second ride, listening to Eminem and wondering was ‘cid was.

Now granted, I was never a fan of Clarksdale (although I’m sure this had as much to do with when in my life I moved there as anything else), but that has made me appreciate Elizabeth City even more. I’m surprised to realize even as I write this that in 2000 (the year I moved from the Delta to the Albemarle) that Elizabeth City had 3,000 less people than my former town of residence. But it had a movie theater with two screens and a shopping mall, and that was quite enough for me.

But it retained the small-town feel. I knew pretty much everyone in my graduating class, and a good chunk of my entire high school. And although I sometimes wish I’d learned to drive in a bigger place so that I’d be a more aggressive driver, I like the fact that rolling down Southern Avenue, Ehringhaus Street, Halstead Boulevard, or even Highway 17, I can’t help but pass someone I know. In one single day last week, I saw, waved to, or phoned after passing Jerry, Billy, Linda, Ginny, Madeline, two different Mrs. Julies, and my mom, and all I did was go from home to the bank.

Multiply that effect at least by two if I so much as take a walk down Water or Main Street. Dozens of people tell me the next day that they saw me from their car or office or Rachel’s Place (where Johnny still knows what to bring me for breakfast without so much as a word).

And forget the fact that people know me. I (try not to, but) can drop my dad’s name anywhere in Pasquotank County and people who don’t know me instantly love me because they love him and because they know who he is.4 Some people wouldn’t appreciate that, but in my experience, it’s not bad for a cop, FedEx driver, or random elderly lady at somebody else’s church to say “Hey, I know someone named ‘Peck’…”

Growing up in a small town tends to serve you well other places in the world, too. Add in being southern, and stopping on the sidewalk to chat with someone about their family, despite being 20 minutes late and still 4 blocks away doesn’t seem all that foreign, even on another continent. Living in a big city with easily defined neighborhoods isn’t a big adjustment either when you treat the couple square miles around you like a small town that’s just really close to all the other small towns around you.

I tend to think that personal relationships of all kinds benefit from their being born in a small town. Seeing the same people everywhere has pros and cons, but makes for closer relationships with those people. And that doesn’t necessarily impede branching out into new friendships either. I’m used to always being able to strike up a conversation with anyone. This is because I can invariably ask “who’s that” and get anyone’s life story around a place like this. Though I don’t always do that (probably because I know I always can later), it makes for a habit of just being friendly.

Something I learned in another big town was that no matter where you are, you’re going to say “there’s nothing to do in this place,”5 but the fact that I have said that in a city with 10 times the population and 14 times the area of this one sort of takes the sting away from the statement, and negates really the only disadvantage I see to being outside what we sometimes so wistfully think of here as “civilization.”

If the above paragraph sentence is any indication, then maybe going to school here had its effects on me. And I certainly know more country music than I’d care to know and more obscure history than I’d care to admit because of my two small-town stints. But I like the fact that the whole town can be like Cheers sometimes, that six days a week anyone who knows me knows where to find me, and that a movie ticket is cheaper here than it is in a developing nation (despite the need for a baseball cap).6

1Lydia is scoffing at this notion as she reads this post, but shopping malls do include book stores.
2Though I’d learned this already at a much earlier age, this was first of three times I would re-learn this important skill thanks to both witnessing someone being hit by a car and being (somewhat) hit by a car myself in the vicinity of Oakhurst Junior High.
3With, at the time, some semblance of a bookstore.
4Though I tend to have to say “I know… I look like my mom,” before they believe me.
5That’s never true if there are people around.
6Oh yeah, and discovering freedom, tight friendships, and the subtleties of race, street-crossing, and politics in a small place aren’t so bad either.