There is a Spanish word that usually gets translated as “tip” (as in leaving the waiter a good tip), but which we use in Ecuador almost exclusively the way English speakers would say “a free gift.” It’s commonly something a business uses in their marketing. “Buy a refrigerator and we’ll throw in a toaster. It’s a yapa.”
Yapas are also sometimes an extra piece of bread in your order, they way we’d call it a “baker’s dozen.” But people are so used to this expression, it can be anything you get as a bonus or a surprise. Samples at the grocery store? Yapa! Onion ring in your fries? Yapa! Mysterious leftover parts when you’re done constructing that IKEA furniture? Yapas! I hadn’t thought about this concept for a while, until I had one of those extra-things-in-my-bag experience at a fast food place this week. I pulled out the unexpected item and didn’t think “aw, man, how else have they messed up my order?” (the way I probably once would have reacted), I just surprised myself a little and said “Una yapa!”
Jesus was constantly telling people to look at things differently. Even in our very out-of-the-ordinary scripture lesson for this Sunday, he tells people “you judge-y guys want to chuck me aside, but now look how big and bad I am” (that’s from the Danny Peck Translation). He was unexpected, but in the best way. May we recognize Jesus when he shows up in our lives. And may we excitedly say “una yapa!”
Category: Spanish
Remember Your Baptism
As a staff at Soapstone, we have been reading Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren. From the first chapter, it has sparked a lot of conversations both about how we are mindful of our faith in everyday activities, but also about having intentionality in all aspects of worship.
I have used many of her examples about Baptism in the last few weeks as I have taught Confirmation and UMYF, and led discussions on missions. The call to Remember our Baptism keeps bringing me back to living in Gaujaló and working at Emaús. At Emaús, the Baptismal font lives right next to the door so it’s easy to touch the water and be mindful of it upon entering for work or worship. When Lourdes was the priest in charge here, she would end every single service by sending water flying with a metal “flinger.” I’m sure there’s some ecclesiastical term* for it, but “flinger” really gives you a picture of what happened. Because Lourdes has an arm. I think she missed her calling as a softball pitcher. When that water was flung at the face, it hurt. You couldn’t help but remember your Baptism.
Lourdes used to use the same flinger, or sometimes a branch, to send water all over the place when she would bless a house for someone who had just moved in (including when her own family and I moved into the house above the tienda). The blessing of the household was a reminder that God is present with us not just in the church building, but all throughout his creation, even what we consider the mundane. My friend (and star youth ministry volunteer) Sylvia remarked recently that her biggest monthly expense is rent, so in being mindful of how she uses her resources, she tries to find ways to use her home as a place of fellowship to glorify God, and I’ve appreciated that reminder as well.
There have been two Baptisms of small children since I’ve been at Soapstone. The first was of an infant who looked over his mothers shoulder the whole time trying to see the font. He wiggled and squirmed quietly, not trying to escape, but trying to get in the water. He just wanted to dive right into the water if Baptism. The second was an elementary-aged girl who seemed very skeptical as Pastor Laura began drenching her, but began to smile as the words of blessing were spoken over her. You could see in the change of her expression the way she was beginning to give in to what God was already doing.
At different times in my own life, I would describe both of those reactions as “mood.”
There’s nothing special about the water in the font, or on the flinger, or on my face or the wall of a home. But there’s a reminder in seeing and touching and hearing it splash of the fellowship and the Grace that we get to live into every day. And writing this post four feet from the font and ten feet from my team members, I’m excited I get to live into that with a new group at one of my favorite places for another week.
*Turns out when I looked this up, even the Catholic supply stores refer to the “flinger” as a “Holy Water Sprinkler.”
Life With Lourdes
Last Monday afternoon I moved in with Lourdes and her family. Lourdes is an Episcopal priest who was the priest of Emaús and still very much acts as the leader of that community. I have known her since I came to Ecuador for the first time in 2007, but I didn’t get to see her very much last summer, as I was out of the city so much.
She and her husband José have recently become the owners of a tienda (store) a couple blocks away from the Emaús church building. On the second floor above the store is an apartment which is really large by Ecuadorian standards. Lourdes, José, and their son Adrian moved in over last weekend and I moved in on Monday. Everyone told me that it would take about two hours to go from Parada La “Y,” the Tole station near the office, to Estacion Moran Valverde, the big Trole station down the street from the tienda, but it turns out I can do it in just under an hour at certain times of the day and if I catch a certain circuit of the Trole just right at the station.
That’s still a lot of travelling, and two days of the week I leave in the morning from the tienda in the south for the office in the north and then go back in the evening. Fridays are really fun because at the end of the day I go from Iglesia Carmen Bajo in the extreme north all the way back to the south with a couple of pit stops in between. Standing on the Trole for an hour or so isn’t exactly the most relaxing experience, but for 25 cents, you can’t beat it.
Lourdes’ mother and sister Marta both work in the store, and they get here sometime around 7:30 each day. I definitely can’t complain thinking about them, because they come from the Carmen Bajo area every day. Somewhere around 8:00 is breakfast. One of the three of Lourdes, José, or Marta stays down in the tienda while everyone else goes upstairs to eat together. We generally have coffee and pancitos (bread) for breakfast, and Lourdes puts out the peanut butter and jelly just for me. Sometimes there are surprises though. A couple mornings we have had what looked like plain warm milk but was flavored with cinnamon, and as it got more solid towards the bottom, I finally identified it as Ecuadorian oatmeal, one of the foods (like yogurt) that you drink out of a mug rather than eat out of a bowl here.
Because almuerzo (lunch) is the big meal here, dinner tends to be the same as breakfast. Lately (because of the season of the year, approaching the Day of the Dead) we’ve had Colada Morada instead of coffee at night (thick, warm, mora-flavored drink similar to wassail with pieces of fruit in it). Also, especially if it’s a day that I wasn’t here for almuerzo, Lourdes usually has saved some of lunch for me, appreciating the fact that I’m still not accustomed to eating a gigantic meal during the middle of the day (then trying not to want a nap). This is also a good thing because if I’m not here for lunch, it tends to mean that I have had a gringo-sized lunch in the north and would probably be starving by breakfast otherwise.
Wednesday is the only full weekday that I spend here in the south. But on the three weekdays where I return here in the afternoon, I’m usually hanging around in the store for a few hours before and after dinner. It’s fun to listen and try to understand the Spanish conversations going on around me, and I’ve started to get a feel for who some of the regular customers are. There’s a little girl that lives nearby who runs over three or four times some nights while her mother is cooking dinner and apparently realizes one item at a time what ingredients she is out of. Sometimes by the fourth trip of the night, this little girl is in her pajamas. Then there’s the probably 15-year-old boy who stops by around seven every evening to buy two cigarettes (yes, I really think he’s about 15, and yes, cigarettes are really sold individually).
You also never know what friends are going to come by. Almost everyone from the church lives just a short walk away, and many times Rodrigo, Magi, and their family come by and have dinner/coffee with us. As business trickles off towards the end of the night I’ll help clean or stock shelves or count the drawer. It’s also always fun to see the customers obviously wondering why the gringo is working in the tienda.
This weekend I was asked where “home” was for me. In a missionary community, that question always gets interesting responses. Mine began with “wherever my family is.” Then yesterday Lourdes asked me if this has begun to feel like home to me. It has.
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.
Language School
I know that I’ve already given the disclaimer that I doubted I’d be writing as much as I did last summer. Part of that has been intentional, trying to spend more time with people than behind a screen. But For the last two weeks, part of that has been that any writing time I’ve had has been spent doing compositions in Spanish.
Since Friday the 9th, I’ve been doing intensive language classes every weekday morning. A lot of other people from Youth World have been to this language school, and it’s connected to what used to be the Mango Tree Cafe in the Mariscal. Each day I make the trek down the hill, on the Trole, and into La Mariscal beginning around 8:15. It really doesn’t take me 45 minutes to get there, but I like to be early and look over my notes at least once in the morning when I get there.
My profesora is Alexandra, a very smart woman who speaks quickly but doesn’t mind my slow (me parece, or “it seems to me,” anyway) pace. We’ve pretty much got a system down at this point: she comes in apologetically at 9:05 every morning (that’s super-on-time here in Ecuador) and greets me as I pack up from studying downstairs at the tables in the old cafe. We discuss something trivial in Spanish as we head upstairs, and then go over my homework, which tends to be somewhere between five and a zillion exercises from the book, and a composition. I read through what I’ve written at the pace of a second-grader, and she doesn’t interrupt me except for wherever I’ve left out the preposition “a” (which is just about everywhere an “a” goes).
Usually at this point she’ll ask me questions using whatever tense or vocabulary we’ve gone over in the last couple of days and throw in some new words, before heading on to the next tense or word part for the day. It’s a workout for me to switch back and forth from doing exercises to speaking to trying to understand a new concept as Alexandra explains it in the language that I’m still trying to figure out. But it’s also in a way a respite for my brain when she starts diagramming something on the board or when I am just conjugating a list of things out of the book as opposed to trying to hold a constant conversation, which will totally fry my brain.
What’s exhausting is how much effort it takes to get an idea across because I sometimes just don’t know one word. I’ve spent enough time now talking to Alexandra and realizing her patience that I will try to speak without stopping in the middle and asking “¿Como se dice….?” I know that most of the people I have to speak to in Spanish won’t know that one obscure word in English that I’m trying to translate, so many times talking just becomes an exercise in outside-the-box thinking.
It is a ton of fun though, for several reasons. First, I can see my own progress, in everything from my vocabulary to my understanding of the logic behind how sentences are formed in Spanish to my confidence in speaking it. We also totally pick on each other. I laugh at Alexandra when she thinks I’m going to make a mistake but I actually roll out with some phrase a lot smarter than what she thought I was about to say. She laughs at me when I respond “uh-huh” instead of with a complete sentence beginning with “Si…”, or when I come up with ridiculous answers to her questions.
This morning, for instance, we were going over reflexive verbs. At this point Alexandra has figured out that I lean slightly toward the introverted side. So of course, for her example question she chose to use the word casarse, or “to marry.” Her question was something along the lines of “¿A quien quieras casarse?” or “Who do you want to marry.” So of course I responded “Shakira.” I thought she was going to cry.
Since my main project right now is language school, people keep asking me really detailed questions like “So how’s that going…?” My practiced answer includes how my brain is fried at the end of most days. And while there are times when I want to rip out my literally 101 pages of notes (so far) and declare how worthless this is, 99% of the time I realize how good it is that I’m completely shot by lunch. As Preston put it, “You’re supposed to feel like an idiot,” and I remember that if I knew Spanish, I wouldn’t be in language classes. My brain is working overtime right now, and there’s definitely a bigger reason than the altitude that I need a nap every day. But it’s really cool to see my own progress and to realize how much I need to be able to communicate with people, and how thankful I am that I have the opportunity to do classes and sound like an idiot in front of one person instead of the whole Spanish-speaking world around me.