mario mixing the ice cream


william breaking more ice

kelly workin on her ice cream...


yay ice cream.


nicole and esther

norvy watching me melt holes in the bottom of my plantin buckets. :)


mario and i
my lovely face


david holding the wood while i cut/saw my shelvings


david...measuring...


resting...ah


a small friend outside my house who was camoflouging (how do you spell that?) with my house. :)


nicole taking her non-chemical medicine after we went to a clinic to check out our parasites (maybe i forgot to mention that part?)


nicole getting re-hydrated after a few too many visits to the bathroom. she was really sick. i didn't feel great, but didn't feel terrible...got some parasite killers and pro-biotics to work on my baso, which is low (anyone know what that is?)...and all non-chemical! wonderful. natural. lets hope it works. ha.

cooking at the apt in sincelejo! torin, nicole, dodanim, and norvy.


ice cream in a bag...

mario excessively excited about the ice cream. love this smile.

nicole putting some natural filter in the bottom of one of many large planting basins. :)


more hot nails and holes...


unpacking on the bookshelf i made. :) holler.


eating vegetables! something that does not happen enough for me.


torin and nicole excited for crepes and veggies. :)


chilling in zambrano eating our ice cream. :)


william, oldest son of pastor, crushing the ice.


mario working on our ice cream.

well, i realize its been 20 days since my last post and there is way too much to say. my appologies.

i don´t even remember 20 days ago. i think bonnie was here. bonnie is the country rep for mcc colombia. she visited the coast, and we had three days with her, which were really helpful and good. helped define more of what our role is, which seems to be being constantly defined and redefined, and it was great to feel her supportive presence out here.

she arrived on my birthday. it was a day of much love. i had a number of lovely phone calls, many notes, emails, letters, and we had a wonderful birthday dinner, prepared by dodanim (co-worker/participant)...guatemalan food. i also taught them how to make jello cake and we attempted that out here, which was a success...they wondered about the bright green cake, i think, but it was fun to have something from home.

chronologically i dont know where im at now, but ill go back a week. on saturday afternoon, nicole bauman, very good friend of mine from college, arrived in sincelejo. she had been studying in guatemala for three months and is making her way south toward paraguay for mennonite world conference in july. so the past week has been phenomenal. sunday afternoon we headed to zambrano and were there the majority of the week.

it was so nice to have a visitor. being able to have someone who met the people i daily interact with and was able to know my community on a personal level was really helpful - more so than i thought it would be. it is so nice to have someone to talk to and process with, who doesnt just hear about, but experiences what my life is like in zambrano. so this week has been a huge blessing.

i spent a lot of time in zambrano working, which felt good after a number of visits where i dont feel like i have much agency. a group of young adults from the church are beginning a community garden project, which i am part of, and so two days of the 4 we were in zambrano, i was up at 6 am, outside digging post holes, building seed beds, moving dirt, etc. we had a number of really interesting conversations with the guys (we were the only girls working) about gender equality/differences. we clearly have different understandings about women and men´s roles, but amidst our differences, i feel like we respect each other and love each other, which is the most important to me, really. they kept wanting to carry things for us, or do the hammering so we didnt have to, etc. but nicole and i both were adament that we could carry our own weight, and they quickly learned that we could...and would, regardless of what they wanted us to do, i think. so that was a really great thing. it was nice to get our hands dirty, do physical labor a bit, and also, i think my skin turned two tones darker, which i didnt complain about.

during the week, we also taught some of our friends how to make ice cream in a bag. the ice cream out here on the coast is pretty pathetic (i didnt know i had such a critical tastebud for ice cream till i got out here and tasted this stuff) so i taught them how to make ice cream with two ziplocks. it was a hit. and delicious.

apart from the garden, nicole and i also got busy helping david (young adult from the church who built my apt) put up shelves in my bathroom, kitchen, closet, and bookshelf which i made last time and it seriously lacked a few more shelves (it looked ridiculous...three shelves in a 5 1/2 foot bookshelf. ha). good times.

we also planted my seeds, which was one of the biggest highlights i think. typical costeñan food is basically...fried starch. they eat little to no vegetables and i am missing dearly the loveliness of rhubarb, lettuce, spinach, beans, strawberries, and much more, from my garden at home. it took a long time to find seeds, but i found some and kind of went nuts with them. since i have no garden, we bought large wash basins in which we heated nails and melted holes in the bottom to let the water drain, then filled them with dirt and planted vegetables: squash, peppers, onion, tomato, spinach, lettuce, cilantro, thyme, mint, and basil! its a start at least. they are actually worried that kids will carry away my large basins, so david offered to help me lay brick this week and built a garden out on my patio, which would be phenomenal...so that may be in the plans this week. we´ll see. basically everyone thinks i am ridiculous and crazy for eating vegetables, but i am THRILLED.

did have a bit of a fun time getting dirt to my patio to plant. william, the son of ester and rodrigo (pastors) is studying at the university in cartagena, but is home on summer vacation for a month, so as norvy was really busy this week, he was my escort wherever i went...im not allowed to go anywhere on my own yet. so william took us to get dirt, and threw a big bag of dirt on the back of the moto and told me to take it home. so that was great. i took it back to my house, dumped it on the patio and turned around to go back to pick up more. when i got to the place, however, the gate was shut so i kind of pushed into it with the front of the moto and yelled at william, asking how to enter. he looked at me like ¨well, figure it out¨ told me to push it open with my left hand while driving the moto with my right. my largely moto-driving experienced self, however, slightly missed the path and attempted (but failed) to drive up the pile of rocks right beside the path instead. ha. all is well, except my two toes. but it was so nice to have him sit there and watch me rather than come over and help me. might sound crazy, but to have him just stand there and walk me through it and make me do it rather than ask to do it himself was a refreshing respect i dont feel like i always have.

in other news, i have noticed that spending days and days without speaking english does not tire me anymore, and that is a welcome change. its so exciting to not be tired after a day of speaking spanish, and to realize how much my vocab is constantly growing, even though it doesn´t seem like it.

we also had a great game of basketball this week. they love playing, because they know i love playing, and even though they´re terrible, we have a blast.

found out i will have internet access in zambrano, which is a welcome connection to you all. hope this wasn´t too long. appologies for the delayed post. i´ll work at keeping it more accurate. and finally here are a bunch of pictures! enjoy.

i miss you all. love you much. happy fathers day, again, dad. family...it was BEAUTIFUL to hear all of your voices. a bit bittersweet...wishing i were with you this week. but i love you all dearly.