Pictures from our Waterfall Hike to Guadual

 







 
















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

From rationing to releasing

For the last 12 months, we have been rationing our resources. You name it, we have conserved it, apportioned it, and allotted it: from Skippy peanut butter, to Earl Gray tea, to cheddar cheese, to dark chocolate. From Crayola markers to Ticonderoga pencils to embroidery thread to temporary tattoos. From shrinky-dinks to jigsaw puzzles to body wash.  From maple syrup to soy sauce to Scotch tape. I am the chief control freak on this project, and I am afraid I have passed some of my neuroticism onto my kiddos. The thing is every little thing feels more precious when it is not readily replaceable, when Amazon Prime is a pipe dream, when the nearest Target is 5000 miles away. The truth is, everything IS more precious. And yet, now we find ourselves, at the tail end of this journey, and it is time to let go.  It is an admittedly sharp turnabout to go from rationing to releasing.  It is time to bake another big batch of chocolate chip cookies and use up that chocolate. Time to s...
Read more

In Ecuador you do not say “Adios”

Image
“In every language, there seem to be certain ‘unmentionables’—words of such strong affective connotations that they cannot be used in polite discourse.”  Language in Thought and Action,  S.I Hayakawa and Alan R. Hayakawa What are these so-called unmentionables?  Perhaps your mind goes first to bad words, like the f- word or racial slurs like the n-word, or other derogatory words like the r- word for people who are developmentally  disabled. Or perhaps suppressed words, like those pertaining to menstruation or sex. Or perhaps you are thinking of words that are thought to wield magical powers like saying the word “quiet” on a labor and delivery floor when not much is happening (Don’t do it, the nurses will kill you). In all cultures there are simply words you do not say.  One, surprisingly important unmentionable in Ecuador is the word Adios . Whereas Adios  is commonly used to mean “goodbye” or “see you later” in Mexico, Spain, and much of the rest of the Sp...
Read more

Sweet memories

It has struck me countless times this past week that many of the sensory experiences of life that have become mundane will be sweet memories in just a few day's time: the early morning crow of the roosters, the catchy jingle of the gas truck, the wind in the back of a  camioneta , the aroma of roasting plantains, the stickiness of life in the tropics.  It has also struck me that my children's Spanish may never be as voluble as it is in this moment -- they wake, live and dream in Spanish. They play card games and basketball in Spanish; they harvest oranges and yuca in Spanish; they observe the world around them almost entirely in Spanish. In fact, it is not uncommon for us to be alone on a walk and have Brynna speak to me only in Spanish. I am a bit tender about lots of things this week, but at this very moment, I am sad to imagine that, as we transition back to an English-centric world, they will lose some of their skill and fluency. It is perhaps even sadder to think that the...
Read more