down on the farm

i took a weekend trip to the colony Canadiense 2 (canadian 2) and stayed with the Falk family.

it was nice to be in the country and enjoy the slow-paced lifestyle. the food was delicious (cake at every meal!), the weather beautiful, and the family was very friendly. the father spoke spanish, but the women of the family did not. still we managed to get by. i have had 10 months of being the awkward foreigner who doesn´t really understand what´s going on, so i´m used to it.

here´s their house.

the falks are from a group of colonists who moved from Paraguay over 40 years ago. they had been extremely poor and life had been very tough for a long time, but now they are successful. they own land, cattle, milk cows, and are part owners of a store. they milk the cows twice a day and sell it to Pil, the national milk company. they all have hands the size of plates and can milk a cow with lightning speed. before i tried/failed milking, all i could think was "man i wish i had practiced this in wisconsin so i could impress them" but nope i am just a city slicker. after pushing the milk back up the cow for a couple minutes, i managed to get a weak stream going.

Sunday was their annual dankfest, or thanksgiving celebration for their church. the falks are part of an evangelical church, not the colony church, that has been around for almost 2 years. i helped clean the church saturday afternoon and the youth group decorated it with real fruit creations. there was a morning service, lunch, and then an afternoon program. the sunday school sang some songs, recited bible verses, and played the piano. then leaders of the community went to the pulpit and talked about the move from Paraguay, colony life, conversion experiences, and funny anecdotes. i really wish i could have understood what they were saying. a woman who knew english would randomly translate for me.

after the program we had a feast of fresh fruit. delicious! a volleyball net was set up and the youth played. plenty of chatting and tereré drinking. a few english speaking women found me so i had some pleasant coversations and felt welcomed. it was a long day, 9am-5pm. so i crashed when we got back and missed the milking! and i headed back to santa cruz monday morning with the trufi taxi service.

it was a good experience, i´m glad i went. but i´m also glad it´s over with. even though i didn´t speak low german and the mother knew a little spanish, we still enjoyed each others´company and shared matté. and i got to see a glimpse of what life is like for the people that come into Centro Menno. and it was nice to not be the only big white person in church haha!

typical night

Right now I´m supposed to be writing my goodbye article for the Menno Bote describing my time here, but I find myself back in paper writing procrastination mode. So to get those creative thoughts flowing, I´ll write here instead.

Last night after dinner I helped my host parents study for their “parts of the body” test for their English class. I helped them with pronunciations and they taught me some new vocabulary (I know I know how did I get by 10 months without knowing the word “tobillo” – I would just point to my ankle). Some words in castellano just don´t translate exactly. For example, “manco” means without a hand or “tuerto” missing an eye. My host dad acted these words out for me with big gestures but I was sorry to say that English doesn´t have a cool words like that.

After reviewing family vocabulary words like “father in law” or “husband” (or according to papi, what corrie does not have), we got into a huge argument over the definitions of “step-brother” and “half-brother” (my host mom declared that she has 12 half brothers and 5 half sisters, which is true). It was hilarious because mami and I would explain and papi would just yell no no and try to make up his own definition and then confuse himself and not finish his thought. Trying to argue my definition was also way confusing since I just learned those words in Spanish, so I finally just gave up. We were at a stalemate until mami brought out the dictionaries (sounds like an intense night of Scrabble between the aunties and gma) and all was resolved with papi exclaiming claro! (of course!) even though he had been arguing against the dictionary definition.

To end the night right we sang some English worship songs they had learned in class. When I first came here I really struggled with singing in church, but now I know most of the songs and love singing them. Trying to teach my host parents how to say the word “awesome” made me realize how wack the English language is! And now I can´t even speak it that well.

bye schroeder family

last week the (ex) directors of centro menno, hans and elma, and their kids went back to canada after 4 years of living in santa cruz. i miss them and pray for a smooth transition into a new life.




as a last hurrah we went swimming (crazy gringos swimming during winter) and had a nice dinner. then i got a hair wrap done with the girls so they could show off some bolivian fashion. but now they are gone and i just look like a hippie.






keep having interesting encounters on the street. this time a gypsy woman from argentina told me i was cursed by a witch and that´s why i´m crazy in my mind (so there is a reason!). but no worries, cuz she could bless it out of me for free. that all made me a little mad and when i spoke to my friends she would yell at me "no espeaky in inglés!" we got away, but it took our favorite ice cream treat a "fruggy" (what the what i am completely blanking on the english name - candy bits mixed in vanilla ice cream) to feel better.


i have 6 weeks left (rapidingo!), so the job search has been kicked up a few notches. if anyone knows of anything out there, please tell me.