http://hopeandjosh.com/

Change is a Gift

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 22:00:31 -0500

Nothing was wrong. It just didn’t feel right. I look back on the past year in Seattle the same way I feel when I hold a vanilla latte. Comfort, warmth. Two-feet-on-the-ground, head-in-the-right-place stability. We bought furniture. Joined an amazing church community. Ran my first 5k. Paid off student loans. Stocked up on household supplies at Costco. My life was wonderfully and unabashedly normal.

At the end of the day, everything was okay, and that was sort of the problem.

Just because my head was in the right place, didn’t mean my heart was. With this blessing of groundedness came an underlying question of “Okay, what’s next”. I tried to shake off that feeling at salsa clubs and bury it on morning jogs. And though I was grateful for the many, many gifts in my life, the challenges, the life lessons, and most of all new friends, I was open to change. Open to the uncertainty and adventure of the Next Step. Whatever that would be.

So I did some reflection. Looked into bigger cities. Somewhere I would feel inspired. Somewhere I could grow. And I found it in Chicago. Like Seattle, it has personality. A different one, with fewer recycle bins and more pizza joints. And my family is a 2 hour flight away instead of an overnight redeye. It’s a diverse, friendly, pulsating city. You could explore Chicago every day and never reach the bottom. Neither city is better—just different.

So after 3 months here, everything’s shifted a little.

I’m slowly learning Portuguese. The pronunciation is completely different, and it sounds like underwater Spanish. For now, I’m using podcasts but plan to take group classes soon. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but our trip to Rio after the wedding gave me an excuse to dive in. I’m also learning a different kind of salsa—mambo, which is on a different beat. And with slightly different styling. Every time I go on the dance floor, I get the same feeling when listening to my Portuguese lessons—very, very lost until that brief moment when something is familiar. And then very, very lost again. But you don’t grow if you don’t learn, so I’m excited and energized by the long road ahead.

On those beautiful summer days in Seattle, I’d walk up Capitol Hill from downtown, rife with Instagram moments. A pithy flyer for lesbian film screenings. Sidewalks generously sprinkled with pink petals from Japanese flowering cherry trees, a popular option from Seattle’s Approved Street Tree list (yup, that’s a thing). People lined up around the corner at Molly Moon’s ice cream. A unicyclist on his daily commute. So many things to see and appreciate. Seattle has a unique energy that few cities can claim. People are tolerant and mindful. The heart and soul of the place is incredible. And I wouldn’t be disappointed, if the universe aligned, to move back someday.

If there’s one thing I’m worse at than volleyball, it’s saying goodbye. So this isn’t a goodbye to Seattle. It’s a thank you note—a sad one and a happy one at the same time. I’m sure the city is the same without me living in it, but I would never be the same without having lived there.

The Great Wheel, in Numbers

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 14:34:00 -0400

Height: 200 ft
Tons of concrete: 550 for the foundation alone
Weight: 280,300 lbs
Pier: 57
Length of ride: 12 minutes
Passengers: 252
Tickets: $13 for adults, $8.50 for children

I’ve been walking down Alaskan Way for months as the ferris wheel slowly morphed from foundation to bones to a full fledged tourist attraction. At first, I was hesitant to embrace such a huge structure on the skyline, because it could block incredible views of 5pm sunsets (yup, that’s winter in Seattle for ya).

This may be the case, but I’ve been quickly converted. The fact is, the Seattle pier wouldn’t be a party without a giant ferris wheel. Not only is it extremely photogenic, the wheel actually looks like it was meant to be there—it adds a hint of nostalgia to an iconic area of the city.

Thoughts from the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 02:37:04 -0400

We drove up north to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, and were a little confused. It was the last weekend of June, which meant it was harvest season, and we passed fields and fields of decapitated tulip stems. Finally, though, we sighed in relief as we approached a crowded parking lot and THIS:

We walked along the fields, dodging the mud puddles and careful not to step on any flowers. It’s amazing how cheerful they look, all huddled together like that. There were tulips of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Mostly colors.

Josh took a bunch of photos. Check them out here.

Wake family reunion!

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 02:30:05 -0400

Mama Fresh, Hija, and Lovechild were united! When Mal Mal came to visit us in Seattle, we wanted to show her the epitome of Seattle: the Fremont Sunday market. Locally sourced honey, hot empanadas, and vintage odds and ends…you could go every weekend and never get bored. We stopped for a photo in the antique mall (above), where Josh bought an old Polaroid camera in really good condition (below). Note to self: Decide on a word to spell out of old marque signage. Those letters look sweet, but as a word nerd, I can be a bit picky. Maybe I’ll choose my favorites and Scrabble it out.

$4 File Cabinet

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:21:00 -0400

As some of you may know, Josh is colorblind. He can see traffic lights and do normal things, but because of this he has a magnetic attraction to super bright colors.

Our office is going to be our next big project. One of our biggest challenges is managing the massive amount of paperwork and mail that comes in our house…and never leaves. Thus, our search for a filing cabinet.

Josh fell in love with this $159 beauty from CB2…

And we spotted these colorful desktop filing cabinets at the Container Store for $99, but they were way too small.

So while we were running errands in SODO, we passed by the Goodwill Outlet, where items that not even Goodwill will sell in their stores are pawned off “by the pound.” Needless to say, this sucker needed some loving. But for a whopping $4, the price was right.

At one time this was a black filing cabinet, someone thought these were supposed to be grey and so they spray painted it.

This was Josh’s first metal project involving paint, so there was a lot of experimenting between sanding and paint stripper. He started off sanding which took FOREVER, and then discovered the beauty of paint thinner.

If you look REAL hard, you can see the potential in there somewhere.

Removing the hardware made it a lot easier to polish it up.

We decided on bright orange, so Josh coated everything with white primer first so the color would really pop. And pop it did:

We love it! It’s fun and functional but didn’t cost a million dollars, since we already had the materials on hand (sander, paint thinner, spray paint). That was the fun part. Now we have a room full of papers to file…

Malm Hack: Tufted Headboard

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 01:32:00 -0500

This is the infamous Malm, compliments of IKEA. A regular in broke college students’ apartments, this fine piece of furniture is about as plain and boring as… well, an assembled bed made of medium-density fiber board.

We inherited this bed from a college friend, but weren’t excited about it. Here’s Futile Attempt #1, where we tried to hide the ho-hum frame with some colorful pillows and a headboard slipcover. I sewed both from IKEA fabric, and yes, the words are upside-down. No, not on purpose.

So we lusted over this DIY project with the hope that maybe, someday we could have a lovely tufted headboard of our very own. And maybe we could glam up our Malm with some sort of attachment.

I bought a giant swatch of slate gray corderoy fabric, snipped some fabric for custom buttons, and sewed through several layers of foam and batting with a magic knotting technique I learned in my quilting days. That is the extent of my contribution. Josh (and friends) took over the rest:

They drew out a part of a circle by hand and traced it on a 1/2” ply 59.5” x 15” to fit the frame of the Malm.

Then they sawed that shape on both sides. On our carpet. Which they promptly vacuumed.

Then they measured and drilled 3 rows of 4, 5, and 4 holes for the buttons. I think tufting looks best with staggered holes, but aligned holes are fine too if you’re into symmetry.

They chopped up a pine board into three 1.5” x 3.5” x 10” pieces and mounted 2 metal tie-downs from Home Depot to the front and 3 to the back.

You know that egg crate stuff you buy to make the beds in college dorms feel less like pavement? It’s a far cry from a thermapedic, but it’s the perfect thickness for the headboard and easy to cut too:

We used some low-grade batting to smooth out the egg texture and stapled it to the back of the headboard. Doesn’t it look all cute and fuzzy?

Time for the main event. Josh’s buds draped the shell fabric, cut it to size, and staple gunned it to the plywood.

Meanwhile in the kitchen…

We use a pack of fabric button kits from JoAnn Fabric to press together 13 custom buttons. It looks complicated, but the process was (ahem) a snap!

We made sure to buy thick embroidery thread that would stay put through 2 layers of thick fabric, foam, and batting. Instead of making ginormous knots to hold the buttons in place in the back, we made a knot a few inches out and double stapled it to the plywood.

And ta-da! The bed with a pretty head and no guts.

Too bad you can’t cuddle with a headboard— this fabric is softer than our pillows.

And that’s a wrap!

How to Cook a Thanksgiving Turkey

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:48:00 -0500

We weren’t sure what to expect for our first Thanksgiving in Seattle. Josh wanted to buy a few rotisserie chickens, but I refused. Thanksgiving without family is sad enough, but Thanksgiving without turkey would be…unfestive.

So, with some trepidation, we bought a 6 pound frozen turkey. Two of Josh’s friends were in town, and none of us had ever cooked a turkey before.

We Googled the entire process, and somehow made it happen:

Step 1
Open turkey packaging. It will be slimey and gross, so do it over the sink.

Step 2
Excavate the cave-like innards of the turkey cavity. This too will be slimey and gross, so make sure the garbage disposal is reachable.

Step 3
Wash out the turkey guts with warm water. Probably not a necessary step, but you’ll feel better if it at least gets a rinse, since there were some nasty things hanging out in there.

Step 4
Fill a garbage bag halfway with 1 part salt, 8 parts warm-to-hot water. A bucket or large bowl would probably be better, but our 2-person household has no such thing. Place the turkey in and check that it’s completely submerged.

Keep the turkey in the fridge overnight in the salt water solution.

—-

12 hours later…

Step 5
Take the turkey out of the salt water and rinse it off. Then place on a broiler sheet and start the spiceage. Rub some olive oil all over the skin and cover with a mixture of the following spices:

Garam masala
Chili powder
Garlic salt
Basil
Paprika
Cinnamon
Oregano
Salt
Pepper
Cayenne pepper
Montreal steak rub

Step 6
Cut up apples and stuff inside turkey. We hoped this would keep the inside from drying out. I don’t think it really affected the meat, but baked apples ended up being a tasty side dish.

Bake at 350 degrees for 2-3 hours.

—-

3 hours later…

Step 7
Carve up your delicious Thanksgiving turkey.

Step 8
Enjoy feasting with friends. Stuff your face. Guzzle wine. Repeat until food coma commences.

The turkey had a cajun jerk style rub with an Indian flair. Good stuff. We’ll try it again next year!

Back in action!

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:13:00 -0500

We’ve been: learning to cook, taking road trips, playing settlers of catan, hanging Christmas decorations, birthday partying, exploring, volunteering, FIFAing, reading Steve Jobs’s biography, working, indoor skydiving, fixing cars, and wrapping presents.

Check back soon for a new round-up of projects and adventures.

How to Restore a Herman Miller Eames Shell Chair

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 01:52:00 -0400

Herman Miller’s M logo may look unfittingly like an orange bikini top, but this guy designed midcentury modern furniture like Victoria’s Secret designs lingerie: Very Sexy. If I could furnish my house with just one thing, it would definitely be a shell chair.

We found 2 of those magical Herman Miller Eames shell chairs on Craigslist in Pittsburgh for a really good price. The seller was an antique dealer who knew that the ripped vinyl would be too expensive to fix. It worked out, because we planned to rip off the vinyl anyway. Here’s what one of the shell chairs looked like after we detached the base:

The orange color was faded and looked slightly moldy, while the rip was unstitchable. Plus, orange is a tough color to coordinate.

The other one looked like it was suffered “death by a thousand cigarette buds.” Poor little guy…

With a razor blade and some tugging, we ripped off the nasty vinyl pretty easily. The brown piping even peeled right off. So we were left with very stinky blue foam. Whoever sat in these chairs smoked a lot of cigarettes together.

And the scraping began! Our secret weapons: a pack of razor blades, 2 packs of brillo pads, a fine tooth comb, a potato peeler, and several bottles of Goo Gone. The comb and peeler were not helpful. The Goo Gone was miraculous…after we read the directions.

The Goo Gone didn’t seem to do anything except make the room smell weird. And it left an oily residue on our hands.

Then we realized we had to let it sit for a few minutes, and it came off much more easily. Oops!

The foam scraping party lasted an embarrassing 5 hours for the first chair and 2 for the second. At least we had a decent learning curve! After a wash in the bathtub with dish soap, we scrubbed the base with baking soda and were really happy with the final result:

They’re in pretty good shape for 60 year old chairs. Under the rotten tangerine vinyl was a flawless off-white fiberglass shell. Was it worth 7 hours of work? Yes ma’am! I love that these chairs have a history.

$15 Borders Sign Wall Art

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:05:00 -0400

I credit my dad to the fact that I love books. He had a very sneaky way of getting me and my sister excited about reading. Saturday mornings at the library were weekend field trips. Summer vacation always began with a long reading list. We never went to bed without a story, never started a road trip without a stack of books in the backseat.

Needless to say, Borders has a special place in my heart. I have fond memories of drinking hot chocolate in the cafe, a brand new book in hand. So when I saw that Borders was closing in downtown Seattle, Josh and I asked for the nostalgic signs above each section.

We just mounted them with a nut and a washer, which gave us a flat surface to stick on some 3m wall tape.

Then we measured the wall and decided to put “cooking” in the kitchen above the stove as a teaser.

We only needed a level, measuring tape, and a pencil to mount the signs in our office. It’s fun, easy, cheap, and looks great next to our bookshelf in the office. Even better, I feel like we preserved a part of my beloved Borders!

Total cost: 6 signs @ $2.50 each= $15

How to do a Photo Transfer with Acrylics

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 10:00:00 -0400

Say hello to our new coasters!

I took an acrylic class at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and I finally learned how to an acrylic photo transfer. Basically, acrylic is made of plastic, so when a clear gel dries, it can pick up ink from newspapers, books, or similar printed materials. We needed coasters for our new coffee table, so I grabbed a pack at the dollar store. I’ll upgrade to better material when I get this process down!

I used Liquitex gloss gel, because the matte gel doesn’t “look” waterproof to me (even though it is. I’m just saying I would think twice about putting a wet drink on top of it).

And I used maps from a 1947 almanac for the printed material. Yes, I ripped pages out of an old book. I felt bad for about 2 minutes. Then I envisioned how cool they’d look as coasters. You’ll also notice our stop sign table has now become my craft table. That’s because we don’t care how much paint or glue gets on it- it’s already covered in graffiti!

Okay so I coated the paper with acrylic gel. I didn’t stick to a specific shape- I just tried to cover the parts I thought were most interesting, since I was going to cut it later anyway. I used a big oil brush, because I don’t mind the bristle marks. A foam brush would be better if you care about the texture.

I let the maps dry overnight, and then I gave them a bath in lukewarm water. If you use hot water, the gel might get soft (and your fingers will get wrinkly). I didn’t paint over the coasters- the white is just the back side of them.

I flipped over my palate and started scrubbing the paper side (NOT the glossy side) of the maps to get all the paper off. I started just rubbing with my hands and then realized I could just use a brillo pad, which was much more efficient. If you want a completely transparent transfer, you’ll have lots of scrubbing to do. I purposely left a thin layer of paper so it would still be translucent.

I left out the maps (glossy side up so it wouldn’t stick to the paper towel) to dry for an hour. They didn’t stick, but I’d probably use aluminum foil on a baking sheet next time since they were delicate and hard to move when we needed to use the table. After they dried, I measured the inside border of the coasters and cut the maps accordingly.

Here’s how they turned out! I think they’re pretty cool- the totally random juxtaposition of traditional fruit (a la still life) and antique maps, plus the fact that we now have colorful coasters for our coffee table.

The Midcentury Dresser Table

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:00:05 -0400

We’re old people. Seriously, I was thinking about how much of a geriatric couple we are when we woke up at 8am on a Saturday morning to go to estate sales. But it’s sad to know that after we’re fully furnished, we won’t need any more stuff, even if they’re hidden treasures in someone’s grandma’s attic.

Anyway, we found this dresser for $5 in a guy’s garage. He said it was his grandfather’s from the 1960s, and it wasn’t much to look at, but the wood was in good shape. And I thought the different sized knobs were charming-like mismatched socks on a little kid who dressed himself for the first time.

My favorite part was the retro shelf liner inside: Who would have thought you’d find a colorful surprise like that in a dresser with a nasty old paint job?

We detached the legs and Josh attacked the dresser with a hand sander to get all the paint off. Then we painted the drawers white and stained the rest with the dark walnut stain from the desk we were working on.

At a yard sale that same day, we bought these legs off a couple who donated a table to Goodwill and forgot the legs in the car. So we bought them for $1 and stained them to match. I love our new dresser table, but I especially love that it was so cheap and easy to make!

DIY Midcentury Desk

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 11:01:00 -0400

This is our one week anniversary of moving into our new place in Seattle, and we’ve been having fun getting it all set up. One of the best things about this house is the workshop in the basement, which is now covered in yellow sawdust and has frankenstein furniture parts strewn around the floor.

Josh spends more time at his desk than probably anywhere else in the house, so when we saw this little yellow fellow at Goodwill, he had to do some convincing to persuade me he could actually do something with it. He builds robots and electronics gadgets, but I’ve never seen him fix up furniture.

We could see patches of the original wood after detaching the bottom:

I was envisioning something a little darker (like this one on the bottom left), but Josh assured me we could sand off the yellow and stain it. It didn’t take more than a glance at those cute little stubby legs to see the potential in that thing. What’s a few hours of sanding?

After a casual encounter with the hand sander, the sunny green-yellow paint finally came off…slowly…and stubbornly.

Poor Josh labored all afternoon with 80 and 60 grit to strip it, then went over it all with 120 and later 220 for the final round.

And all the hard work paid off:

Inspired by Daniel’s AMAZING desk on Manhatten Nest, we bought some brackets and legs on Amazon. Although the picture doesn’t look like the correct legs, you’ll notice the height does say 28” and when they arrive they look more like these guys. Daniel happens to be Josh’s CMU friend Jeremy’s little brother. Small world right?

We cut off 2 small pieces to raise the top board above the dresser (the legs we ordered were a little too high so we did this to make it level instead of cutting the legs). Then the next step was a dark walnut stain, which we applied outside and left overnight to dry.

Ta-da! We spray painted the handles silver to brighten them up and set it all up in our new office. It’s pretty cute right?

Epic Kickball Game

Sun, 29 May 2011 10:00:06 -0400

It was my first day at work, and there was talk of a fun, leisurely kickball game that night. Would I be interested? Uh sure. The last time I played was probably in 4th grade gym class and that horrible day when I kicked, missed, and stuck out is still a sensitive topic for my elementary-school self. Can you come early for practice? Mmkay. Practice for rec kickball? That should have been the first sign that this wasn’t going to be a schoolyard kickball game.

And it wasn’t. We met an hour early to practice grounding the ball, catching fly balls. and perfecting our kicks (ankle not toe, third base not first, etc). The team was a mix of people from work, two random high school kids, and a few friends of said coworkers. There was actually an umpire and the other team was gearing up on the other side of the field. We relocated to the baseball diamond and the showdown began. Blue had no idea that Orange was about to bring it.

After an uneventful first 8 innings, tension was high. The blue team broke out the rule book (it was more like a rule packet) and I felt more and more like an extra in a spinoff of the Dodgeball movie. The high school all-stars caught everything that came their way, and Heather kicked a solid grounder toward third base to get safely on first. Then Kickball Mike popped an uncatchable home run into the stratosphere and Orange went home victorious.

Kickball is a part of the Pittsburgh Sports League (PSL), which serves “young and young-thinking youth.” Go Orange!

The Pirates...the Buccs...Both?

Fri, 27 May 2011 10:57:00 -0400

I was anxiously anticipating the Welcome to Pittsburgh! sign. Actually there was no sign to welcome me (or if there was I couldn’t see it through the traffic near the bridge). But the curved yellow bridge does sort of hint at a smiley face. I haven’t spent much time in Pittsburgh- just a few weekends here and there. I’ve tried crepes, ridden the incline, and played frisbee on the CMU campus. I’m excited to see more of the city this summer. Some people hate change, but for me a new place means new adventures with new people.

Josh’s friends had some extra baseball tickets so we unpacked my stuff from the car and carpooled downtown. After a fun round of parking-garage-hopping, we found a space and headed to the game a little late. We ran into Shawn, who is the first person I met at Deeplocal. I was confused because people used the Buccs and the Pirates interchangeably. Apparently they’re the same thing? Josh’s friends bought a huge bucket of wings. I wish I could put my finger on exactly what they tasted like…chili lime? Sweet and sour with hot sauce?

A few seconds after I took this photo, the ball came flying past third base right where that little boy was standing. He hopped over the bars, nabbed it, and ran away beaming and victorious. Guess his baseball mitt came in handy after all. If I took longer taking this photo, I might have gotten the white blur coming right toward Josh and Sid…or maybe it giving one of them a concussion.

Please know that this photo was taken after driving 7 hours from North Carolina so I look a little haggard. If baseball is the all American sport, we were a little unpatriotic. We spent 90% of the time walking around the stadium and 10% eating wings in the stands. The Pirates won 10-1, so it wasn’t an intense game. Sid bought a beret-with-avisor after trying on several very “Pittsburghian” hats with several very unflattering looks. And then the game was over.

A look back at the stadium after everyone cleared out. Josh took this from the bridge. Well, Pittsburgh, here I am. Four years ago, I felt the same way about Winston-Salem. Here’s to a new city. Cheers!

Huacachina

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 19:57:28 -0500

Okay so we’re backtracking but Huacachina is worth writing about. I think it holds a special place in our hearts because it was the first time we really felt like gringo tourists, but this trip was something to look forward to after the internship and our meeting with the Ministry of Education. I’ve never been snowboarding and I’m not too hot on a skateboard, but sandboarding was a blast!

The dune buggy we took with some Peace Corps volunteers who just happened to be working out of Ancash too. We compared stories on our roller coaster ride over the dunes.

Incredible landscape with beautiful textures and lines.

As the evening started to get a little cooler, we stopped sliding down the sand dunes and sat to watch the sun set.

The sand isn’t as soft as it looks, as I will soon find out half a second after Josh snapped this picture.

We felt like little kids, splashing in the hostel pool, racing down hills of sand, and throwing our hands up on the buggy ride. Working in Ancash was a valuable experience and we both had a lot of discussions with new friends in the area about education, women’s rights, indigenous culture, and poverty. But our trip a little south of Lima truly felt like a vacation, and we were okay with doing silly touristy things for a weekend.

Islas Ballestas

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 19:53:00 -0500

Home to the blue-footed booby, Humbolt penguin, pelicans, sea lions, and the occasional dolphin colony, the Islas Ballestas are known as the “poor man’s Galapagos.” The islands, composed mostly of rock formations, certainly lives up to its name. You’ll find a variety of exotic marine animals for only $15 USD, including the taxi to and from the port and the two hour boat tour.

The color gradients that fade into the sea, the fluttering of thousands of birds, and the salty smell of the ocean air—it’s easy to appreciate the islands. Some visitors bring waterproof cameras, but other than the occasional sea spray, your equipment should be fine. Keep in mind, you’ll be riding in very small tourist-grad boats, and the waters can get a bit rocky if the weather doesn’t hold up. If you have a low threshold for motion sickness, be sure to take medicine before the ride.

Cruise along the island’s rock formations, and you’ll discover massive flocks of birds reminiscent of The Little Mermaid. You might consider wearing a hat to avoid “bad luck” overhead. In the country’s indigenous language Quechua, “guano” means droppings. The term has been used to refer to the excrement of marine birds such as the ones on the Ballestas, which provided excellent fertilizer for pre-Incan communities.

All of the boat tours are guided, so you’ll learn about the islands’ history, marine wildlife, and environmental protection policies. Tours are available in English and Spanish.

Humbolt penguins live along the coast of Peru and Chile, named after the early European explorer. They are an endangered species, due in part to guano mining. Because their droppings provide rich fertilizer, their natural habitat gets destroyed in the process. Their adorable waddling will make you wonder why anyone would want to harm these beautiful creatures.

A far cry from the stereotypical circus sea lions you may have seen balancing beach balls on their noses, these sea lions (lobos marinos- marine wolves) take lazy naps in the sun. Some of them may swim nearby, so scan the water for visitors.

The wildlife and scenery of the Islas Ballestas are impressive, but there’s plenty to see nearby as well. During your morning tour, you’ll also pass by the Candelabra, an ancient geoglyph carved into the sand. If you’re intrigued by the mysterious carving, check out the Nazca Lines. The Paracas National Reserve is a memorable place as well. Photographers love the red sandy beaches and pink flamingos wading in the sea.

Tinco by Josh

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 18:48:00 -0500

We wanted to do a quick little post about the last school that we worked with in Ancash: Tinco. Tinco is a town just below Punta Callan (4225m), the high ridge just west of Huaraz which we went over to visit all our prior schools. This meant that is very high and very cold (freezing at night). Since the school was only an hour and a half away from Huaraz, we were planning on going to Tinco and returning to Huaraz every day. It was going to be glorious- hot showers and internet every night.

That was until we got to Tinco and met the headmistress. Truth be told, it’s never a bad thing to meet someone who is truly invested in the kids’ education. But she got the whole town was ready for us and we needed to stay in the town because they already arranged us food and a room (a classroom with a bunch of blankets). We returned the first night to Huaraz because I had a doctor’s appointment; I was still not feeling that well and running to the bathroom 10 times a day didn’t seem as enjoyable with toilets that didn’t flush. The plan was the stay in Tinco the remainder of our 2 weeks.

We worked from 7am to 4pm teaching the kids, then from 4pm to 8pm teaching the teachers, then we taught the bored teachers card games until 10pm. We were exhausted, and I was getting sicker and sicker.

I woke up in the middle of the night not feeling great but it wasn’t just bathroom problems, I felt nauseous. I leaned over the second story of the school and puked up all the super greasy french fries from dinner. This combined with my bathroom runs kept me in bed all day while Hope taught the kids. Afterwards we decided to go back to Huaraz for the night so I could get better in the hotel. Hope wasn’t feeling too hot all of a sudden and while we were in Huaraz she ended up puking out of the windows of a Taxi. French fries actually came out of her nose. I think we all know what made us sick…

The best part of the story is that when we returned to Tinco and told the headmistress that we couldn’t eat the townspeoples’ food anymore, she seemed to think it was due to other reasons besides food poisoning or parasites like the doctor said. She asked if we had fallen recently? And we said no, why? She continued to tell us that when you fall sometimes your stomach goes to a bad place and it needs to get everything out of it to make it better. We told her we didn’t think this was the case. She had an alternative theory, she said she was talking to the local indigenous women and they had told her that they have been staring at us because we were gringos and because of this we had bad energy and us throwing up was trying to get that bad energy out. The indigenous women also told her they were going to stop.

We had a great time with the kids in Tinco but we were always trying to convince this headmistress that we couldn’t eat their food, and she kept feeding us. We appreciated everyone’s hospitality but since this was the last school, we tried to decine graciously. Frankly, we are both sick of being sick.

Repaso

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 15:21:38 -0500

It took us until the end of our time in the schools to realize that we should really do a repaso, or a review, of all the activities and functions that we had taught over the past two weeks. It’s one thing to lead kids and teachers through steps, but the time is wasted if no one can remember these things. We bought a bag of candy from the grocery store and the repaso was GREAT SUCCESS in the words of Borat.

We wrote 8-10 tasks based on the things that we taught- tasks that the kids have already done but we modified them slightly so they couldn’t just find the activity in their diary and say they were done. We divided the classes into groups (secretly placing a “high aptitude” kid in each group to act as a natural leader) and explained that the group to complete all the tasks would get the candy.

Well actually everyone got candy when they finished, but the first team to finish got to choose first. There were a few simple rules: Someone in the group would pick a task out of the hat (we actually used a soup ladle in one school) and read it out loud to the other group members. Every member of the group had to finish the task before they could move on to a new one. If they needed help, they had to raise their hands quietly and wait for me or Josh to come over and give them a hint.

We were surprised how much the kids remembered and happy to remind them of certain steps when they forgot. The repaso day was by far our favorite day of the two weeks. It’s just too bad we didn’t start doing this from the beginning!

Learning Spanish in Peru

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 22:01:00 -0500

It’s not uncommon for Josh to walk into the café, order an orange game and some eyeball bread, and then inform the waitress politely that he is going to hit her with a credit card. After three months in Peru, Josh has come a long way from his unique form of Spanish sign language (shrugging and pointing to me to translate).

When I started learning Spanish a year ago, I remember how humbling it was to make mistakes and laugh over them. It was a lot easier to remember those little language nuances through real world experience than it was to memorize a page in my grammar textbook. So as travel partners, we use a system called “language boot camp.” I’m Josh’s support system and help out with translation when needed, but for the most part he takes the first step. His Spanish has improved significantly over a short time and I’m very proud, but sometimes the first step is more of a tumble…

Ordering
It’s not difficult to order food in a different language when there is a menu in front of you. Again, Josh has mastered the art of international sign language: the universal point and mumble. But he usually trips up at breakfast when the waitress asks what he wants to drink. Instead of jugo de naranja, orange juice, he has asked for juego de naranja, orange game (with a similar pronunciation but less refreshing aftertaste) on more than one occasion.

Sandwich and pizza are both translation-friendly options for beginning Spanish learners, but other dishes are not as easy to remember. Take garlic bread, for example. When we’re really hungry, we’ll order a basket of garlic bread, or pan de ajo, as a starter. Josh has startled many a waiter when he asks for pan de ojo, or eyeball bread, instead. Luckily, they’ve never had it on the menu, even though eating cow eyeballs is not unheard of in Peru.

Dessert
Ice cream is usually our dessert of choice, but not even the sweetest vocabulary can escape a hilarious mispronunciation. A few times, Josh has ordered dos bolsas de helado, or two bags of ice cream, which is quite a bit more than dos bolas de helado, or two scoops of ice cream. The first time he asked for a coño, or vagina, instead of a cono, or cone, the server turned bright red. This is an innocent mistake with a naughty meaning, and Josh never forgot that real world Spanish lesson.

The check
In most parts of South America, you won’t get the check until you ask for it. It’s not bad service; in fact, it’s considered rude for a waiter to place a check on the table if the patrons haven’t requested it. Unlike our “eat and go” dining habits in the United States, meals in Peru tend to revolve around conversation and slow eating, and a check just makes diners feel rushed.

Josh has perfected the subtle hand wave across the restaurant to get the waiter’s attention. But sometimes he puzzles the poor servers when instead of the cuenta (check) he asks for the cuento (story). No one has burst into “Little Red Riding Hood” yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised. The worst is when he asks to pay with a credit card. Just one little letter turns the Spanish word pagar, to pay, into pegar, to hit. So when he tries to tell the waitress he will pay with plastic but instead explains that he will now hit them with his VISA, it’s no wonder they take a few steps back.

They say you learn from experience, and learning a language is no different. We still have a few more weeks left in South America, and Josh and I both expect to eat—and laugh—our way around the continent as we both perfect our Spanish.

This post is an entry for the Language Learning Blog Contest being hosted by Pimsleur Approach. You should enter!