On the second day of Christmas

We drove through the grey streets of Sibiu, looking for our guesthouse.  Rain glistened in the glare from the street lamps on the wet roads. We piled from the car, stretching our cramped legs from hours of riding, and headed indoors to our rooms.  After settling in, we met in the common area- Diana and Petter, Cristian and I- with a quandary.  Where do we go to eat, here on the outskirts of town?  We did what any person of our generation would do, pulled out our smart phones and started looking for options. 

Sibiu as seen the next day in the daylight

We were all in agreement that we didn't feel like walking the whole way to the city center in the cold damp night, so we settled on a place just a few blocks away with good reviews.  We walked down the mainly residential street, anything that wasn't a house already shuttered for the night.  When we reached the block where the restaurant we were looking for was, there wasn't a light in sight.  I spotted the door, walked up to it, and even with my rudimentary Romanian skills knew it wasn't good news.  They were closed for the Christmas holidays.

Cell phones back out again, we huddled under a street light, looking for other options.  What would our parents have done a generation ago, we pondered, and then realized the obvious- they would have asked a real live human being at the guesthouse before venturing out in the cold.  And probably would have found out the restaurant was closed before getting there.  Oh well.

There really only seemed to be one place likely to be open nearby, and though none of us were really pleased by the option, we didn't feel like walking the whole way downtown, so we set off down the deserted city streets. The sidewalk came to an abrupt end and we climbed some steps to a grassy section with a path worn into it by all the other people who have come to the same place and decided to keep forging on.  Cars whizzed by beneath me, and as I stepped gingerly, trying not to slip on the icy patches, I imagined slipping off the edge, run over by the oncoming traffic below.  The path we were on veered uphill and we suddenly realized why the sidewalk ended.  We'd reached a railroad that crosses over the road here.  We looked at each other, the road below us (an obvious pedestrian path going under the railroad bridge on the other side of the street), and the tracks.  We decided to risk it.  We scrambled over the tracks, no last minute encounter with an oncoming train to make us regret our decision, and back down the hill to street level. 

There, in the distance, we saw our destination, golden arches beckoning to us to come in out of the cold.  And that, my friends, is how we ended up eating dinner at McDonalds on the second day of Christmas in Romania.  Apparently we weren't the only ones stuck with no choice of open restaurants on a holiday, because the place was packed.  It was, as expected, a mediocre meal (also, they don't put ice in your soda at McDonald's in Romania, and as the only American there, I was the only one who found that really weird. Also, the chicken nuggets tasted different), but hey, we didn't have to walk forever, it was open, and we weren't hungry anymore, and after all, that's the most important thing about food.

The Pana Town Fair

Later that evening we headed up to check out the fair. "You want to risk the ferris wheel?" I asked, knowing what we were in for after my visit to the Sololá fair the year before. But, he'd apparently forgotten my story and we jumped on, slowly spinning as they loaded and unloaded people. We were stuck at the top for awhile, no takers coming to fill the empty seats. We hung there, swaying in the breeze, admiring the town from above, a view I'd never seen before. We tried to spot where my house would be, and looked down on the band playing live music on the stage in front of the church.

As we got back down to the bottom Cristian was ready to get off, thinking we'd done a complete rotation and the ride was over. "Oh no, it's just getting started!" I informed him as the ride finally lurched to life. We spun up into the clouds, circling vertiginously, the lightweight car swinging as it turned. Every time we reached the edge of the wheel, about to drop back down again, the seat tipped and we'd be looking down, nothing but what looked like a straight drop down before us. After a few rounds of that, it ponderously started spinning backwards, picking up speed as it went until we were being hurtled into the unknown behind us. Feeling grateful we'd decided NOT to eat before hand as it came to a stop we stumbled off, happy to be back on solid ground, but smiling from the adrenaline rush.

I'd missed it the year before, off in Finland visiting Cristian, but this year, same dates, he was visiting me. A week beforehand traffic started getting funny as vendors set up their stalls all along the roads near the church. The night before the official town holiday (the day of the patron saint of the town, in this case St. Francis), there were fireworks all evening long, and they didn't stop as we got ready for bed. At 3 o'clock in the morning I woke to hear the church bell tolling. Non-stop. For 45 minutes. I could hear a brass band playing, music floating down from the plaza. Fireworks continued to go off, and when we woke up in the morning they were still going on. Suddenly it made sense to me why Guatemalan's get the day of their town fair off. After being up setting off fireworks, playing music, and tolling church bells literally all night they'd need a day off!

The fair crept further into town, street by street, until there were vendors set up along the street I walk to work on. Some days, the child in me just can't resist, and walking back from work one day, I just couldn't resist the cotton candy. I stopped to see if they sold smaller sizes, but the vendor just shook his head no. Take it or leave it. I decided that at 60 cents it was worth it, even if Cristian and I together didn't need that much sugar, and home I went to share the biggest cotton candy ever with Cristian (it was too much even for both of us).

The Proposal

Cristian had just gotten in the night before and after a long, tiring journey, a late night, and jetlag, watching a movie together seemed like the perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon. So we cuddled up on the couch and he started About Time, a movie he said he thought sounded good and he had on his computer.  Fifteen minutes in or so, he turned to me and said, "Wait, this takes place in England?" Bemused, I asked him if he hadn't noticed their accents. It was a charming, sweet love story with a time travel twist and I was soon caught up in the story.  Boy meets girl, they fall in love, and a song I know started playing. 

Not just any song. I looked up at him, "Hey! It's our song!" I smiled, then kissed him, happy in the moment.  I had a tiny little suspicion that maybe he wasn't as clueless about this movie as his "This takes place in England?" remark made him seem.  "Did you know our song was in this movie?" I asked. "What do you think?" he responded.  The obvious answer was, "Yes"

"Now I have a question for you." he said.  And in the second before he continued, my stomach did a million acrobatic flips and my heart started racing.  "This is it. He's really going to ask me to marry him." I thought. "Will you marry me?" he asked, and out of nowhere, he had the ring box open in his hand. And once again, the obvious answer was "YES!". I clung to him, tears hovering at the edges of my eyes, feeling like my heart would burst with so much love and joy. He slipped the ring on my finger as the movie played on in the background, the two of us completely oblivious to it anymore.  He finally asked if I was going to look at the ring, which I'd really overlooked in the significance of the moment.  It was gorgeous.  I watched it sparkle and tried to wrap my mind around the fact that we were actually getting married. 

Eventually we came down from the clouds, got to call and tell my parents, and even eventually finished the movie.  Turned out he'd actually watched it 7 times, figuring out the timing so he'd know when to slip the ring out, unseen by me and be ready to propose.  And it worked. The tenderness of being proposed to with our song playing in the background, the element of surprise, the privacy to be delighted together afterwards-I couldn't have imagined a more perfect moment. 

Sunrise over Tikal

We trudge down the path in the dark, the humidity already startlingly heavy so early in the morning.  Our flashlights bob, lighting the path in front of us.  Suddenly, our guide stops short, a giant tarantula caught in the pool of light from his flashlight.  We gather around to look, me hanging back at the edges of the crowd, glad for my closed toed shoes. It skitters down the path, back the way we came and I breathe a sigh of relief that I won't have to worry about it following us, running over my feet, or crawling up my leg.

Finally we make it to the base of the pyramid.  We're one of the first groups there, and our guide reminds us to be silent at the top.  At the very top Deborah urges me to climb the last steep stairs as high as we can go to watch the sunrise.  They're terrifyingly steep, and I'm afraid I'll tumble all the way off and down to the jungle floor, but I inch up them til I sit with my back against the wall.  More groups join us, but we're all mostly silent, shifting, rustling, and occasional whispers all we can hear.

Until the howler monkeys start up.  It's otherworldly.  It sounds like jungle cats, lions of leopards or something equally terrifying, are fighting in the trees below us.  Their deep throaty roars and growls are fascinating and unsettling at the same time.

Slowly, the sky turns from black to grey. There's a tiny tinge of pink above us, but not the spectacular oranges and purples I was hoping for.  It doesn't matter, because slowly, out of the morning mists, we begin to make out shapes. More temple pyramids appear in the distance, their tops rising above the canopy of the trees, mist clinging to the edges.  Everything is still.  The howlers have stopped crying. It's the sort of moment that makes 3 am wake up times, and pitch dark walks through tarantula infested jungle totally worth it.

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What doesn't kill you makes a good story

It's 4:15 am and after an hour on the trail it's still pitch black.  I pick my way along the narrow path, coffee trees on either side of me.  The beam from my flashlight tenuously lights the next few steps, and I trudge on, one foot in front of another me while one line from Christina Perri's "A Thousand Years" runs in my head on repeat: "one step closer. one step closer. One step closer."

Suddenly, my foot slips in the loose earth. I start sliding off the trail, down the hill, the other foot following.  Before I can catch myself I've dropped off the trail, my body gaining speed as I fall down the steep slope. I try to brake with my feet, hoping I don't slide half way down this mountain, or worse, that there's a dangerous drop off before I can stop.  It's all over in a couple of seconds. I've managed to stop, lying in the dirt with my head just below the edge of the trail.  My cry as I went over the edge alerted everyone to my fall and they come over to check on me. "Can you help me?", I ask our guide, and he gives me a hand as I try to hoist myself up. It's harder than I expected, like trying to jump out of a swimming pool, except, my body doesn't have the weightlessness of water, and what would be the pool edge keeps collapsing under my hands.

I finally scramble back up, stop to catch my breath, and we keep going.  If we want to make it to the top in time for the sunrise, there's not much time for breaks. We walk a couple hundred more yards, the path becoming less distinguishable and more prone to crumbling beneath our feet as we go.  Finally, our guide stops us and tells us we have to go back and try the other path.  Disheartened at needing to retrace our steps, I carefully make my way past what momentarily felt like a near-death experience.

This section isn't so bad, and we stop to catch our breath and get a drink with a clear view of our destination ahead of us.  It still looks impossibly far away, but our guid assures us that it's only about 40 minutes.  We start back up hill, and not too much later 2 men pass us walking downhill.  "How close are we?", I ask.  "About 5 minutes" they respond.  "Thanks for lying!" I say cheerfully, knowing how often people have exaggerated while on hikes before just to keep up morale.  We think we still have 20-30 minutes left.  But then, wonder of wonders, we reach a steep wooden staircase, and a last uphill climb. Our guide stands smiling at the top. "You made it!"

We step out on the peak, collapse on the bench for a minute, then move out to the viewing platform.  Below us, the towns around the lake lie shining in the darkness.  Off to the east the sky is just slightly tinged with pink.  We drink in the beauty as the sky turns deeper pink and shades of orange.  The town below wakes up- someone starts setting off firecrackers right around 5 and the church bells start ringing at 5:30. "It's the early morning mass" our guide explains.

The sun well above the horizon, the cold at the top finally forces us back down.  We return to town a longer, gentler way, winding our way through fields of corn, and later coffee, towered over by mango trees.  The lake is gloriously beautiful every time we catch a glimpse of it, deep green volcanoes framed by the brilliant blue of the sky.  I don't think I'll ever tire of the beauty of this place I call home.

We finally arrive back at our hostel, ready to devour the free breakfast that came with the room. We bask in the comfort of sitting still and I wince at muscles I forgot I had reminding me of their existence as we get up to go.  A quick boat ride across the lake, and I'm back home again, right around 11.

7 years and counting

Sometime in the past six months, I seem to have lost my voice.  My blog's been lying neglected, and I've been asking myself, "what happened to the stories?"

But every year on this date, the day I left for Costa Rica seven years ago and started this international adventure, I like to blog and look back on the past year and forward to the next, so I'm pushing out of my blogging silence.

I think the reason I've been so quiet is that there have been 2 very big things in my life this past year, and neither of them are the best blog topics.  Learning to love more deeply, to communicate even about the hard things, and to bridge the physical distance between Cristian and I has been one of the main focuses of my year.  And I have loved the process, and feel so much more solid in our relationship than I did a year ago. But I'm a fairly private person- those moments aren't things to share with the world, so no stories there.

The other big thing in my life has been my job.  And again, this is something I love.  I feel so much more at home now at work, doing things I enjoy for something I believe in deeply.  I'm weeks, hopefully, from finishing my first major project at work (completely revising our curriculum) and I've had so many little successes along the way: starting monthly professional development sessions, introducing guided reading into our workshops, working with staff to understand and use more inferential questions.  But yet, somehow, those things don't inspire me to blog.  It's a lot of hard mental work, staring at a computer screen, long discussions with coworkers and observations in the field, before I go back and make some more adaptations.  No clear beginning, middle, and end.  Nothing dramatic to post about.  I don't find the stories in what I do.

I want to find the stories again, though.  If only for myself.  I like to look back on older blog posts, remember times in my life that were joyful and painful and frustrating and exhilarating.  And for the past 7 months, I have nothing but a blank, all the missed opportunities to look for the stories in my life that shape me into who I am.

So, in the next year, I'm hoping I'll find my voice again, see the stories that make up my day.  I think I have some big changes coming my way again.  Maybe not in the next year, but I think the decisions and plans will be in place by the time a year rolls around again. And I don't want this time here to go unrecorded.  I want to remember my triumphs and struggles, and the little every day things that make life in Pana so unique.  Here's to a year full of stories!

The Year of Two Easters

Joy: Panajachel Guatemala

8 am Easter morning.

The church is transformed; white banners, edged in gold, cascading from the ceiling and down the wall, the somber Lenten purple disappearing over night. In the quiet hush, we choose a seat near the back, hoping that our lack of familiarity with the Catholic service goes unnoticed there. We're not there long, however. To our confusion, the priest starts recruiting women to carry the statue of the risen Christ, and everyone starts filing out the door. 

We join the group, wondering over the lack of service and ceremony, and cross the plaza in front of the church to the street.  Realization sets in: "Easter mass and parade" is what the sign said when I stopped in to find the service time.  Apparently the parade is first. The women, representative of those to whom Jesus first appeared, lift the statue of the risen Christ and lead us down the street.  Next comes a dusty pickup truck, crowded with an entire band in the back. The music starts, joyful, celebratory. He is risen! We are saved! Chains are broken!

I'm beaming as I join in the songs, simple choruses that are easy to pick up on the spot. We parade down the street where all the bars and clubs are, dead at this hour on a Sunday morning, passing underneath pineapples, flowers, and other fruit swinging above us, decorating the street for Easter.  We reach the main intersection in town and swing back up toward the church, early morning shoppers stopping to watch, or join in. After our joyful procession through town, we file back into the church for a more traditional service, but I'm brimming with joy.  Can there be a better way to celebrate Easter than singing all through town my joy that my Lord lives?

Reverence: Ramnicu Valcea, Romania

11 pm Easter Saturday

The lawn around the church is already overflowing with people, but we push towards the door, Cristian assuring me there will still be some room inside.  We crowd in the back, standing together.  The lights are off, it's dark, solemn, we're all waiting in expectation, remembering the death of Christ, and anticipating the moment we celebrate His resurrection.

At midnight, the bells start pealing and a single candle is lit.  The light of the world has conquered the darkness.  The priest lights the candles of the other priests and they begin slowly processing out of the church, waving incense, and stopping to sing "Hristos a înviat din morți"- Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs bestowing life!

I join in the first phrase, since Cristian taught it to me before we came, but my tongue gets lost in the unfamiliar sounds of the next phrases. As the priests get closer, Cristian's mother's caution to be before we left suddenly makes sense. Putting my hair up seemed unnecessary- I'm an adult, I thought- I won't catch my hair on fire with my candle. But now, with everyone pressing in around me, trying to light their candle directly from the priest, I realize it wasn't my own candle I should worry about, but everyone else's. My protestant Christmas Silent Night with candles mental image shatters, as instead we're crammed tight as sardines and lighting candles over one another's heads. I abandon any idea of lighting my candle from the priest- I'll just light it from Cristian instead.

The priests, long robes and beards flowing, leave the church and cross to a platform set up facing the church doors. We all stand on the lawn, candles glowing in the dark, as the priest speaks and Cristian occasionally whispers translations in my ear. Outside there are even more people than were crowded into the church. I'm filled with a sense of reverence and awe. This ceremony seems ancient to me, and I'm sure it is- the Orthodox Church has been around for a millennium.

There's something deeply rewarding about joining in both of these Easter traditions, so different than my own, but both so symbolic of the joy and reverence that the death and resurrection of our Savior should invoke. My faith is bigger than me, than the way I have lived it out, and I feel joined to something larger- the universal Church of all believers. It's another moment where I can almost envision heaven and the beauty of people of every tribe, nation, and tongue coming together to sing praise to the Lamb who is worthy.