The Cukrowski Family

2009-12-02T11:46:00.003-06:00

ACHIEVABLE GOALS

2008-05-06T20:12:00.005-05:00

We leave Casa ACU in a few hours, tomorrow noon-ish, to head to the airport for the LONG journey home. We get back to Dallas at 7 A.M., the morning of Ken's and my 24th wedding anniversary (what a way to spend it, eh?!). My wonderful mom will pick us up, we'll head directly to the Apple Store to try to repair my stupidhead computer and retrieve the photographic evidence of this fabulous journey, and then we're off to Abilene before nightfall.

It's been great. There's so much more to say, but I'm glad we came here. Attached is a photo of our group on the day we arrived in Uruguay, a mere 3 1/2 months ago, when we knew a dozen or so words of Spanish among us and precious little of what to expect from our time here. Now, I can safely say that I've reached my goal of being able to speak the Spanish of a mildly retarded toddler. Set your sights low, I always say, and then maybe you can achieve them.

I'll write something much more profound (I'm sure!) later, but for now, I will leave you, Casa ACU, the Study Abroad students, and the country of Uruguay with this prayer: Vaya con Dios, mis amigos. Gracias por todos.

Talent show anyone? - by Krista Cukrowski

2008-05-02T13:03:00.003-05:00

Hey, This is Krista! I felt the need to tell all y’all readers about one of the most exciting things that has happened since we have arrived here! What I’m talking about of course is the First Ever ACU Study Abroad Talent Show!

What happened is that Mallory, one of the students here, thought it would be fun if everyone got together and performed something for all the rest of us--and thus a great idea was born. It was a REQUIREMENT that everyone perform a talent, so EVERYONE was rushing around, thinking of things that they could do! And when I say “everyone,” I mean even my PARENTS and the Penya Family as well! The whole thing was great, and everyone contributed lots.

However, the #1 reason that this was so hilarious has to be because Holly, one of my Dad's students who happens to be a gymnast, needed a second person for her number. She decided that her talent would be (drum roll please!) to teach Ken how to do a backhand spring in 24 hours. Yes. I am COMPLETELY serious.

I find it necessary to explain why this is so spectacular. My dad is in great physical shape, and he can probably run circles around you.
BUT….he’s going to turn 46 in 2 days, and he's so inflexible that he can’t even touch his toes! He certainly has never done a back handspring.

Despite these minor setbacks, Holly put Dad to work. They spent hours practicing the steps that would go into this miraculous feat. When the time came to perform, most people had NO idea what they were gonna see! So…Dad stepped up there, gave a quick intro, Holly joined him, and I started up playing the Olympic Fanfare on a friend's computer (Mom's died)! Somehow, my father is still alive! It turns out that you CAN teach an old dog new tricks!

The moral of this story is…You can view this wonderful achievement on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCaX2clNegA&feature=user or just type in the key words “Coach Holly and Dr. Cukrowski” and be prepared to laugh your head off!!!!!

A TIME TO MAKE LISTS...

2008-05-02T07:36:00.004-05:00

To prove to you that I really am getting old, as if the gray hair, memory loss, and wrinkles weren't evidence enough, I will now report that my perception of time is that of an older person. For example, time no longer exists in 24-hour chunks in my memory--everything either seems to have happened just yesterday or about a thousand years ago. I find myself thinking today, as my nephew Luke turns 12, that it was only at most a year ago when I was honored to be present in the room as he was born, when his daddy was alive, and when my family and I lived in Connecticut.

About a minute and a half ago (Karen time) or four months ago (real time), we were making lists, preparing to come to Uruguay. Now, as we're less than a week from returning to Abilene, you could see lists again on big Post-It notes in the apartment kitchen were you here (and I wish you were). These lists say things like "Get flowers for Mariela and Raquel," "Visit the Gaucho Museum," and "Pick up Nativity Sets for Christmas gifts" (sorry to spoil the surprise!). But what the notes are really saying is "Finish up this incredible experience and leave it behind."

And so, in my best Ken-like fashion, I will make some lists for you now.

Things I will miss about Uruguay:

*my Pomelo drink, Paso de los Toros Light; I drink at least about 2 liters of this stuff every day. I'm going cold turkey next week. Pray for me.

*recycling; you can buy stuff, especially drinks, in refillable, recyclable containers, and turn them back in for cheaper drinks. In Argentina and Brazil, recycling containers for other kinds of things, such as plastics and organic material, were as prevalent as were the regular trash receptacles. Abilene's recycling, such as it is, is entirely optional, and it's much, much easier not to recycle than to do it.

*La Cigale: great Italian-style gelato ice cream store, two blocks from here. Coco con Dulce de Leche. 'Nuff said.

*Public transportation; I love walking everywhere. I've missed my car maybe twice in four months, if that.

*The temperature now; it's Fall going into Winter here, and it's beautiful. Yesterday in Abilene, in April mind you, it was 88 degrees apparently. I hate being hot. I can't even fathom what the people who made a town in West Texas were thinking when they decided to settle there; maybe they were antisocial and thought "Oh good, now nobody will ever bother us by coming here too."

*no phones: I love that my phone isn't ringing off the hook; I have a cell phone here, but in fact I never carry it and I don't even know the number! Back home, I disconnected our home phone service last Fall, since we all carry cell phones. That's a start.

*the smell of the laundry here; our laundry smells incredible when we get it back, neatly folded and in these fun blue bags. The price went up this month, from 60 pesos a load to 70 ($3.50). Worth every penny for the smell alone.

*the courtyard: I love the students, and the environment the courtyard has fostered. For example, one of my favorite parts of every day is hearing Marissa Walker sing as she goes through her day.

*12:30 P.M. Raquel cooks a meal for us every day, and nine times out of ten, it's fabulous. Ten times out of ten, I'm grateful for it!

Things I'm looking forward to back at home

*my family and friends (well, duh...)

*good-tasting milk in cartons (it comes in stupid, floppy sacks here; if they were recyclable, I might be willing to give in on this one, but they're not)

*our cats; I really want to take a nice, long nap with Crookshanks.

*a break from people all the time; yes, the courtyard is both on my list of favorite things AND on my list of least favorite things. Such is life...

*some variety in my clothing; I only had 3 pairs of shoes (flipflops, sandals, and sneakers), one pair of jeans, two pairs of shorts and capris, one skirt, two pairs of pajamas, a jacket, and a few shirts total; I notice, however, that even typing my total wardrobe took awhile, as it's more than lots of people have, and it was in fact enough to get by on just fine. Lesson learned).

*one type of currency in my wallet; I'm so glad the Euro exists for folks in Europe now, except stuffy ol' Britain. It was a pain in the neck having to have Uruguayan and Argentinian pesos, dollars, reals, and soles available, often within minutes or hours of one another.

*black pepper; actually, I will be glad to return to flavorful food in general. Los Arcos, here we come!

*knowing the language. While we have learned LOTS of Spanish and I'm proud as punch of my kids for keeping up and/or bettering the college kids with whom we took the beginner class, we still can converse only on the kind-of-slow-two-year-old level. It's good enough to get around, but it ain't pretty.

Things people moving to Uruguay should bring with them:
*Jif Extra Crunchy peanut butter, because it's fabulous and unavailable
*notecards and maybe a 3-ring binder and paper; these are findable, but I would have preferred my own kind. I made my own notecards, and they were great for studying Spanish.
*tortilla chips, yes, even though they're bulky and they will become dust in your suitcase. The dust is better than the chips here.
*Velveeta and Rotel, fajita and/or taco seasoning
*stateside gifts for the folks you will get to know here; I brought a whole suitcase full, and we've used every one of them. I'm talking stuff like ACU sweatshirts, Texas playing cards and keychains, etc.
OK, these lists are incomplete, but they're the best I've got right now, mainly because I'm tired of writing this blog in the computer lab, now that my computer has bitten the dust. See you soon back in the U.S. of A.

2008: A South American Odyssey

2008-04-23T15:27:00.005-05:00

Question: How do we know that 2001: A Space Odyssey is fiction?
Answer: Because a computer takes over the world.

A computer could never take over the world because it would break, JUST LIKE MY COMPUTER. Or the battery would go from charging great one day to not working at all, JUST LIKE MY COMPUTER.

Yes folks, the reason I haven't been blogging is my computer, aged only 9 months, has died the death of deaths--the hard drive caput suicide mamba of phooey-ness.

Oh Karen, you may ask, not with ALL YOUR PICTURES FROM SOUTH AMERICA ON IT?

I can't even type the answer. I hope, I hope, I hope that I can get this baby fixed enough back in Texas to eke out my photos. The good news: A few photos Krista had saved to her iPod; a few I had sent to various students; a few were posted on the blog. Those thoughts are helping me not cry my eyes out right now.

I was taking fewer pictures than before, by the way, because MY CAMERA DIED TOO. Yep.

A computer will take over the world? Ha. Hal Schmal.

COUNTRIES I'VE VISITED

2008-04-17T14:01:00.002-05:00

In September, I posted a map of countries I've visited. Now that I've visited six more, I thought an update was in order.
So, where have you been? If you follow the link, you can fill in a U.S. map or other places as well as this particular version.

create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

PEARLS BEFORE SWINE

2008-04-17T13:47:00.000-05:00

Learning Spanish - by Krista Cukrowski

2008-04-14T14:03:00.002-05:00

Hi. This is Krista. Uhhhh…I just thought I'd tell y'all a little bit about our learning Spanish in South America. Our teacher's name is Amelia. My first thought when I saw Amelia was that she reminded me of the little bat (my favorite character) in the Disney movie ANASTASIA. She hops around the classroom, acts out "los verbos" for us, and on occasion will choose some lucky students to help her out.

On a normal day, she'll make us go around the room and conjugate verbs to different forms for about 30 minutes.

An example of conjugation in class:

Amelia: Hiciste?

Krista: Pues...uhhhhmmm….Si, yo….hico?? Possiblemente?

Amelia: MUY BUEN!!!!!!!!!!!!

To me, there are lots of Spanish words that seem made up. One of the best is "hablaba" (which means "I was speaking"). Hablaba looks like gibberish—kind of like the English word "suing," which also looks like gibberish.
OH! And you can't leave out "desafortunadamente" (which ironically means "unfortunately"). I usually forget a few syllables, which in turn makes people give me this *Aw-look-at-the-pathetic-mental-child-trying-to-speak* look. Sometimes we have contests to see who can say it the fastest. It usually doesn't end well.

For those of you who were wondering what we do for that remaining hour, it is my pleasure to inform you that we go over the 'Chapter of the Week,' and sing. Yes, I typed that correctly. We sing. In Spanish. Badly. Actually, the singing is my favorite part, mainly because I'm the one who gets to find the songs, purchase them, bring speakers to class, oh, and listen to the song a few times beforehand. It's kind of nice, really.

I really am grateful for Amelia, and her diligence in teaching us the "Uruguayo" way to speak Español. It really is fun! =)

Music in South America, Part II

2008-04-14T06:43:00.001-05:00

As a follow-up to the blog entry Krista wrote about her impressions of South American music, Karen will rebut.

Here's what I think: much like music in the States, I love some of it, I hate some of it, and I "appreciate" some of it, although it's not to my taste.

When we were in Peru, they played a cool multiple-stick flute thing; Krista bought one, and it's fun to try to play. Hers came with a little booklet so you'd know which notes to play, and our favorite is "Hey Hude" by the Beatles (no, that's not a typo; that's yet another amusing little pronunciation thing, since in Spanish the J is pronounced as an H).

We heard some native guaraní people singing and using rain sticks as instruments at the National park. They didn't sound very good, but they were sweet. [Sad fact: there are only about 900 Guaraní people left in the world now, as their society gets more and more engulfed and more and more of them choose to join the outside world.]

I despise anything that sounds like a mariachi band. I want to like it, but I don't. I appreciate the heritage, but it bugs the heck out of me. This is how I feel, by the way, about opera: I TRY to like it; I know I'm supposed to; I appreciate what it's doing; but I don't like it.

In Paraguay, we heard a cool trio, including a guy who could make a harp sound like celestial music, a train, a piano, a bass fiddle, well, anything. A lot of the music sounded mariachi-ish, but I appreciated their talent very much. And I really loved the train song.

Then there's the good stuff. Anything with a good drum beat, like the African-based candombe sounds, is thrilling and appealing to me.

For example, we went to a way cool concert at the absolutely gorgeous Solis Theater here in Montevideo (think the Paramount on steroids) and heard Chico Cesar, a Brazilian who sings of women's rights, the homeless, and others who have little voice in today's world. He is the youngest of seven children from a poor family in the sticks of Brazil, and he's never forgotten his roots. The only song I had ever (barely) heard was "Mama Africa!" which you can hear (or lots of his others) by going on youtube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj_-P_Fjdhg.

Now, having said all that about South American music, I haven't by any means left my favorites from the past: the Stones, CCR, Elton John, etc. But I have learned some appreciation for a whole 'nuther culture's rhythms and sounds.

Annotated Brazilian Trip Quiz

2008-04-11T11:56:00.015-05:00

Since Kenny liked the Peru quiz, I have decided

to follow up with a Q&A over our week-long excursion to Brazil. Good luck as you take this oh-so-important test.

1. When Jeremy Irons and Robert DeNiro climb up some major big waterfalls in the wonderful movie THE MISSION, where are they?

2. Which three countries were involved in Karen's birthday this year?

3. Which currency cannot be used in Ciudad de la Este, Paraguay?

a) the Paraguayan guarani

b) the Brazilian real

c) the Argentine peso

d) the U.S. dollar

e) Merchants only take credit cards there.

4. Name that flag. The following are the flags of the six countries we have visited during this trip to South America:

Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil,

Argentina, Chile, Peru. Which

is which?

Which dam/hydroelectric plant supplies 25% of Brazil's power and 75% of Paraguay's and inspired our group to tell many, many "dam" jokes?

6. What is the favorite soft drink of Brazil? _______

7. What game did we play daily with the cleaning lady at the hotel in Brazil?

a. Duck, Duck, Goose
b. hide and seek
c. kick the can
d. Operation

e. steal the passport

8. How poor are Paraguayans?

a. a little bit poor

b. a lot poor

c. seriously poor
d. quite poor

e. all of the above

9. Short answer. Describe just how good Brazilian mangoes and guavas are.

10. How long was the trip to, during, and from Iguazu Falls, Brazil?

Annotated Answers

1. Iguazú Falls (alternately spelled Iguaçu, Iguassu, Iguasu, and probably some other ways too). These falls (actually over 250 different falls) are bona-fide magnificent,2.7 kilometers wide and up to 75 meters high. Beautiful. Good job, God. [Pictured is a Jesuit

mission, much like the one(s) depicted in the movie, which I recommend highly, as well.]

2. We visited the Falls on both the Brazilian and Argentine sides, and we also went on my birthday for a few hours to

Paraguay! The picture shows where the three countries meet

(well, actually they meet in the river smack-dab in the middle). Strangely enough, this is not the first time I have visited multiple countries on my birthday, but it's the first 24-hour long cumpleaños I have. When I turned fifteen, my family and I were in Japan on April 7; then we boarded a plane, crossed the International Dateline, landed in Los Angeles, and went to Disneyland on the next day, which was still April 7th, my birthday! Cool, eh?! (Of course, the downside is that that may make me one year OLDER than I already am!)

3. You cannot use Paraguayan currency in the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este. Yup. Good to know. As a doctor who came to treat one of our students for a throat infection (she's doing better) said, "I prefer green [dollars]; I'll take plastic or yellow [credit card or Brazilian real]; but it takes about a million of these [shows Paraguayan guarani] to make even one dollar."

4. The flags Argentina and Uruguay look similar: the big blue-and-white stripe with the small sun is Argentina, and the multiple stripes with the large sun is Uruguay. The "Texas flag" is Chile's; the red-white-red one is Peru; the red, white, blue one with the emblem in the middle is Paraguay; and finally, the green-and-yellow one is Brazil's. Now you're one step closer to being ready for Jeopardy. You're welcome.

5. The Itaipu Dam is dam HUGE, eight dam full kilometers wide. We had a dam tour of the facility on the Paraguay dam side, listened to some remarkable native music, most notably unusual harp music, and saw a dam video that reminded me strongly of the Dharma Project propaganda videos in the TV series LOST.

6. Guarana, which tastes kind of like apple juice meets ginger ale and is very good (but nothing, in my opinion, compared to Uruguay's Paso de Los Toros or, in my family's opinion, to the Peruvian soda Inca Kola).

7. b. The game in which we were unwitting participants was Hide the Bedspread. Every day we would leave our hotel room, bedspread decidedly on the bed, (in the picture, you can see one on the extra bed) and

would return to find it had moved to a shelf in the closet, or a spot by the door, or wherever other non-bed-spot she decided it should be. Beats "Steal the Passport" any day, but it was kind of strange nonetheless!

8. e. Very poor indeed. In the disastrous War of the Triple Alliance (1865-70) — among Paraguay and Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay — Paraguay lost TWO-THIRDS (yes, you read that horrible fact correctly) of all adult males and much of its territory. Since then, what with natural disasters, bad management, military dictatorships, and perhaps worse, lack of dictatorship, things have not improved.

9. SO good. I ate good guavas for the first time since I left the Philippines in 1980, and last night for dinner, I had sayote, which is a tasteless squash-like plant that has great texture and that my mom used to cook for both a vegetable dish and/or for a mock-apple pie. And the pineapples and mangoes in Brazil were great too. Actually all the food was really tasty, with the possible exceptions of grilled chicken hearts, oxtail, and the humpback of a cebu (that's what they called it, for real). It was kind of like I was daring myself to try those things; it's amazing how much one's mind controls how a food will taste. I used to eat anything in the Philippines: bugs, dog, whatever. Now I really have to convince myself to eat something non-standard, like guinea pig. I had no trouble convincing myself to eat flan every night, however, in my quest for the most perfect custard. My mom still makes the very best, but some of these came close.

10. 24-ish hours each way on a bus (OK, it was a GREAT bus, a double-decker with a game room downstairs and a decent little bathroom, but it was still a bus and no bedroom) and a week-long trip altogether. However, we made great use of the time on the bus. I, for example, slept a lot of the way to Brazil, and, on the way back, I relearned how to do the Rubik's cube and worked on Christmas cards (it's a long story). So, at least that was time well spent! Ha!

I'VE CAUGHT A DISEASE... by Katie Cukrowski

2008-03-31T21:30:00.004-05:00

I have South American sleeping sickness! And there is no vaccination available!

Since the day we got here, over 40 days ago, I think there have only been something 3 days that I haven't taken a nap. Wow! This Friday, my nap was almost 5 hours long, spanning from right after lunch to just a couple minutes before dinner! I take said nap right after lunch every day because I'm full from the amazing meal I've just eaten here and when I go upstairs to my room, it's nice and warm with the rhythmic hum of cars outside that just lulls me to sleep.

I can't fight it. It's too strong. And it wins everytime!

Now, it's not just me with this "disease", because right around this time every day, the house goes quiet. Even if you are out at this time somewhere in town, there won't be very many people out there either. It's Siesta time, baby!!!

[Pictured are recent photos of Mom, Krista, and me sleeping at various airports (Buenos Aires, Argentina and Santiago, Chile to be specific) on Spring Break. Normally we would be sleeping in our beds, but, because we were all asleep, we have no pictures of such!]

THE LITTLE MERMAIDS

2008-03-29T21:12:00.004-05:00

So, today we went to an estancia, which is a working ranch, where one can ride horses and do a lot of other things as well. The last time the girls rode horses, on our weekend trip to Cabo Polonio, their route was—no kidding—exactly on a fault line where Africa broke off from South America and you can essentially see one of the great land shifts. How cool is that?!
Today's favorite activity, however, beating out the bike rides, the pool table, the good food, and the playground, was the huge, bonafide, fabulously
clean
swimming
pool. OK, it's cool to be around rivers and oceans and lakes—but when it comes to playing in the water, nothing beats good ol' chlorine, the stuff our little mermaids were trained in and that they have in their own backyard!

Additionally, somehow we had neglected to use the underwater feature on Katie's camera before now. I suspect this oversight will be corrected this summer once we return to Abilene, because they had so much fun playing Ariel!

WHAT OUR SCHOOL DAY'S LIKE-- by Katie Cukrowski

2008-03-26T20:22:00.005-05:00

The blog you've all been waiting for--The school day!

8:00 Mom comes in to wake up Krista and me for the day.

8:30 Go downstairs for breakfast (cereal, toast, bacon, eggs, pancakes, waffles, milk, orange juice, coffee, and tea).

9:00 Chapel starts (AKA: a devo done every Tuesday and Thursday by two college students who switch off weekly).

9:20 Chapel ends and everyone heads off to Spanish class.

9:30 Spanish begins. For the next hour and a half, I'm in a classroom at the church next door with all the other students, my family, and our teacher Amelia (pictured below with Dad). The teaching method Amelia uses is where she teaches something for about 5-10 minutes and then spends the next 10-20 minutes going around the room asking questions to each individual person about what we just learned. When she thinks we know everything about that certain subject she moves on and we start over again. This method really helps because we are speaking a lot and you have to know how to converse with people here, so her method works. We do this every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, but on Thursdays we have a quiz over those last few days. This means that most Wednesday evenings are spent cramming for said quiz. Every week we cover about a chapter in the book (We also have workbooks where we do the exercises that correspond to what we learn each day. They are great because then you see the information in a practical way that you can actually use it).

11:00 Class is over for Krista, Mom, and me, but some of the kids have to stay for a class after that is taught by my dad. So when we are back at the house, Kris and I go into our parents' apartment to do homeschooling. Their apartment has 4 rooms (bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and a study/office), and it's in this office where we have all our textbooks and materials for homeschooling. How we've decided to do school here is different from how it is at a school because we kind of pick a subject, Chemistry, for example, and we do like an entire chapter that day, instead of doing one section today, one section tomorrow....,we do large amounts of one subject each day and that seems to work better for our schedule. So another day we might read the entire book we have to read for an English class or a chapter of biology, etc.

12:30 The other class Dad teaches is over now so it's lunchtime. Everyone heads downstairs for this meal and we go into the kitchen where there is a table that has all the food lined up on it and we make a line and you choose whatever you want. It works out really well because you eat what you like and don't what you don't; however, there isn't much that people don't like!! The two women who prepare our meals are named Raquel and Mariela and they serve a nice variety of food choices. We have had very normal things to eat like spaghetti, fajitas, fish, chicken, and sides like mashed potatoes and broccoli which are very good, but then some days we have more traditional Uruguayan dishes like empanadas, chivitos, and Shepherd's Pie, also very good! Everyday there is also a dessert that they make piled with whipped cream, chocolate sauce, or ice cream. Needless to say, this would not be the place or time to start a diet!

1:30 Time to head upstairs and take a nap!!! I believe in the siesta...

4:00 Wake up and continue with more homework.

7:00-ish Dinner time! Mom will either make a meal that day or we go out to eat. Eating out is very easy here and much cheaper than in the States. To get a pizza here is a little under two dollars...about the same price as a drink! We have found a few restaurants we really like and go there often. Right by the house there is also a gelato shop that we are regular customers at. When we don't eat out, however, we have over to the apartment different college kids and have them eat with us. That's nice because then you get to know some of them bettter.

8:00 From now on we have the rest of the day to do whatever. Usually, it consists of talking to friends on the computer, watching movies, playing games, reading a book, listening to music, doing Spanish and lots of other homework, or just talking to other people here.

12:00 Bedtime!

H2O

2008-03-24T19:48:00.004-05:00

I don't like to swim. I get seasick when I cross the English channel or when I go whale-watching. I even prefer to drink Diet Coke (or Paso de los Toros!) to water. But I love to be near the water. I like the way the pool outside my house in Texas casts prisms of color on the ceiling.

I love the sound, the feel, the very waterness of water. We're practically surrounded by water here in Montevideo.

I even like canoeing or rafting on it, I who am the antithesis of an athlete.

We (the 14 of us who went to Peru for Spring Break)

went rafting on the Urubamba River outside of Cusco, and we had a great time. The Urubamba, by the way, goes to Machu Picchu, and it runs into another river that then runs into the phenomenol Amazon River. We rafted for about 2 1/2 hours, but the trip took all day, what with the hour-and-a-half bus ride each way, the delicious lunch they fed us, the instructions we received in order not to die on the rapids, and the putting on and taking off of wetsuits.

In about a week and a half, we will go to Brazil and see Iguaçu Falls. More water. I love it.

LA HOJA DE COCA NO ES DROGA

2008-03-24T19:29:00.005-05:00

OK, this blog entry may be a little sketchy, but here goes anyway. The coca plant is a HUGE part of Peruvian society. The leaves of the coca plant are said to cure altitude sickness, diarrhea, and a host of other ailments. We saw many t-shirts and signs that carried the slogan that titles this blog, translated as "The coca leaf isn't a drug." Peruvians were selling coca candies, coca leaves, coca herbal remedies, etc. Katie bought a package of leaves for about 33 cents (we didn't let her take them out of the country, however, just in case.)

For the record, I DO NOT support the use of cocaine. However, cocaine is a LONG ways away from the coca leaf. Really. And the tea is delicious. I drank it every day, and no, I wasn't the slightest bit impaired. My kids drank it. Even Ken tried it, but he prefers regular tea. I agree with the Peruvians: "la hoja de coca no es droga." Or, at least it's not an inherently evil drug.

THE ANNOTATED PERU QUIZ

2008-03-24T11:44:00.010-05:00

We're back from our FABULOUS Spring Break (really, Fall Break for us) in Peru, and now to jumpstart us back to school, I think we all should take a test. So here goes:
1. Which one of the following foods that we tried was gross?
a) goat b) guinea pig c) alpaca (like llama) d) ceviche (a raw fish dish) e) all of the above

2. What is the favorite soft drink in

Peru? ________

3. Which of the following characteristics describes drivers in Lima?
a) courteous

b) excellent

c) patient

d) all of the above

e) none of the above

4. True or False. Karen is too old to stay in youth hostels anymore.

5. A trip to Machu Picchu is _________.

a. worth a thousand words

b. fabulous
c. expensive

d. rainy but still perfect

e. all of the above

6. Which of the following wool products smells bad when wet? a. alpaca b. vicuña c. llama d. sheep e. all of the above

7. There are well over ________ types of potato in Peru.

a. 10 b. 100 c. 1000 d. 10,000 e. one million

8. Fill in the blank. The name of the tall, peaky mountain in the middle of Machu Picchu is ______.

9. The view from our room in Cusco ___.
a. was breathtaking
b. only cost us $18 a night

c. meant a hard walk uphill

d. all of the above

e. none of the above

10. True or False. The water is potable in Peru.

Annotated Answers
1.b. Guinea pig (pictured), called cuy, tastes exactly like what Krista thinks rat must taste like. The other foods were all yummy. In fact, Peruvian food has spice and lots of taste in general (unlike the bland food that Uruguayans eat).

2. Inca Cola. It's marketed by the Coca-Cola Company, which seems to own everything in Peru not already stolen by the Spaniards. My family loved it too, and Krista bought an Inca Cola t-shirt; she will be in mourning over not being able to get that drink, which tastes like a cross between cream soda and Big Red.

3.e. Oh my goodness. If you want to collect your life insurance, just drive around Lima for awhile. I've seen bad driving in say, Manila, Paris, or Rome--

this is a whole 'nuther league. Another little factoid for you: 1 in 7 cars in Lima is a taxi.

4. True AND False. It depends, because our hostel in Cusco was fantastic (we slept there 5 nights) and our hostel near Machu Picchu was more than adequate as well. In our hostel in Lima (only one night fortunately),

however, our room-with-only-kids-we-know didn't work out, and Ken and I had to share with other folks, one of whom was drunk, dirty, mostly naked, snoring, and yelling in his intoxicated stupor. Horrible. I'm only staying in hostels when we get the whole room from now on.

5.e. Machu Picchu was incredible. We LOVED it.

We will probably drive you nuts with talk of it. We can't say enough great things about our two days there. A bit of trivia for you: the word "Inca" means "King." Also, for

the birders out there, did you know that over 10% of all the bird species on earth can be found in Peru? Well, now you know.

6.c. Llamas smell bad, period. You'll be glad to know that any wool souvenirs we bought were all made of alpaca, which is softer than llama as well. Because 54% of Peruvians live in poverty, we bought almost all of the gifts we'll be taking back to folks in the States on this trip. We bought directly from the makers, instead of through middlemen, and we met some awfully nice people along the way.

7.c. There are over 1000 different types of potatoes found in Peru, and countless ways to prepare them. When I say types of potato, I mean that there's one variety that has blue skin and orange inside, another that has a red skin and an orange interior. All the potato dishes we tried were tasty.

8.Wayna Picchu. Good!

You're doing just great on this quiz!

Ken and Katie climbed this peak the second day, while Krista and I settled for the city of Aguas Calientes and a mountain that translates to"Happy Mountain."

9.d. We LOVED our hostel in Cusco. [For the record, it was called Samay Wasi Peru (I DON'T recommend the one in Lima, only the one in Cusco); we heard of people paying LOTS more money for what we got.] Cuzco is South America's oldest continuously-inhabited city, having been the seat of Incan and then Spanish power for hundreds of years. It is packed with Incan ruins, tiny little beautifully-paved roads, and over-eager, annoying street salespeople.

10. False. I hope that somebody from the Gates Foundation is reading this blog (unlikely), because somebody with some money needs to give these people potable water. I KNOW the money won't be coming from the Coca-Cola Company, because they also sell almost all of the bottled water in the country, which one must use even to brush teeth. For the record, I really only missed two things about Uruguay while we were away: one was delicious, drinkable water, and the other was

my FAVORITE drink ever, even better than Diet Coke, Paso de los Toros Light, a light, grapefruit soda sort of like Fresca but way better.

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD

2008-03-09T11:37:00.007-05:00

You may think I take a long time to get to the point sometimes in English; you should hear me in Spanish! I use a strange mix of Tarzan talk (Me go there) and roundabout ways to say stuff, in order to use the few words I (sort of) know (Still I am please from Texas and I studying Spanish since 5 weeks today now until the 8th of May). All of us beginners (and that is almost all of us; there are 21 of us in the moron Spanish class; 2 students are in Intermediate, and 3 are in Advanced) have a long way to go, but we're way far down the road compared to where we began. Today, for instance, I understood many more words in church than I ever have before; however, they don't go together at all to form, say, a meaningful sermon or a communion devotional talk.

But we all are functional now, thanks to the hard work of our determined teacher Amelia and a lot of homework and study. We can go places and do things and actually get things done.

Example: OK, so there is almost nothing to cook with in the upstairs apartment, and I determine to buy a colander for draining pasta and vegetables and fruit that we've washed. First, walk several blocks to the

GayMar (next to Two Gays, I kid you not), which sells dishes and things.

Karen: Por favor, quiero comprar … ummm… una cosa para, no, por … (give up this unproductive language route and start down an alternate alley.)

Necesito un "colander," por favor. (blank look; after all, lots of people don't know the word colander in English. Try again.)

Despues de … ummm… que limpiar unas frutas … (lady shows me a scrubber to wash fruit; I see a closed conversational window and open another.)

Para … ummm… (I slide into a lingual portal where all the people are mute and gestures rule) …por el agua (then I gesture stupidly as if the water is pouring out through invisible holes.)

Saleswoman: ¡Ahhh, si! (She shows me a couple of colanders and says "laksljoigoien jepien guwoolle joeon lo0elw0j lwoen." At least that's what I hear.) I stand there awhile, looking for price tags, and, finding none and fearing another unintelligible "conversation," I select the cheap plastic one, thinking I'm pretty sure I can afford that one without having to try to break a big bill, which Uruguayans fear most in all the world and which brings on conversations I can't handle.

Go to check-out.
Different lady rattles off price, "llopnwdoiwpin- lppej onchwi."
I look at calculator, see price, pay that, and leave with a cheery "!Gracias!" to which she replies "Por favor.")
Nothing to it!

I've just gotta tell you...

2008-03-07T16:09:00.005-06:00

... about THE “BLOG” OF “UNNECESSARY” QUOTATION MARKS. I go to this blog every few days, thanks to our friend Tim Archer, who found it somehow. It is hilarious if you're a punctuation geek like I am. Pictured is only one of many, many fabulous signs and images, and the blog owner Bethany writes hilarious headlines and descriptions.

End of advertisement. Enjoy!

THE SUMMER THAT WOULD NEVER END,,,

2008-03-07T15:46:00.003-06:00

They've had snow a couple of days back in Abilene, and my friend Gayla hates to be cold. But we here are just finishing up summer by having a week of rain to inaugurate in the Fall. For Gayla, our life from about May 2007 until September 2008 would be a dream come true; it's been pretty much one long summer and early Fall.

Why? Summer 2007 was followed by Fall 2007 in Abilene (true, there were a few cold days, even some snow, but for purposes of this blog, we'll call it Fall). Then we moved here, where it was HOT summer again; now it's beginning to be early Fall; then we'll return to Abilene in time for summer again to be followed by Fall—yet AGAIN!

Not only are our seasons a bit wacker-doodle, but our time is also. We are 4 hours ahead of those of you who are in Texas today, but tomorrow, when you Spring Forward for Daylight Saving Time, we will Fall Back (because Fall is beginning here!); thus, we will only be two hours later than you guys for the rest of our time in Uruguay.

MORE ABOUT CABO POLONIO

2008-03-07T14:38:00.006-06:00

This beach place is isolated. How isolated? You can only reach it by hiking something

7 kilometers or by taking one of these huge 4X4 tank-like

trucks over the sand to get there. There

are waves crashing all over the place; there are vast sand dunes that go on and on. We ate our lunch on top of one

such dune, where we had spread out our same-blanket-we-take-everywhere, and made peanut

butter and banana sandwiches. It was great, and I don't just mean because we got to delight our tastebuds with the

mmm-mmm goodness of Jif Extra Crunchy peanut butter (our last of two precious jars), but also because we looked out at the vast Atlantic, and because we

were together in this cool place, and because we could see God's wonderful creation

in yet another of its interesting manifestations.

Also I've posted, just for fun, a picture of some beach-kill. It's a stingray, and, even though I'm no forensic pathologist, I'm pretty sure it died of the big shark bite that took out its whole middle and backside.

Click to enlarge.

2008-03-07T07:00:00.001-06:00

Cabo Polonio, Uruguay

2008-03-03T04:59:00.006-06:00

Sometimes, if you're very, very lucky, you get to have church on a gorgeous beach with wonderful people.

We were those people yesterday morning.

Thank you, Lord.

LAMEST OSCARS NIGHT EVER

2008-02-24T21:19:00.005-06:00

OK, we Cukrowskis love movies, and we even love the Academy Awards. We have a party every year, complete with games, ballots, decorations, themed foods, prizes, and costumes. Not only did none of that happen this year since we were in Uruguay, but we just turned off the TV in frustration moments ago at 1:30 A.M. and didn't even finish watching the show. Why? First, it started at 11:30 our time, which is pretty late to start an overly-long show, but second, and far more importantly, they simultaneously translated the show on the only channel showing it. It made us crazy barely hearing the English in the background and then hearing the Spanish really loudly in the foreground! We are NOWHERE near good enough in our Spanish to make that work, but also it was annoying because we really did want to hear the presenters and the movie clips AS THEY WERE, not with voiceovers. I think subtitles would have been perfectly acceptable, but not voiceover.

So I'm going to try to upload these pictures for you of the world's most lame Oscar party and then I'm going to bed—pouting and with a headache. :) I'll check in the morning to see who won.

THIS ONE'S FOR YOU, DAVID.

2008-02-23T21:39:00.005-06:00

So we went to the Zoo in Buenos Aires, Argentina last week, and we saw some absolutely freakish little animals that run wild all over the zoo. They're rodents that look like a small deer got real cozy with a rabbit one drunken night and the resultant offspring were these things. We had no idea what they were, but, perhaps because today would have been my brother David's 44th birthday had he lived and I'm missing him, and, because he knew all kinds of weird facts and would have been happy to share them with you, I will tell you about this animal tonight in my best David manner.

The Mara, or Dolichotis patagonum, lives on the plains and scrubland of Argentina and can live up to 15 years. Males and females form long-term pair bonds, but the young form creches. They can easily weigh 25 or so pounds, which is a lot for what is basically a wild rabbit. End of lecture.

What you really need to know is that they're weird looking. See for yourself.

THE MILLION PESO BANK NOTE

2008-02-23T21:01:00.005-06:00

There's a really fun short story by Mark Twain that I recommend (you can find it easily on the internet for free) called THE MILLION POUND BANK NOTE. Without telling you too much, this guy gets a lot of stuff for free because he only has a million-pound bill and nobody can break it. That's kind of what happens around here, but you don't need a million pounds (although I'd like to try!). Nobody wants to take big bills around here, and by big bills, I mean maybe 200 pesos, which is only $10. Forget about spending 500 or 1000 pesos. Only big purchases work for something like that. Maybe part of the reason is that people are relatively poor, and they're dealing in much smaller sums than we Americans are used to.

Nothing costs what it costs in my head. [I've written on this subject before, but it requires updating.] Things either cost more or less, but rarely is something exact on the money, so to speak. The average income in Uruguay is, I've heard, less than $10,000 a year. But you want to know something interesting? These poor people don't expect change when amounts don't merit giving out a coin. What I mean is, even though Americans count every last cent, here there isn't even a coin smaller than a 50 cent (1/2 peso) piece. I bought 102 pesos' worth of stuff at the convenience store next door the other day, and I paid with a 200. Rather than mess with giving me back all that change, the cashier gave me 100 pesos.

"No problem," he said.

Are you kidding me? No way would that have happened back in the States. From what I hear, this kind of thing happens all the time in stores, etc., and--get this--it always favors the consumer. It blows me away.

Here are some other examples of things that are way different priced here in reality than in my head: it's cheaper for us four Cukrowskis to go to the Old City (downtown) by taxi than by bus, which seems completely wrong to me, yet blue jeans cost an outrageous amount (on sale for $50-60; at the nice mall, they're $300). Back at home my hair color stuff (Revlon #42, in case you're interested) costs $3.00, but here it costs U$S 15-20 or more. It's outrageous to buy appliances here: for example, you can buy my really nice large fridge back home for what an apartment-sized one costs here.

I guess I don't really have a point tonight, other than to marvel at the generosity of the shop owners-- and really, a society as a whole that chooses not to sweat the small stuff.

TANGO VS. TENGO

2008-02-19T08:23:00.005-06:00

OK, I've repented from my crankiness, and I'm writing a thankful blog entry instead. This past weekend, we went with all the students, the Penyas, and Lynette's parents to Buenos Aires, Argentina. What a wonderful, exciting, vibrant city! We just loved it, even though we were there only Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Our friends-who-have-been-missionaries-in-Argentina Steve and Lynette Austin, and Tim and Carolina Archer had told us it was great, and had given us some suggestions of what to do and see, and they were right! Too bad we didn't get to do everything, but what we did was just wonderful anyway. I'll write more about other things, but first I want to tell you about the tango.

TANGO
We went to a Tango show on Friday night. We ate a delicious dinner, and a fabulous 4-piece band played throughout, and

then 6 tango dancers

and 3 singers walked us through the various development

al phases of the

tango. A short course for you: it started as a low-class thing, became popular in high class places as well, Carlos Gardel is a biggie in tango singing history, and it's way cool to watch. All of us loved it!

TENGO=I HAVE
Another thing we couldn't help but notice was that, while there was a great deal of wealth in B.A. (1 in 30 people have plastic surgery of some sort), there are many poor, poor people as well. When I visited the cathedral and looked at a statue of Jesus near the Pink Palace (their White House, where Evita stood on the balcony), I could picture him crying as he pictured the haves and the have nots there in B.A. and elsewhere. Attached are some pictures of homeless and rat trap houses, which, of course, we breezed by in our air-conditioned tour bus. Ken did meet and introduce me to a shoe-shine man, with whom Ken struck up a 3-day relationship of sorts: they visited daily; they shared a meal; they spoke in Ken's broken Spanish; they waved when passing by. This man was doing his very best to make a living for his family, but he was having a hard time making it, but no matter what, he was a have not.

When we were at the tango, I thought about the similar word tengo, a Spanish word meaning I have. I have so much. I have a family. I have money. I have stuff, way too much of it. I have an education. I have this wonderful opportunity to travel. I have received so many more blessings than I deserve. I have thankfulness in my heart.

10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU

2008-02-19T07:40:00.006-06:00

OK, I know it's not politically correct to say anything negative about someone else's country—and, to be sure, I LOVE traveling, and I'm loving living in Uruguay—but sometimes you just notice some of the bad stuff. And I'm in a foul mood, so I thought I'd share my peeves today, lucky you:

1. NOT GETTING MONEY: I went to the only ATM I have found that will take my ATM card in all of Montevideo today, and AGAIN it was out of money. So, I have maybe $5 worth of pesos to buy food for our supper tonight. Oh well… I'll go to the far-ish grocery store (Ta-Ta; for more juvenile comments about this and other name brand-names-that-don't-translate-well-into-English, see the comments under the blog entitled "Today I mailed a letter"), since I've walked this far already. No problem that I don't have cash, TaTa will always take my credit card.
Until today. After I had taken a long time shopping, waiting in order to have each vegetable weighed by the weighing-person, and after I had waited for the bread guy to bag my bread, and after I had waited in a really long line because everybody is buying back-to-school supplies, the checker rejected my use of my credit card. They always take my credit card with my photocopy of my passport. [For the record, we've been told, "Whatever you do, don't take your original passport out with you; after all, it could be stolen, and you'd be up a creek." Additionally, our passports are all being held hostage at the Brazilian Consulate for 3 working days while "processing" our visas.]
"No," she said, "You must have your original passport with you at all times." I told her I've always used it here with a photocopy. "No, you didn't," she informed me. Well! I WOULD have paid her with money, but remember, the stupid ATM machine had no money in it. I would have written a check, but forget about opening a checking account down here; ACU doesn't even have a checking account down here (a fact that astounds me), because it's so difficult for foreign entities to get one apparently. Stupid country.

2. OGLING, GROPING MEN: It is part of Uruguayan culture (actually, a large part of South American culture) to cat-call (piropos) women who are walking by on the street or whatever. If a woman smiles or responds at all, the guy or guys take that signal as their cue to up the ante. If you go to a club, like a couple of our students did last weekend (after checking out it was a good place for dancing, not all the negative stuff that can go with such places), you get groped and mauled and harassed against your will until you leave the club, and even then, you're followed, but fortunately one of the Study Abroad guys frowned them away. It may be cultural, but it's still BAD.

3. TRASH IN THE RIVER/OCEAN/STREETS: Many dogs roam freely around here, and I have to admit they're usually pretty friendly and docile. But they haven't learned to flush so to speak. The sidewalks are hazardous. You can routinely see people toss stuff on the ground as well.
And there's a general mistreatment of the amazing gift of water that this port city has. The river is so brown (yes, some of it's sediment, but much of it is pollution) that it was pretty gross riding across it on the BuqueBus ferryboat to and from Argentina this weekend.

4. CHOCOLATE -- They just don't get it.

5. LACK OF AIR CONDITIONING -- This one would be Ken's #1 and ranks pretty high on mine as well. Yes, we get that we're spoiled Americans, and yes, we use too much of the world's limited resources, but hey, it's hot, really hot, and this is an industrialized country in a major city, folks. Couldn’t at least a couple of places, like say a library, a classroom, or a common room, have air conditioning?

6. ORANGES -- The fruit here is fantastic, fresh, and juicy. The vegetables are equally delicious. The oranges—and thus the orange juice—aren't. Florida oranges really are better.

7. ITTY-BITTY, STUPID NAPKINS -- Their napkins are terrible, weirdly-textured, unabsorbant, little useless things about the size of a playing card. You need about thirty to get the job done, which seems counter-productive if they're trying to save paper.

8. LOCKING EVERYTHING UP-- Here, in Casa ACU, where I live among friends and where we don't even lock the door to our apartment at night (it only opens to the student hallways), we lock and unlock doors all day and all night. For example, to go next door to the Spanish classroom, I leave the apartment (which, as I said, we don't lock because that would require using even MORE keys), go downstairs, unlock the wooden door that leads to the garage door, go through the door, relock the wooden door, go to the outside door, unlock it, go through the door, relock from the other side. Walk maybe twenty feet and then wait for either Ken or Rachel (who have keys to the church building, where the classroom is) to unlock that door, go upstairs to the classroom. If anybody is late, Ken or Rachel must go down the flights of stairs to re-unlock the door to allow them in.
VERY annoying.
But why do we do this, when basically we share much of this building with the church and when there are THREE ways (yes, count them) that we could go in there WITHOUT USING ALL THESE KEYS, without even leaving the building, or without inconveniencing anybody? First, there's a door that connects to the church in the hallway outside our bedroom. I repeat, there's a door that connects to the church outside our bedroom, approximately 10 feet from my bed; second, there's an elevator that opens to both Casa ACU and the church building, but we aren't allowed to use it; and third, there's a door in the garage/hallway that opens directly up to the church building. Stupid.

9. MEAT, MEAT, MEAT. We hear a lot about Uruguayan and Argentinian beef. "It's the best," people say, "and they eat a whole lot of it." In Argentina, both parts of that sentence are true; in Uruguay, only the last part of the sentence is.

10. SERRATED KNIVES -- I'm glad there are serrated knives in this world, and around here, since they eat so much meat, they need them. But there's not ONE regular, flat-edged knife in all of Casa ACU, to my knowledge, and I've seen none in all of Uruguay so far. Not one butter knife. Weird.

And some other things annoy me too, like crummy internet service, but I just don't remember what they are this minute. OK, I feel better now that I've vented, and I'll write much more positive entries henceforth. Thank you for listening.

TODAY I MAILED A LETTER.

2008-02-14T15:19:00.006-06:00

Today I mailed a letter. Really. That's all. But it takes me all day sometimes to do one new thing. I had to buy envelopes at a bookstore (they were neither to be found at the grocery store nor at a couple of other stores I checked); I had to buy stamps at a pharmacy. I had to find out that there are no mailboxes around nor a post office that I can figure out. So, I went to yet a different pharmacy that has a box in it for outgoing mail. Who knew?

Our learning curve is getting better daily, but there are still a number of tasks for which we're simply not prepared. I found pancake syrup, for instance, the other day, at what I'm pretty sure is the only place that carries it in the whole city of Montevideo. Took me—you'll think I'm exaggerating but I'm not—most of 3 days.

We went to the movies for the first time on Saturday to see best picture nominee ATONEMENT (loved it, as I had the book)—alas, the learning curve again. First, you buy the tickets at a booth in the mall not located next to the theater; tickets are sold only at certain times regardless of showings. Second, since popcorn is kind of hard to come by around here, we bought the snack pack with two boxes of popcorn and 4 drinks. You have to pay for the snacks over at the (usually-unmanned) ticket booth; the popcorn place doesn't deal with money at all. Third, I braced myself to order the popcorn, thought through my how-to-order Spanish words, thought about what the girl might say to me, etc. So it stunned me when she asked me, "Do you want sugar or salt on your popcorn?" Not kettle corn (which I despise, by the way), but sugar poured on your popcorn. Just another cultural difference, the kind of thing we run into daily around here.

Sometimes the curve you're thrown ends up being better than you expect. Like our Lavadera, the washing place (pictured). We take our yucky, filthy clothes less than a block from Casa ACU, and a marvelous surprise happens. You pick them up the next day, and they're neatly folded, smell HEAVENLY, and for this you pay a mere $3.00 per load. Oh, and yes, in my limited survey of two laundry places, it seems to be a requirement to have

an incredibly friendly, adorable cat basking in the front window. I like going to our place and petting the cat as much as anything, I think (I can't believe that I miss our kitties so much. Have I become THAT person? Oh no...).

IF YOU LIKE PINA COLADAS...

2008-02-09T18:10:00.000-06:00

Las llamadas are the traditional carnaval parades of the candombe troupes. This is the second year that this particular parade has run for two nights instead of one. We went on the bigger night, and despite getting caught in the rain, it was FANTASTIC! I'm not sure how many drum troupes we saw, but we saw many before we left in a downpour a little before midnight I think, and they ran until 2:00 a.m. or so. The parade flowed very much more smoothly than the one that had opened Carnaval until the rain caused intermittent delays. Candombe has its roots in Africa, and it's a mix of Latin American and African drum beats. Apparently, the neighborhood where the parade is used to have a bunch of drummers get together hang out and drum; then more joined in; then more and more. Now hundreds and hundreds of people come out these two nights [and other times as well] to make this exciting event a reality. We could see the flags of each new group long before they reached us, when the drumbeats were just a faint throb. Dancers came next, costumed in feathers, sequins, and bright fabric. The candombe drummers followed in large groups, making a a tremendous sound that you could feel reverberate right through your body. Audience members joined behind the drummers dancing and clapping. I LOVED it! Despite the rain, despite the people drinking large juice boxes of wine, despite the massive amounts of pot being smoked around us, it was very, very exciting and beautiful. I would go again and again were I able, but I wouldn't go again to the boring Carnaval parade. [I'm trying, by the way, to upload some candombe drumming, in video format; hope it works! Allen Teel, this attempt is for you!]

PUT THE KID IN A CAGE.

2008-02-05T04:28:00.000-06:00

-written by Krista Cukrowski

This Saturday, I went to the zoo with Dad and Katie. Dad had warned me that it most likely would be very depressing, filled with mistreated animals and such, and that I would most likely hate it. However, I really liked it. In general, it was…nice compared to what we were expecting. It turned out to be something like the Abilene Fair meets an Exotic Ranch. As Zoological Parks go, they had a very large range of animals, almost everything from rhinos to small goats (which I still don't understand the point of…you're not even allowed to pet them. Lame.).

One thing that Ken was really impressed with was that they had 3 different types of large flightless birds (Ostrich, Rea, and Emu), and they even had a penguin. (Yes, just one, and it looked like it was a bit confused as to why it was there). Ken says it was "Bizarre." Some of the more interesting things we saw were: Baby Leopards and a very playful older one, a Hippo, Coatis, Seals, Ocelots, Snakes, Guanacos, Baboons, Tigers, Parrots and Macaws, a gross capybara, tons of domestic cats that just run around freely, and some semi-attractive hyenas who were interested in catching some of those domestic cats that run around freely.

On a sadder note, our visit there was blighted by the presence of what I would have to say is the most repulsive thing I've seen so far in Montevideo. It consisted of a very obese child of about nine or ten who was continuously ramming his wide body into the fences to scare the animals. For example, the first time we encountered this disturbed child was when this really cute, fluffy sheep went up to the edge of the enclosure to get a cracker. How adorable, right? Instead of the cracker, it got whacked in the face by the moronic fat boy who was being cruel to animals. Grrrr….I really didn't like this kid, and if I knew how to tell him not to do that in Spanish, I would have, but alas….stupid language barrier.
The Abilene Zoo is definitely a much happier place than MVD's Zoo, but when you consider that admission was only 20 pesos (inexplicably, we got in for free, which we attribute to Carnaval, our fallback explanation), and the size of it, they really are doing the best that can!

Oh, and did I mention that we got cotton candy? It was good.

LICENSE TO CARNAVAL

2008-02-04T13:53:00.000-06:00

The sign at the corner bakery says "Licensia en Carnaval." Then it tells us they will be back on the 18th of February. Today, I might add, is the 4th. These folks take their Carnaval seriously!

"How long does Carnaval last?" GREAT question, but hard to answer. "40 days," some say, "like Lent, only different." Our laundry place is taking Monday through Wednesday off for Carnaval; Hansen's school, however, is BEGINNING its school year during Carnaval (this Wednesday, Feb. 6, rather than in March like other schools); the convenience store virtually next door is open in the mornings and then closed the rest of the day for "awhile."

This much I have heard to be true. Carnaval--and thus vacation--lasts longest in Uruguay (versus Brazil and Argentina and other Carnaval-celebrating places). But what do people DO during Carnaval, other than the opening parade I told you about and occasional candombe bands playing? We have no idea. Stay tuned...

EL SUPERBOL

2008-02-03T21:20:00.000-06:00

The Superbowl is not a big deal here, but it did run on the local Fox Sports channel. I, like many people, offend true American football fans by only watching a few minutes of football per year (but then again, I'm offended by the whole sport in general, but that's fodder for its own blog entry sometime), usually the last two or so minutes before the halftime show (which I didn't even watch this year), the halftime show (which I've turned off many years, most notably the horrible spectacle that was Prince), and the last two or so minutes at the end of the Superbowl (a strategy that paid off really well tonight, since halftime was great, and the outcome of the game changed the last couple of minutes).

Tonight changed nothing for me, because (a) the commentary was in Spanish, so I understood even less than I usually understand about football, (b) the commercials weren't the high-dollar extravaganzas we're used to during the Superbowl but were mostly local commercials (again, in Spanish-- imagine the nerve!), and (c) several of us here at Casa ACU have picked up some bug or 'nuther that's keeping us close to our baños. So, I actually would have had to watch the game JUST TO SEE FOOTBALL!

[An aside: I did, however, watch and enjoy the halftime show. Tom Petty was in great form; his guitarist dude was amazing; the show was really about the music and not about a bunch of glitz or wardrobe malfunctions. I predict there will be much said about the "disappointing halftime show," and I hope you don't listen, Mr. Petty. They're just so young, these folks. They don't know you like I do.]

Back to futbol; as everybody knows, the REAL football worldwide is soccer, and Ken, Katie, and Krista have STRONG opinions about that subject, now that they've gone to a biggie game around here, where they fell in love with "our team," Team Nacional. They came home pumped about the whole event last Monday: "Mom, you can't believe that they searched us, yet people blew off real flares during the game; where were they hiding them?" "Mom, there were over 60,000 people there; it was so exciting, easily the loudest place I've ever been." "Mom, they sing a song where they take off their jerseys and swing them around over their heads. Seriously, it's the 'take off your jerseys and swing them around your head' song." "Mom, I have to learn how to whistle with my two fingers in my mouth; everybody here learns that; at home, only Aunt Shelly can do it." "Mom, I can't believe you sold your ticket to Mike; it was SO fun." Plus, we have positive feelings about soccer since my nephew Tyler is so good at the sport. He's one of two freshmen playing for his College Station high school team, and he's played for some really-hard-to-get-in teams and camps pretty much since he learned to walk. He's really, really good at it. So really, our favorite teams are Team Nacional and Team Tyler!

GODDESS WORSHIP

2008-02-02T17:01:00.000-06:00

Most of the time our travels have served to show us how much we people on this globe are essentially the same. Sure, a few customs are different, but really, when all is said and done, people all over the world love their families, have to eat, have to clean, and such.

Then there are a few customs that really are radically different. In the Philippines, it was still done that people would put out food for their deceased relatives on November 1st, All Souls Day. It didn't matter if you were a devout Catholic or whatever; this cultural phenomenon was part of your DNA and upbringing.

Here in Uruguay, the Festival of Iemanja (EE-mon-zhAH) is something odd from my perspective. Every February 2nd, worshipers of Iemanja, the goddess of the sea, start gathering early in the morning (a few) and continuing through the evening (thousands).

So what goes on during this strange, ghostly, spiritual event? You'll have to take Ken and Katie's views, as Krista and I had had enough walking earlier today; we saw the preparations on the beach but not the actual litter, which offended Krista SO MUCH. Here's what Katie and Ken found:

By sunset, the beach was mobbed. Celebrants lit candles and left flowers at the statue of Iemanja. Hundreds of people waded into the water to release their offerings (this part kills Krista, my conservationist; I find it interesting that littering is what offends her, not the pagan ritual thing. We hear that some people throw such valuables as wedding dresses or fine jewelry into the water; then, later, when all the people have left, scavengers comb the beach and shallow waters to snag them!). Individual congregations staked out small areas on the sand, and each seemed to have its own variant on the ritual, although white-robed women were everywhere. Many seemed like semi-voodoo variations, kind of like that strange lady in THE PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movies. At one meeting place, a woman held a large shell and wailed. In another, a teen-aged girl staggered in a trance (there were quite a few young girls who seemed to be in training to take over one day from the older white-robed ladies). Many performed symbolic cleansings. Others danced. Drums beat and bells rang all around. Uruguay is a very secular country, so this mass spiritualism is somewhat surprising.

DON'T IT MAKE MY BLUE EYES HURT

2008-01-31T08:16:00.001-06:00

Not only is it the height of summer here, but the sun is simply stronger in Uruguay, closer as we are to the equator and, according to what I've heard, under an actual hole in the ozone layer—so more UV rays get through. I wear 60 SPF sunscreen and I've still gotten a little burnt each time I've been out; the students run around with no sunscreen to about 30 SPF, and after last week's trip to Punta del Este, there were MANY red faces and bodies (this week there are several leprous-looking, peeling body parts among us).

In contrast, the people here have such beautiful and beautifully-adapted-to-the-sun skin. There really IS something to that Latin Lover thing; there are so many physically lovely men and women—and the babies, oh my word, are gorgeous. But lest you think that everyone is similarly brown-colored, let me dissuade you of that thought. There are people as fair as I am (though I've seen nobody as freckled, lucky them), and there are people about as dark as Katie is (I would say that's maybe the majority), and there are people significantly darker. In general, beautiful brown eyes with long lashes prevail, and, as I've seen everywhere I've traveled outside the United States, people are much thinner than Americans. On the streets, I'm often the only one wearing sunglasses, because my blue eyes actually hurt outside here without them, especially during the middle of the day. Don't I wish my blue eyes weren’t?

The update on Krista’s music experience in Latin America

2008-01-31T07:19:00.000-06:00

Written by Krista herself

From what I’ve seen/heard so far, the music here can be quite varied.

Some people have insisted on listening to American music. I personally was thrilled to hear Alice Cooper’s "School’s Out" playing in the gym on the first day we went there. The Gimnasia plays a lot of different music, and practically all of it is Techno Remixes of English-Speaking bands such as Evanescence, Within Temptation, and the Cranberries (that one was really fun to kick box to).

Now, as for bonafide Latin American music, it actually isn’t that bad, but I don’t particularly enjoy it. When we were at Carnaval, a few of the floats actually had live bands playing on them, which was really cool. I’ve only heard a bit of their music, but the tempos are off to me and I find that it sounds….wrong.

What else is wrong with the Spanish-singing music is that, some of it is just translated American music. At the church we attend here in Montevideo, we sing “In moments like these,” but it sounds so bad because they try to squish their words into the music written. It's either sung very fast and very badly, or very elongated and very badly. I’ve decided that they just need to write their own songs, because, hey, it would sound SO much better.

WHY WE'RE SUNBURNT

2008-01-28T19:50:00.000-06:00

PUNTA del ESTE: Saturday we went on a trip together with all the students to visit the famous-around-here resort town of Punta del Este, about 2 ½ hours away from Montevideo.

CASA PUEBLO: Our first stop was about 30 minutes before our ultimate destination at the amazingly cool home, Casa Pueblo, of artist Carlos Páez Vilaró. If you get a chance to Google this man, please do. I really like his art, and his open-to-the-public home is breathtaking. It was my favorite part of the day.

GORRITI ISLAND: Our "real" destination, Punta del Este, has miles and miles of beautiful beaches, and, as it's the height of summer vacation here, everything was pretty packed. However, due to clever planning on the par

t of Lynette and Lee Penya, we took a boat to a little island offshore (called Gorriti) for about half the day; there was beautiful sand to be found, the crowds were much smaller, and Ken and I walked the entire circumference of the place, exploring just about everything (the girls frolicked more at the beach than anything).

LOS DEDOS: We also did the touristy thing by stopping at Los Dedos (which means The Fingers), a huge sculpture of a hand emerging from the sand. You can see our group in the picture. We also went to a crazy, wavy bridge that Autumn's Study Abroad group got to go over several times; we,

however, were in a big, fancy tour bus that wasn't allowed. Bummer.

We do, however, have a picture of it with Ken, Katie, and Krista.

PIRIAPOLIS: On our return, we stopped in another resort town called Piriapolis, where we ate a fabulous dinner at a hilltop restaurant with an almost 360-degree ocean view. Despite (a) a tire blow-out on the bus and (b) a run-in-with-something-oceanic that forced us to re-dock and switch boats and (c) quite a few sunburns all around, this was an A+ day. Study Abroad student Emily said it best when she said, "This is the best day I've ever had, ever."

CHURCH IN MONTEVIDEO

2008-01-28T17:11:00.001-06:00

The Church of Christ is right next door (in the left picture, the church is to the right, the metal gate doors on the left are our entrance to Casa ACU; the bell tower above is very cool; the whole building is MUCH larger than it appears in the pictures), so naturally we go there for services each Sunday. The congregation is pretty small but filled with sweet, sweet people. [However, because of the Uruguayan custom of greeting people by kissing them on the left cheek, I get my weekly fill-up on human contact in about 82.4 seconds.]

I am proud to report that all thirty of us at Casa ACU (22 students, 4 Cukrowskis, and 4 Penyas) have attended church both Sundays we've been here. That's saying a lot, since most of us understand VERY little while we're there. Our group consists of a number of excellent singers, and that's been fun to sing in Spanish; also, we've actually contributed to the edification of the church in that we sing better than they do!

This kind group of people treated us to a reception after the first Sunday, where they served pizza and cokes. We all had to introduce ourselves--in Spanish--the regular members were very kind. Katie and Krista have met a couple of the kids from the youth group; perhaps there will be some chances to get together sometime.

The services are wonderful, but class, taught by a well-intentioned man who utilized completely narrow-minded readings of proof texts, was designed to make everyone understand that church attendance is the most important thing a Christian can do for salvation. It was both annoying and sad. I'm sure I will say more about church here at a later time.

FALSE FRIENDS

2008-01-28T15:23:00.000-06:00

Among the many mistakes I'm making in Spanish, which are too numerous to count, some are simple, little things and some are muy grande. Some words both look and sound like English words, but they really don't mean anything like one another. Sometimes, people refer to these errors as "false friends." "Embarazado" and "Ingles" are like that; if you say you are "embarazado" about something because you are embarrassed, you are actually saying you are pregnant! Or, if, like one of our students Colter, you are telling people about your "ingles," about your speaking English, you're actually talking about your groin muscles; this he did for awhile!

But I'm not saying anyone else is making more errors than I am; after all, I talk a lot, so I'm probably making the most mistakes of anyone! The simplest errors for me are Spanish words that look like English, visual cue errors when I read the word; by that I mean that when I see the word "con," I can't help but think it's against something, but it really means "with," pretty much opposite in meaning. Similarly, "once" still should be followed by "upon a time" to me, but it's the Spanish word for eleven.

Don't even get me started on my errors of the ears; over and over in church yesterday (for the record, I estimate I understood about 6 per cent tops; I gathered that the sermon was about God's love for Gentiles as well as for his chosen, Jewish people), I heard corramos, "let's run," which was immediately followed each time by… no, not a jog, but a prayer (after all, prayers do make more sense in church!). But my ears weren't hearing "orames," which means "let's pray"; they heard a word I knew instead. I'm sure I also heard the preacher say several times something about "una cigala," which I looked up in my dictionary. It means "Norway lobster," which I don't understand even in English, so I'm pretty sure he didn't say that. Once I did figure out— after the fact—that I had heard French, "a mort," meaning "dead" or "died," when, of course, the preacher wasn't speaking French; he was using the verb to love, "amor." Duh!

A harder, yet supposed-to-be-simple, word is "mañana," which can mean tomorrow or in the morning, depending on the words around it, words I may or may not catch. So someone may be talking about something going to happen next week in the morning, and I think the event's tomorrow. Problem.

This false friend discussion reminds me that I've been a false friend to people too at various times through the years. I hate all the hypocritical, nasty, and petty things I've let myself do or think over the years, and I regret them. And I am thankful for my true friends, such as Gayla, my family, and others, who have remained faithful to their flawed friend through the years.

CARNAVAL 2008

2008-01-25T10:17:00.001-06:00

OK, so you want to know something really funny? I tried posting a short little video clip of some girls, somewhat scantily-clad-but-still-clothed, dancing on a float to really loud music to give you, dear readers, a small taste of what the Carnaval parade last night was like. But Blogger turned me down. Thus I have now been rejected for attempting to post porn on a website! I never thought I'd live to see the day! Wow.

So instead I'll post a couple of much-less-interesting still shots and tell you a wee little bit about Carnaval (spelled correctly, by the way, even though my fingers want to type CarnIval with an "i" every single time).We enjoyed (mostly) the opening parade of Montevideo's carnaval last night. The parade started around nine (but we left the house at 7:30, walked downtown, got there around 8 and started looking for spots to stake out, since there were 28 of us in our group last night) and lasted longer than we did. We left in several different stages, around 10:30, 11:00, midnight, and one group left after that (curfew is at 2 A.M.).
The parade started with the queens of carnaval and the queens of the llamadas riding on floats. Trucks advertising Pilsen Beer and Antel (the national phone company) followed. Marchers carried large horizontal banners featuring various sponsors and kids from the audience would lay down in the street so the banners would pass over them. Throughout the whole thing, there are vendors hawking their wares walking up and down the sides of the street; they are selling various food items, like roasted meat, potato chips, and drinks, or they are selling knick-knacks like pins and/or wands that light up or blink and Carnaval masks ranging from the traditional to Disney characters and aliens. It was fun seeing the murga groups in their elaborate costumes, but the parade wasn't really the best forum for hearing what I understand to be their excellent singing. Some rock bands played amplified music from the top of trucks, and that worked well. The candombe drum troupes were the most exciting, but they were fewer and farther between than I had hoped. I hear we're in for some candombe treats at the beginning of February, however. [The second picture shows a few members of our group, and you can best see Mike, Nobuki, Colter, and Kelsey; we paid for seating, as opposed to standing forever and ever along the sides of the streets.]

During the LOOOOOOOONNNNNG spaces between groups, kids sprayed each other with foam from aerosol cans and threw confetti. Most of the confetti, rather than glittery or papery, was little styrofoam pellets, either colorful or plain white. We all looked like we had odd dandruff before too long. The kids also sprayed foam on the floats and on the dancers. Performers later in the night fared better since the kids had depleted most of their ammunition. We were surprised to see that there were far more men in the parade than women.
We were told to be aware of pickpockets and camera-stealers, but, as of this writing, I haven't heard of anything bad happening to any of our group. My group left the earliest, around 10:30, and I wanted to walk back on the main street through all the crowds and excitement; they humored me for quite a few blocks. However, after we passed a bunch of pot smokers (Krista said it reminded her of the Abilene High bathrooms; sad, eh?) and, after a bunch of drunk people started a conga line right behind Krista, she said, "Mom, take a left at the corner; we've gotta go up Colonia instead." So we did, and it was a lot more calm, just one street off the chaos. All in all, I'm glad I went, but I'm also glad I didn't sit there until 2 A.M.

[The really blurry picture is there to show you how it FELT when we were in the crowds, trying to get through to anywhere.]

TEA VS. MATE

2008-01-25T08:08:00.000-06:00

FOOD WE'RE EATING HERE, Part I

2008-01-24T07:40:00.000-06:00

The food we're eating is good—and not just because it contrasts SHARPLY with what we were eating the last couple of weeks back home (notable exceptions so far are tripe and blood sausage, but they're in another blog). Before we left Abilene, we decided to eat everything we could from our freezer and pantry to turn off our fridge and save electricity while we were gone. So we had some interesting combinations and "meals" as we decided what to eat and the least-disgusting way to prepare it: "Surprise, family! Tonight we're having black-eyed peas, walnuts, feta cheese, and yogurt!"

So for today's entry, I'll just tell you about a few food items.

Red Bell Peppers: really expensive back home, but less than $1/lb. here. I have served them in salads and have cooked them into my spaghetti sauce so far. We had a whole one grilled down at the meat market place. They are absolutely delicious.

Yogurt: The yogurt is amazing, like a dessert. So we're eating it as a treat. The brand we like is almost like real whipped cream, and we like the Forest Berry type to stir in with it.

Anything Raquel makes: I know you're feeling sorry for me, but there's a wonderful cook here who prepares seven meals a week--and we onsite families are welcome to eat with the students. She prepares a hot breakfast on Tuesdays and Thursday mornings, and she makes lunch Monday through Friday. Poor babies--we're on our own for dinner and all weekend meals. Not bad, eh? I'm sure I'll be updating you on more of Raquel's specialties, but let me give you a little hint--the word rhymes with "b-empenada."

ASHES TO ASHES

2008-01-23T12:03:00.000-06:00

Pictured here you can see the city center's main feature, a HUGE statue of Jose Artigas, who is so famous that every other street, square, and company is named after this man I had never even heard of. So who was this guy?

Artigas had been a soldier of the colonial guard, which protected the western Uruguayan borders from occasional Indian or Portuguese attacks. He became famous when he became Uruguay's benevolent dictator, believing that government should include not only the fancy-pants people but also the lower classes and Indians. One can only imagine how the people in power loved these innovations—not!—and when the Portuguese invaded Uruguay around 1820, Artigas was forced into exile in Paraguay for the last thirty years of his life.

I missed how he actually died (I think it was an anticlimactic death by old age) or how his ashes came to be housed right smackdab in the middle of Montevideo, but there he is in the urn in an underground mausoleum that's guarded 24 hours a day. Guarding this guy must be the most boring job in the world, because
(a) he's not going anywhere;
(b) I don't think anybody wants to steal him; and
(c) one of the two guards we saw was actually falling asleep standing up. It's cruel I know, but it was HILARIOUS watching him bob and snap, as he waged his own battle on behalf of the leader Artigas.

Just for the record, I too want to be reduced to ashes someday, and yes, I get that I will be whether or not I choose. But I really don't want to be buried; I have instructed my family to cremate me—and definitely don't keep my ashes on the mantelplace next to the lost TV remote.

Why cremation over a coffin? First, I think most cremations are great (a notable exception is General Artigas, whose remains and tomb take up an entire town square) because why should dead people take up a lot of space; second, I like the idea of going in one big conflagration instead of slowly rotting (I especially hate the idea of worm and maggot infestation); and third, I want my ashes poured out somewhere nice—or maybe many somewheres nice, like at a little vineyard in France or in your garden or a little bit in a library somewhere. Doesn't that sound nice?

EATING MY WORDS (Coffee, Part II)

2008-01-22T18:46:00.001-06:00

We parents eat an awful lot of our words throughout the years. If (1) you talk as much as I do and (2) you like to eat, you have to eat even more of them than most. But I thought I could do worse than follow some excellent examples that I had known. Here’s one: when I was six or seven, my grandfather Pa Jay gave me a pinch of snuff—in order to teach me never to get hooked on tobacco, like he was. It worked! I reeled, and I can’t believe I didn’t vomit, it was so so so so gross. When I was offered cigarettes and/or pot as a teenager, I quickly turned down all such offers.

So when my firstborn was two years old, she asked for a sip of coffee (not quite as dramatic as chewing tobacco, I’ll admit, but this is my story), and I thought, “Yeah, I’ll give her some, and she’ll hate it, and then she won’t get hooked on coffee.”
It worked!
Tah-DAH! I’m a great parent!

A year or so later, I have another two year old, and Krista asks for a sip of my coffee. Knowing now that I am in fact a fabulous mother-and-teacher, I say “Sure.”
And she says “Yum.”
Uh-oh! But no matter; after all, I had a cup with lots of cream and sugar (Ken always says that we like our coffee the way that, if you were to freeze it, it would be coffee ice cream), so I gave her a sip of black coffee. A little cruel admittedly, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
And Krista says “Yum.”
Oh no! Pa Jay’s method is failing me; what to do, what to do? So I give this beautiful baby, who has barely passed her second birthday, a coffee bean to chew.
And Krista says “Yum.”

Now that’s a real coffee drinker—and she has been all these years.

A nice cup of Coffee Mate… hold the creamer

2008-01-21T21:26:00.000-06:00

Ken and I aren’t really coffee drinkers; sure, we have the occasional cup when we’re out with folks (we don't inhale), but really, Ken is a hot tea guy, and I’m a cold Diet Coke girl.

But here’s the thing: coffee is available everywhere—and often, for free (Starbucks notwithstanding). Churches offer it; my oil-changing place back home offers it; for crying out loud, even my dentist offers it, and you’d think they’d despise people drinking such teeth-staining stuff.

One summer during college, I drank a LOT of coffee, but again, mainly that was because I was cheap. I worked for a patent attorney, and one of my main jobs was to make sure there was an extremely fresh pot of coffee at all times. I was pretty poor and I hated to waste pretty much anything, so he and his clients would have a cup or two, and I drank the rest—black—all day long! I’m talking 15 cups a day, easy. I figured I was hooked for sure, but in the Fall when I went back to ACU, nary a cup of joe passed my lips.

But here in Uruguay things are different… old people and young people alike drink mate (pronounced MOTT-ay), often many cups a day. It's a culturally distinctive thing similar to the tea ceremonies of Japan--there are special cups you use made from a gourd (also called a mate), fill it all the way with mate leaves which look exactly like dried grass clippings, pour in your hot water, and slurp it through a straw that kind of looks like a spoon. The whole process looks mildly like everyone is sharing drugs through a bong, but the slurping gives the whole thing away. Sadly, I think I would prefer it to be drugs. Why? If you know me AT ALL, you know I hate slurping or smacking sounds; actually, they make me completely nuts. Thus, so far the whole sharing the mate experience isn't one I think I'll import home for keeps.

I’ll tell you another coffee story tomorrow, this one about what a perfect mother I am (ha!).

CARNIVORES

2008-01-21T11:37:00.000-06:00

You know how most of the world eats healthier than Americans in general? That's true, but there are some places that defy preconceived notions as to what makes up a healthy diet. I think most people would expect us to be eating only a bit of meat now and again here in Uruguay. But they would be wrong. Quite wrong. The word CARNE in Spanish means meat, whence comes our word CARNIVORE—and that's completely accurate in the case of Uruguayans. They eat A LOT of meat.

We went to the Old City on Saturday with the students and the other onsite family, our back-at-home-neighbors Lynette and Lee Penya and their kids, to look around the flea market, to see the port area, and to eat dinner, OK, well, to eat meat. The place is huge, and stall after stall sells huge braziers of grilled meat: several kinds of sausage, pork, chicken, beef, etc. [A tip: if you order the grilled meat for two, more than four people can eat it; if you order the grilled meat for four, then half of our class can eat on it and have leftovers. Mostly this is because there's a whole lot of meat, but it's also because some of the meat is, shall we say, less commonly consumed in the United States, like tripe, which is yummy stomach lining, and which was in the pile of leftovers.]

A funny conversation happened between the girls and Sophie Penya, who is three years old and LOVES anything sweet. She saw Katie, Krista, Sarah Sims, and me eating (or at least trying) what looked like delicious chocolate cake but was in fact blood sausage, and she wanted some. Sarah told her that it wasn't cake, but Sophie wanted to try it. She took a couple of bites and then said something like "I've had better cake." I can imagine! J

[Also pictured are Katie and Krista "Fear Factor-ing" some blood sausage.]

STUDY ABROAD in MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY

2008-01-21T11:21:00.000-06:00

January 16 through May 8, 2008

We're here! We have arrived in Montevideo, our home-away-from-home for the Spring '08 semester. Short version: the weather is gorgeous, the students are fantastic, our apartment is great, we are all well. Long version: sorry I haven't posted before now, but now that we're settled in, I'll post frequent, bonafide entries. Stay tuned...

Pictured: We are very near lots of beautiful coastline.

Rovinj

2007-09-27T10:36:00.000-05:00

The old coastal town of Rovinj is just across the bay from Venice, which you can tell from its architecture and stonework. Everywhere you turn is another picture-perfect moment--case in point: the photo of Tom and Sandra was taken from the parking lot!

Pula

2007-09-27T10:26:00.000-05:00

The ancient town of Pula houses the best-preserved Roman coliseum. The one in Rome is bigger and more famous, but is in much worse shape. The Pula arena is almost intact, and one can also go underground to understand better the entry-and-egress system and a behind-the-scenes look at the world of the gladiator. Ken, as you might well imagine, was in hog heaven, since this is the kind of thing about which he teaches daily!

Plitvice

2007-09-27T10:18:00.001-05:00

Plitvice is a unique place ecologically, because its calcium deposits form newer and better waterfalls at all times and because of the clear water its natural filters create. We walked around eight miles of the Plitvice waterfall area with Sandra and Tom Sibley on our weekend jaunt through three of Croatia's famous sites. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

Croatia is BEAUTIFUL!

2007-09-27T08:11:00.000-05:00

I didn't know very much about Croatia before going there a week or so ago--OK, I didn't know pretty much anything about Croatia. But it's a wonderful country, young because it's only been a country for about a decade and old because it has a long, fascinating history, some of which I may get around to writing about in a future entry. But for now, I'm here to tell you that this country is flat-out gorgeous. It has an 800-mile coastline, beautiful vineyards and trees, and gorgeous architecture.

Take your pick--lamb or pork?

2007-09-27T07:31:00.000-05:00

'Nuff said.

Where We're Staying in Croatia

2007-09-20T03:07:00.000-05:00

Of course, you're aching to know where we're staying in Croatia, so I will leave you in suspense no longer! We're in a small, attic apartment above the Institute for Biblical Studies where Ken is teaching. The apartment has 3 bedrooms, a bathroom with non-working shower, a kitchenette, and low overhangs everywhere. It's absolutely perfect for us, because Ken simply walks downstairs to teach class. You're probably thinking the picture of the vertical windows in the roof is where we're staying. WRONG! We're one floor HIGHER than that; our windows are those skylights in the attic! The vertical ones are part of the Institute. The ground floor houses the Church of Christ, and it has a very cool baptistry copied from the one in around 800 A.D. I'll try to remember to take a picture of it later on today.

The Word of the Day: "Hotel"

2007-09-20T02:23:00.000-05:00

1644, "public official residence," from Fr. hôtel, from O.Fr. hostel "a lodging," from M.L. hospitale "inn" (see hostel). Modern sense of "an inn of the better sort" is first recorded 1765. Hotelier is a 1905 borrowing of Fr. hôtelier "hotelkeeper."

One can see from the definition above that an hôtel originally meant a big house, often divided up into smaller units or apartments and was not what Hilton or Marriott have in mind. While apartment complexes have been around forever (ancient Rome had its insulae and other civilizations have had communal-yet-separate living quarters), the first official hotel is in Paris, and is pictured here at the Place des Vosges.

End of etymology lesson for the day. You're welcome.

A New Country on My Personal World Map

2007-09-20T01:20:00.000-05:00

create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

I'm sure you're all just dying to see which countries I've visited in my life, so here's a map of them. I was able to add Croatia as of this week! This map tool I used enables me to cheat quite a bit, so it looks like I've visited, for example, everywhere in Russia, and I've only been to St. Petersburg (and environs) and Moscow. Also, it is quite an exaggeration to say I've visited Iceland, when in reality my cousin Lisa and I have only ever washed our hair in a sink in Reykjavik, and Iran, where we landed to refuel one time, and my brother David and I went to the stairs that descend from the plane, telling our mom that we wanted simply to set foot on Iran (at which point we looked down and saw machine guns pointed up at us) and then telling her that we had changed our minds!

Ken could add a number of places to his personal map, including lots of Caribbean islands, Egypt, Israel, and South Africa, but subtracting all of Asia.

We're both looking forward to adding South America to the girls' and our maps when we move to Uruguay for the Spring '08 semester with ACU's Study Abroad program!

It's all Napoleon's Fault

2007-09-18T10:32:00.001-05:00

So many things that I thought were originally French weren't. One of these is the origins of the cravat, or the tie. Here's one version of the story: when Napoleon inspected his troops, he thought the smartest-looking ones were the ones from Croatia, the ones with the ties; in fact, the word "croata" can be found as the root in a number of languages for tie or cravat. Napoleon thus began to require cravats of all his men. [Pictured: the stained-glass dome is in a shopping area under which one can buy $500 silk ties; also pictured is a dude in traditional Croatian costume wearing the red cravat.] So you can blame Napoleon for those nooses you men like so much....

The Rodin Museum(s)

2007-09-18T08:17:00.000-05:00

When you go to Paris or to Philadelphia, please, please, please go to the Rodin Museum(s). We have now been to both, and each was an extremely wonderful experience. When we went to the one in Philly, we were grouped with a tour of blind people who had special permission to touch all the pieces and whose tour guide emphasized the musculature of the statues, etc. As the only seeing people on the tour, the leader didn't want to leave us out, and we too were encouraged to rub our hands on the statues and to experience them that way. That may be my single favorite trip to any museum because of that tactile aspect.

But the Rodin Museum in Paris is fabulous as well, and of course it's housed in a gorgeous "hôtel" (more on that word another time, but you can see it in the picture below, next to the building with the gold dome--that's Napoleon's Invalides, where he's buried, by the way) that Rodin and many other artists actually inhabited. There are so many things to say, but I think I'll let a couple of pictures speak for me, though they fall FAR short of the experience of seeing these works in the round and in their "3-D-ness." (For the record, Ken had a headache, hence the matching pose.)

A Trifling Tale of Trouble Tasting Truffles

2007-09-18T06:51:00.000-05:00

This trip, Ken and I were going to eat a fancy-pants meal on the Isle de St. Louis, and I really only had one goal: try my very first truffle, those hundreds-of-dollars-per-pound delicacies famed for growing under the certain trees and one that cannot be cultivated but rather must choose life like some little Republican embryonic 'shroom. But it was not to be; alas, on Friday night, we had snacked too late on all things delicious and French and knew we couldn’t eat a four-course meal; on Saturday night, we were too tired and I had the tummy waggles, only for a brief period of time that occurred during eating-a-fancypants-French-dinner time, meaning late. And on Sunday, by the time we got downtown it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner and we were flying out that night. Rats...

Ah, but all was not lost, because when we flew to Croatia, I learned some truffle facts that are very, very interesting--to me anyway. First, while the "black truffle" of France is supposed to be delicious and runs somewhere around $300/lb., the Croatian white truffle is even more of a delicacy and often runs more than $1000/lb. "But how can I ever afford to eat even one bite?" I whined to Sandra Sibley, the very nice woman who took me around Zagreb on our first full day. She knew a place...

And so we went to a fancy-pants restaurant in Zagreb, Croatia, where we sat out on a terrace on a beautiful day in a beautiful city in a beautiful country and ate a beautiful risotto with white truffles. Wow. My meal cost only 22 kunas, around five dollars. How did it taste? Great, for real, not like people saying they love caviar but they don't, because c'mon, it's fish eggs, and they look like Nemo's siblings. Risotto, the national dish of Croatia, is on many, many menus, and this truffle dish tasted quite a bit like a yummy stroganoff.

So here are some more truffle facts for you (you know you want them):

1. The greatest delicacy for a long period of time was a truffled turkey. "I have wept three times in my life," the composer Rossini admitted. "Once when my first opera failed. Once again, the first time I heard Paganini play the violin. And once when a truffled turkey fell overboard at a boating picnic."

2. A single (very large) truffle once sold for 160,000 dollars.

3. Karen has now eaten them, and she liked the dish she ate very much.

Foreign Signs

2007-09-18T05:00:00.000-05:00

Shelly sent this list of foreign signs, and I thought you just might like to read a few. I have eliminated a few, as, after all, my mother reads this blog! :)

Cocktail lounge , Norway:
LADIES ARE REQUESTED NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN IN THE BAR.

At a Budapest zoo:
PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS. IF YOU HAVE ANY SUITABLE FOOD, GIVE
IT TO THE GUARD ON DUTY.

Doctor's office, Rome :
SPECIALIST IN WOMEN AND OTHER DISEASES.

Information booklet about using a hotel air conditioner, Japan :
COOLES AND HEATES: IF YOU WANT CONDITION OF WARM AIR IN YOUR ROOM,
PLEASE CONTROL YOURSELF.

In a Nairobi restaurant:
CUSTOMERS WHO FIND OUR WAITRESSES RUDE OUGHT TO SEE THE MANAGER.

On the grounds of a Nairobi private school:
NO TRESPASSING WITHOUT PERMISSION.

In Aamchi Mumbai restaurant:
OPEN SEVEN DAYS A WEEK, AND WEEKENDS TOO.

Hotel , Japan :
YOU ARE INVITED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE CHAMBERMAID.

In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from a Russian Orthodox monastery:
YOU ARE WELCOME TO VISIT THE CEMETERY WHERE FAMOUS RUSSIAN AND SOVIET
COMPOSERS, ARTISTS, AND WRITERS ARE BURIED DAILY EXCEPT THURSDAY.

Hotel, Zurich :
BECAUSE OF THE IMPROPRIETY OF ENTERTAINING GUESTS OF THE OPPOSITE SEX
IN THE BEDROOM, IT IS SUGGESTED THAT THE LOBBY BE USED FOR THIS PURPOSE.

Advertisement by a Hong Kong dentist:
TEETH EXTRACTED BY THE LATEST METHODISTS.

A laundry in Rome :
LADIES, LEAVE YOUR CLOTHES HERE AND SPEND THE AFTERNOON HAVING A GOOD
TIME.

Tourist agency, Czechoslovakia :
TAKE ONE OF OUR HORSE-DRIVEN CITY TOURS - WE GUARANTEE NO MISCARRIAGES.

The box of a clockwork toy made in Hong Kong :
GUARANTEED TO WORK THROUGHOUT ITS USEFUL LIFE.

Airline ticket office, Copenhagen :
WE TAKE YOUR BAGS AND SEND THEM IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

The best!!!! In a Japanese cemetery:
PERSONS ARE PROHIBITED FROM PICKING FLOWERS FROM ANY BUT THEIR OWN
GRAVES

In case our blog looks weird...

2007-09-18T04:04:00.000-05:00

In case our blog looks weird, let me explain that I'm posting on Blogger in Croatian, and I'm sure if I could read it, I could find some magic button that says "English" to select, but I can't find such a thing, so I'm winging it based on my fading memory of what the Blogger site looks like. Lest you think I'm exaggerating, here's what I'm looking at--see how you would do in Croatian!!!

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Paris, 14 septembre à 16 septembre 2007

2007-09-18T03:31:00.000-05:00

Fermée ou ouverte? Paris is old, founded sometime around when cavemen discovered that bones look like baguettes, but that baguettes taste better. Thus, at any given moment, many buildings and areas are undergoing total renovations and are closed (fermée). For example, this is my 3rd trip to Paris, and I have yet to visit the allegedly-gorgeous Sainte Chapelle; it is closed for renovations, this time only for the three days we were in Paris (I’m not kidding!). Also, we went up to the Musée Picasso, and inexplicably it too was closed. But I’m not sad about these things: I’ll just have to go back to Paris every chance I get…

Additionally, at the risk of making the reader barf when I say the following--a closed door really does mean that sometimes there's an open window nearby. Because we went out of our way to go to the Picasso Museum and because it was closed, we wandered nearby and found the Musee Cognacq-Jay, which gets me to my next harangue, I mean topic.

How much things cost: In life, nothing costs exactly what it should/does in my head; everything costs either WAY too much or WAY too little. For example, the exchange rate in Europe at this time favors only around a dozen people in the world, all of whom have the last name Rowling, Gates, Hilton, or II. For the rest of us, here is some good advice: get out your ATM card when you arrive in Paris and keep it out until you leave. It costs 9 euros for a 1-hour boat ride on the Seine or 11 euros for all day; it costs a mere 6 euros to see the unbelievably great Rodin museum, but it costs 2-and-a-half euros for a teeny-tiny bottle of water there.

But there are things that cost shockingly little as well: we stumbled upon the aforementioned Musee Cognacq-Jay, a museum dedicated to the 18th century in Paris, and it was completely FREE! Ken and I would have loved it, even if it hadn’t had a single Fragonard or Renoir (which it did). The house itself was beautiful, with two courtyards and gardens, a study area, and the cleanest, nicest, free bathrooms in Paris. There are jillions more of these (often free) little, out-of-the-way museums in Paris--or sometimes, they're big, right-there places. The Petit Palais (which is very large, but dwarfed by the HUGE Grand Palais across the street and which is my favorite building in Paris) is COMPLETELY FREE and gorgeous and houses the Musée des Beaux-Arts, which has a fantastic collection of old beautiful glass objects (think Tiffany), among other art treasures.

More about prices: I’m shocked that I could get free internet most places on the Metro, but I would have had to pay around $20 every day for that privilege at my overpriced-to-begin-with hotel. My thought is that, not only am I cheap because I have to be because we don't make all that much money, but that it's responsible and even FUN to try to "do Paris" on the cheap: run into the Musee Cognacq-Jay and other places, take a bottle of water and refill it, take the Metro or even better, walk along the Seine. End of harangue...

Karen's Predictions for Book 7

2007-06-25T16:56:00.001-05:00

Karen's predictions for the last Harry Potter book:

Why?

The rule in our house is, no matter how big the kids have gotten (and they're 15 and 14 now), we read every single word of each Harry Potter book aloud together (OK, just the first read-through; after that anyone can read alone, which is good since Krista has read each book about 4,000,000 times). Katie could read before Kindergarten (because she was motivated by her cousin Zack, who could read even younger than she, so she decided she would simply learn. Krista, who loved to be read to, simply showed no interest in reading for herself. That is until Harry Potter came along. One of my favorite family moments ever was reading aloud the first Harry Potter book before the big broo-ha-ha with our 1st grader and our 2nd grader. We thought it would be a good book, because Ken and I had read a wee tiny review somewhere, but we had no idea it would turn into the phenomenon it became. We were a few chapters in, at the Hut on the Rock, and Hagrid says, "Harry, you're a wizard." There was no turning back for Krista. She MUST be able to read this magnificent tome for herself--and so she learned to read as a first grader, not Little Miss Whatzit or Dick and Jane, but Harry Potter (the first three books only were out at the time). So thank you, Ms. Rowling.

What about this July when the last book comes out? We have a very limited time in which to read the new book cover to cover: Ken will have just returned from teaching in Russia this year when the last book comes out. Katie and I will just return from camping. Then, the girls and we will be back together for one day--ONE DAY!--so we will speak to nobody at all for the whole Saturday after the midnight release because our family must read aloud, aloud, aloud to get it read before we go our different ways: Ken will stay in Abilene the next week, but Katie and Krista will go to Camp and Karen will go to Camp Creek for Karla's 40th birthday scrapbooking extravaganza.] Whew... close call.

I'm always spouting off this or that opinion/prediction about Harry Potter to whoever else is into the books, so for the last book, I have said that I would write down my theories, such as they are:

Horcruxes: the Weasleys' clock, tiara, or Ron's chess set (it was his grandfather's, which means it would have been at Hogwarts around the time Tom Riddle was at school)
Why do I have a Weasley horcrux link at all? It's just a theory, of course, but I'd like to see this ancient, pureblood family--whom the DeathEaters and Lord V. have scorned for so long--to "matter" (in quotations because of course they matter to us, who adore them) in the long run--also, Ms. Rowling has taken care to point out that nobody else has a clock like theirs, Dumbledore commented on it, etc. Besides, that gets us to the Burrow, and we need locations for the events of Book 7. If I'm wrong about the horcruxes (which is likely, since why would the Weasleys have something that used to belong to Lord V.?, I still feel strongly about the Burrow being the location for one of the showdowns (remember the code words Mrs. Weasley hates to say, etc.).

One of the items in the following list will be a horcrux from the Black house:
"Mrs. Weasley pointed at the dusty glass-fronted cabinets standing on either side of the mantelpiece. They were crammed with an odd assortment of objects: a selection of rusty daggers, claws, a coiled snakeskin, a number of tarnished silver boxes inscribed with languages Harry could not understand and, least pleasant of all, an ornate crystal bottle with a large opal set into the stopper, full of what Harry was quite sure was blood."
I'd guess it's the bottle with blood and it's Voldemort's blood from the height of his powers. He'll get into the Black house via Kreacher or get it off of Mundungus, who would have stolen it.

Where will we go to find the Horcruxes? maybe the Burrow (see above), Godrick's Hollow, the Room of Requirement and/or Dumbledore's office, and invented new places (like the cave was, etc.)

Other odd little thoughts of mine:
Is Percy good or bad? Percy Weasley will ultimately be "good"--but he will still be a sycophantic, turkeyhead politician like Barty Crouch Sr. and Fudge, and he will never stop aspiring to Minister of Magic.

Random Predictions: During the last book, somebody will open a chocolate frog and Harry will be on a card now.
The mirror will be repaired and (very limited) contact will be established with Sirius.

There's a line in the sixth book that says something about Voldemort having killed enough people during his last reign of terror to have made an army of inferii. But wait! Weren't most of his victims from the good guys? So could Harry's own parents be "inferii-ed" and try to do harm to Harry? I hope not. Even if Voldemort is a great wizard and they were too, well, dead to fight him off, je m'en doute. So I predict some inferii switch-er-oo-ing.

The Snape section:
Snape had a thing for Lily Evans, of course. Snape's a half-blood (I love that, like Hitler, who was part Jewish, both Snape and Lord V. have this animosity toward that which they themselves are), and Voldemort will have found out through alternative sources. Legilimancy will save Harry's life in Book 7. Snape will die, perhaps saving Harry from the AK curse. Lucius Malfoy will die. Draco will die, but he will do something against Voldemort before dying. Peter Pettigrew will die saving Harry. Professor Umbridge will not die, more's the pity. Harry will "kill" LV only in that something LV does will backfire and do himself in (like the first time); justice will be served, and Harry won't have to be a killer per se.

I just hate Snape, whether or not he turns out to be on the side of good. I can never forgive him for being so mean and unfair to students, especially cruel words like "I don't see any difference" in Hermione's teeth when they grew absurdly large. Yes, I trust Dumbledore--but even Dumbledore admitted he made mistakes regarding what to tell Harry and when--so what is the big secret Snape and Dumbledore shared? I've thought that maybe Snape is Dumbledore's son, but that doesn't really work, and it takes us off in a whole soap opera direction Ms. Rowling doesn't. I think Snape told Voldemort where the Potters were originally, and they were killed. His confession to that effect doesn't exactly make me want to trust him--so why does Dumbledore? To redeem himself, he must have made an unbreakable vow with Dumbledore; I have no good ideas as to what BIG thing Snape did to assure Dumbledore (destroyed a horcrux or somehow contributed to saving Harry the night the Potters died?), and that's maybe the unresolved fact I'm most looking forward to from Book 7.

Of course, Jenny and Harry, and Ron and Hermione (finally!) will hook up; Neville will eventually teach Herbology, and Hermione will run the school after McGonagall retires.

Some of my favorite "I think J. K. Rowling is brilliant" moments:
When Ron says that the sneakoscope is broken and keeps going off--but of course he has Peter Pettigrew the Rat in his pocket at the time. What I'd love to see is something like yet a third tier there; my personal theory is that either Charlie or Bill has gone bad, and I'm taking a longshot and betting against Charlie; after all, he could have helped out with the dragons in the original heist attempt of the Philosopher's Stone from Gringotts.

LOVE, love, love lines like the one when Harry hears the mysterious voice the first time in The Chamber of Secrets: "and the voice was pure venom." Brilliant! She TOLD us it was a snake, but do we get it? No! Another example of her incredible restraint is when Olivander says "Curious" about Harry's wand and the Phoenix feather in Book 1, but we don't see its connection until Book 4 at the end.

And perhaps most brilliant of all, how on earth did Ms. Rowling accomplish the unbelievable murder that Snape used on Dumbledore--and there STILL be a bit of doubt as to whether or not Snape's "good" (I hear people wondering whether or not he was under orders; that's what Dumbledore was asking him to do, etc.). If I could write one/tenth as well as that, I would be proud. Good job, Ms. Rowling. [Of course, he will never be more than "good" in quotation marks to me (see above loathing I feel for the man).]

Thank you very much, Ms. Rowling, for such good books, and for helping my kids turn into avid readers.

Reason #143

2007-06-07T21:59:00.001-05:00

Reason #143 why you will never wonder whether or not I’m anorexic…

Macapuno ice cream. I found a terrific sari-sari store in Whittier, California that had Magnolia brand macapuno ice cream (that’s coconut to you un-Filipino types). Yes, the same brand of ice cream that was my favorite yea, those many years ago when I lived in the Philippines. And it’s still my favorite. (An available substitute is Mary’s Palateria coconut ice cream bar, for those of you with ties to Abilene, Texas, but it uses mature coconut, not the young stuff that comprises macapuno.)

Sin City

2007-06-07T21:53:00.000-05:00

Katie and Krista are not likely to run away from home to seek their fortunes in Las Vegas any time soon. We swung by Las Vegas on our way home to Texas, and they were pretty appalled at the lewd and crude place. I was proud of them; even though they too were wowed by the flashy, glitzy lights of The Strip, they pronounced their visit “done” right away, especially when they saw a most appalling sign that read “Girl delivered within 20 minutes.” We stayed in a great room in the Egyptian-themed Luxor, in the neon pyramid on the 11th floor. Classy, eh? We couldn’t get out of that town quickly enough.

Imprisonment

2007-06-07T21:48:00.000-05:00

To hear some people tell it, zoos are horrible places, where captured animals must live out their foreshortened lives in cramped prisons, for the entertainment of the masses. Undoubtedly, there are many zoos such as that; personally, I‘m horrified by the cockfights that were so prevalent n the Philippines of my youth and by some tiny cages of abuse I’ve seen and heard about elsewhere.

And yet, there’s the well-run zoo, two of which come to mind. Krista works at the Abilene Zoo full-time all summer long; our zoo, which is very, very small, treats its animals very well indeed and refuses to “outgrow itself,” meaning it won’t acquire more animals than it can house and staff well. When, inexplicably, Abilene found itself the keepers of a couple of polar bears, they promptly traded them to a zoo in the North with a climate far more suited to the cold-loving bears (and acquired brown bears, which can tolerate the heat better and that can retreat any time they like to their air-conditioned quarters. And what about conservation? Here’s an interesting example: there are only a little more than a dozen Cohelan Box Turtles left in the wild. They were almost extinct. Little ol’ Abilene, Texas has seven of these rare turtles, earning that right because, under our keepers’ watchful care, they have procreated and flourished.

We went to the San Diego Zoo last week, spending two days at that marvelous facility. Our admission tickets (around $40 each for Ken and Krista, who went for two days and $33 each for Katie and me, who only went one day) went, as we were reminded repeatedly throughout the day, to massive conservation efforts as well as the upkeep and care of the zoo and animals themselves.

Today K4 visited Alcatraz in the San Francisco Bay, a prison where humans have been incarcerated for years. We “enjoyed” seeing the place where Al Capone and The Birdman were imprisoned, but in case I may have given you a different impression, I don’t want to go to prison--ever. I’ll try to learn to live with my hypocrisy because I do not want to live in jail and yet I don’t mind if animals are—kindly, well, safely—kept in zoos. And I’m delighted that Krista has such a responsible job at the zoo, one that utilizes and expands her many talents.

The Truth is Out There...

2007-06-07T21:39:00.000-05:00

…in San Diego. Katie was attacked by an alien creature from the sea that was worthy of the X-Files. Thanks to massive amounts of time learning at the TV-feet of Scully and Mulder, however, she was able to get away, with only the stench of squid ink upon her.

A Seussical Christmas

2007-02-05T13:43:00.000-06:00

Karen's mother, Wynell LeCroy aka Lala, has got to be one of the most fun grandmas ever! She always picks a theme for Christmas; this year was "A Dr. Seuss Christmas." Here's a photo of K4 in our Seussical garb!

2007-02-05T13:36:00.000-06:00

The Cukrowski Family

Ice Skating

2006-11-25T03:06:00.000-06:00

As our tour guide said, "Over here on your right you have the National Archives, where we have the most impressive documents that founded our nation; over here on your left you have the Mall's ice rink, where you have the worst skaters in the nation."

Cousins with November Birthdays

2006-11-25T03:05:00.001-06:00

Pandas

2006-11-25T03:05:00.000-06:00

New and Old Monuments

2006-11-25T03:01:00.000-06:00

Ken and I had never seen the newer WWII monument, the FDR memorial, the Holocaust Museum, or the American Indian Museum. The kids had never seen anything in Washington, or at least they didn't remember anything from the drive-by we did one year on our way to Hilton Head Island and Alabama for vacation.

Silly Boy!

2006-11-25T03:00:00.000-06:00

Security Alert Level Orange

2006-11-25T02:58:00.000-06:00

photo taken from inside the Washington Monument

2006-11-25T02:56:00.000-06:00

Tourists

2006-11-25T02:32:00.000-06:00

You may have heard the quotation from Erasmus, "When I have a little money, I buy books—if any is left, I buy food and clothes." While the Cukrowskis all have a weakness for buying books as well, we'd have to add that we spend whatever extra money we have on travel. We'll maneuver this or rob Peter to pay Paul or wrangle every drop of travel money we can out of our pay to travel somewhere and see and learn something. Both Ken and I were fortunate to have traveled with our families while we were young, and remember, we live in France in our hearts! We've been so blessed to be able to travel a number of places with our girls— to Yellowstone in winter or France and Italy in the summer... and now Washington, D.C. for Thanksgiving 2006.

One game we always play upon completion of a trip is the alphabet game; name something from the trip that starts with the letter A, then B, etc. Tonight, while we were waiting for our flight in D.C. to return home, we played again, and it was so easy to come up with multiple items for each letter. Take M for example: museums, the Metro, the Mall, Mt. Vernon, memorials, monuments, memories. Especially the memories.

Museum of Natural History

2006-11-25T02:24:00.000-06:00

Just because you're fifteen doesn't mean you're particularly serious! Katie, Krista, and Zack really enjoyed taking trick pictures (and other oddities) on this trip. Katie received a digital camera for her birthday, just in time for this vacation, and she's getting really good at photography.

Which gets me to a comment: digital photography rocks! We took pictures to our heart's delight on this and other trips; but we can crop or delete or adjust the photos easily--and we can print the good ones instead of how we had to print up everything in "the old days," meaning two or three years ago. I am never going back. Just so you know.

Washington, D.C.

2006-11-23T21:53:00.001-06:00

Washington, D.C. is one of Ken and Karen's favorite cities. After all, what's not to love about a town with an outstanding metro to take you to any of the great, free museums? We took advantage of Ken's annual SBL (Society of Biblical Literature) conference, which was meeting in D.C. this year, to join him. Katie, Krista, and our nephew Zack LeCroy all had the whole week off, so we were able to join Ken. We have been packing each day with lots of sightseeing and fun. We'll keep you posted!

2006-11-23T21:53:00.000-06:00

2006-11-23T21:05:00.000-06:00

2006-11-23T21:03:00.000-06:00

2006-11-23T20:57:00.000-06:00

How to Get into the White House

2006-11-21T08:05:00.000-06:00

Since the recent additional security measures have come into effect, it is nigh unto impossible to get to go on a White House tour. You can't bring your purse, any liquids, a pen, a camera, a cell phone—or even anything that could hurt someone. You have to write your congressman a month ahead (we didn't), and your tour will still have decent odds of being cancelled, especially this Thanksgiving week.

So, we pleaded. To no avail. Ah, Mr. Bush, you've let us down in so many ways...

2006-05-31T08:47:00.000-05:00

Institute of Theology and Christian Ministry

2006-05-30T09:04:00.000-05:00

Ken’s students at the Institute of Theology and Christian Ministry were really stellar. They studied hard (Ken joked that the only language they had in common was Biblical Greek!), and they have such good, encouraging hearts. It’s uplifting to see (mostly) first-generation Christians, people who have chosen to study more, often against the understanding and wishes of their families and people around them. They love being together, which is a good thing, because their dorm situation here at the University of St. Petersburg is that they have a floor of a large dormitory designated for the Institute students, so they can’t really get away from each other. As the Dean of Students put it, it’s a real “laboratory of love.”

They love Ken, and Ken loves them. He plans to return as often as can be arranged to teach another course or two (this year he taught Mark, Greek, and the Thessalonian letters; last year was Greco-Roman Backgrounds, his specialty). They gave us some lovely parting gifts at a little party on the last day, including our favorites, which were T-shirts with pics of them together with Ken on them and singing us some songs in Russian. 'Til we meet again, St. Petersburg! We’ve had a lovely trip. SpaSEE-buh!

2006-05-30T09:02:00.000-05:00

2006-05-30T09:01:00.000-05:00

2006-05-30T08:57:00.000-05:00

2006-05-30T08:45:00.000-05:00

Wal-Mart??

2006-05-26T22:52:00.000-05:00

Food

2006-05-26T22:51:00.000-05:00

I have seen zero grossly obese people in Russia.
Zero.
Not one.
Not any of the people who were shuffling around like penguins in the Metro in Moscow, and that’s in a city of 10 million (and Ken and I feel like we saw a million of them in one day!). I saw a few, but only a few, people who could stand to lose a few pounds. I saw quite a few more people who could definitely stand to gain a few pounds. And I’ve seen a JILLION people who are just right.

Why do they look so good, and we Americans don’t? They walk a lot. Our Metro station is a brisk 10-minute walk from here, a leisurely 15-minute one. In the States, my car is conveniently located in my garage approximately 10 feet from my fridge, oh, I mean, my back door.
I’m also pretty sure they don’t watch hours and hours of TV, munching on Cheetos and slugging down sugary sodas all the while.

I suppose people exercise, but I’ve seen nobody jogging specifically for exercise or anything like that. Of course, there are gyms, and people play basketball and other sports. I know they drink a LOT more vodka, but I hardly think that’s the key to looking great! I think the answer lies mostly in their food, and what follows are my comments on Russian cuisine. They eat more fresh foods and darker breads. We’ve had a number of excellent salads that have fresh onions and tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers (not so much lettuce, and definitely not the nutritionless iceberg). Russian black bread is great; the other breads we’ve had are average at best, in my opinion. (France and Italy would beat the pants off both Russia and the States in a bread war.) But I’ve had nothing resembling what Krista disdainfully refers to as “Fat-free Wonder Crustless White Bread.”

They have stuff that can get a person fat, certainly. They simply eat more moderate amounts of it. There’s a lot of different kinds of pasta; for example, we’ve had Pell-MEENY, which resembles ravioli, stuffed with meat, or potatoes and mushrooms (Ken’s and my favorite), or cottage cheese (also great, but less common). They serve it with a better-than-ours- but-it’s-the -closest-comparison sour cream, or (disgusting!) plain ketchup or mayonnaise.

They have these awesome little ice cream-ish things (but they won’t sound awesome in my description) that are actually a fine sort of cottage cheese coated in chocolate that you eat like an ice cream bar. By the way, their cottage cheese is more like a combination of ricotta cheese, cottage cheese, and maybe even cream cheese -- and it’s delicious! It’s in a lot of dishes, surprising ones even, and I love it.

There are a couple of outstanding Russian chocolate makers, and Ken has been sacrificing his body to research the best dark chocolate bars to take back to the States as gifts; he is close to making a decision, but perhaps a few more samples would be in order before he nails his choice down to THE one.

And then there’s my favorite, something I’ve referred to in a previous blog: blih-KNEE. Think crepes in France and you’ll come close. These ultra-thin pancakes are filled with everything from meat and mashed potatoes to caviar to sweetened condensed milk and cottage cheese. My favorite, just as it was in France, is the banana and chocolate (not a traditional favorite, but still available at most of the places that serve these pancakes), but I like it much better here, because I like “real” chocolate more than I like Nutella, which is hazelnut. We’ll attempt to make this back in Abilene, so if you’d like to try it, let us know and we’ll serve one up!

And the soups we’ve had so far have been great. I understand that often soup is served cold here, and I admit that that sounds less appealing; however, we’ve had maybe four different soups, and they’ve all been served hot. All were good, with lots of fresh vegetables in them, in larger pieces than Campbell’s usually provides! I’ve also loved a risotto, rice dish, that we had that is a kind of rice pilaf; the cook gave me some of the spices that she used, so I’ll try this recipe back home, too.

Ken and the students break for tea daily here (around 11:00 A.M., and then they eat lunch together at 2 P.M.), and I’ve grown fond of the tradition. Ken has always drunk hot tea with honey in the mornings, but I usually have my Diet Coke for my early dose of caffeine. But here they use these quick-heat water heater pitchers, so making tea is a fast, delicious, and companionable experience. I plan to retain hot tea drinking in the States.

There have been a few yucky things, too, of course. They’ve served some thin-sliced undercooked meat of some sort that was popular with the students; there are lots of different-yet-all-the-same cakes with jam inside them that are kind of dry; there are some salted fish that look at you as you are about to eat them, a not-so-appealing experience. Well, this will provide you a taste (ha,ha!) of what we’re eating while we’re here.

2006-05-26T22:50:00.000-05:00

2006-05-26T22:49:00.000-05:00

Bluebonnets?????

2006-05-26T22:48:00.000-05:00

Getting a Job in Russia

2006-05-26T22:37:00.000-05:00

The official unemployment figure for the U.S. right now, as I understand it, is 5.1%.The official unemployment figure for Russia right now, is 8-ish%, more in St. Petersburg and other places, and lower in Moscow.

But I don’t see what’s so difficult about getting a job in Russia; after all, I was here less than a week, and I got one!

OK, here’s the real scoop: On Thursday, when we were here in Russia, I heard from the elders and preacher at our church, Minter Lane Church of Christ, that they would like to employ me as the Minter secretary (yes, back in the States. Gotcha!). And I wrote them back and said yes. So, I have a job when I return to Abilene for 30 hours a week. The biggest downside, of course, is that it begins in the summer.

My duties will be to put out the bulletin, do the office-y things that need doing, visit with people, and coordinate communication between and among people and groups. (As Ken put it, at my last job at the Press, I was “paid to criticize people,” and now, I’ll be paid to be a “know-it-all.”) Now, being a know-it-all will be a stretch for me, but I’m up for the challenge!

Actually, I will need to learn a lot, because (and I can hear Thom laughing all the way from the U.S.), I also have to write the checks and “do the money stuff.” I was very forthright with Danny and told him that I don’t know anything about that and that I hate it, but he assures me that there’s a program that Karen (the previous
secretary was also named Karen, so that should make it easy for people calling the church!) and Bobbie can and will teach me that does most of it for you. Karen, in case you’re wondering, was wonderful to do the secretary thing for as long as she did, because she’s a surgical assistant by trade and can make better money there and further her career as well. And she’s a great lady! So, there’s my news. Stay tuned…

2006-05-24T23:45:00.000-05:00

2006-05-24T23:44:00.000-05:00

The Fountains of Peterhof

2006-05-24T23:42:00.000-05:00

Peter the Great was actually great in many ways. First, he was a HUGE man, close to seven feet tall; but, of course, more than his physical stature, he accomplished many amazing things. One of them is the magnificent palace complex he built a few miles outside of St. Petersburg called Peterhof. He had visited France and was duly impressed with Versailles; Peterhof was created to SURPASS the wonders that the “let them eat cake” Marie Antoinette had established there, if you can imagine.

When guidebooks say “King So-and-so built such-and-such,” they of course mean that the king had a place built, but there were architects and scores of builders, etc. who actually constructed the place. When someone says Peter the Great built something, however, you can bet that he was actually involved in its construction (although there were of course thousands of other people involved, too). For example, Peter was responsible for the establishment and construction of the Russian Navy; he spent hundreds and hundreds of hours actually building boats alongside the other builders. But he was interested in boats and water, so he did it. He wasn’t all that interested in palaces, choosing to live most of the time in a wooden house with ceilings too short for him. But the chance to build a palace (actually a lot of buildings are there) with working fountains that led to his beloved Gulf of Finland—now that was something he could get into.

There are over 150 working fountains at Peterhof, and they run today the same way they did when he and a master water architect designed and built them in 1721, using a gravity system that enables all the fountains to erupt, the tallest of which spouts over 63 feet high. Somehow (and this is all I know) a pulley system carries the water up to the top, gravity makes the water rush down, enough to gush in the fountains and then rush down to the bottom to turn the pulley things, which causes the buckets of water to go back up again. Amazing, eh? A system powered entirely for itself and of itself.

Oh, and here’s a fun thing: there are quite a few “trick fountains” as well. Passersby can get a random drenching from these fountains that come on whenever a person comes too close, or when a lever is pushed, or just whenever. Apparently, Peter in particular enjoyed dousing some of the more fussy court women who visited his palace!I went to Peterhof on Tuesday, and I thought the gardens were spectacular; I took over 150 pictures there alone. I’ve reduced that number to only a few for the blog, but enjoy the ones you do see!

2006-05-24T23:41:00.000-05:00

2006-05-24T23:40:00.001-05:00

2006-05-24T23:40:00.000-05:00