Here at last

Wed 18^th/Thursday 19^th Abril, 2012

Well, we are here.  After an uneventful flight (well, three flights actually – Melbourne to Sydney, then Sydney to Santiago (Chile) (about 12 hour flight) then Santiago to Guayaquil (Ecuador) (5 hour flight) plus waiting around and napping on our backpacks at Santiago airport for about 7-8 hours), we are currently at Ecuador Bethel at Guayaquil.  And it’s hot and humid.  It was apparently 30 degrees when we landed last night at 10pm local time!!  We were very glad to see the two Bethel bros who picked us up at the airport and drove us to Bethel.  By this time we didn’t know which time zone we were on or what day of the week it is (Ecuador is approx 15 hours behind Eastern Australia) but we did know we were in desperate need of some sleep, and being night time, we slept.

Lots of signs at the airports are in English and Spanish, and procedures are the same, and aeroplane announcements come in both languages, so we didn’t have any problems there.

The most disconcerting thing we have found so far is getting our heads around the fact that people here actually don’t converse in English!- while we of course knew that intellectually, living it is another thing.   The  language we have learnt and used since birth, is no longer the language people around us are using, and It will probably take us a while before we confidently or automatically respond in Spanish rather than in English, even for such basic things as hello, thank you, etc..  Plus we are rather self-conscious about doing impolite things to the Spanish language with our bad pronunciation.   But the more we do it, the easier it will get.

We had a taste of traffic Ecuador style this afternoon – a brother took us into town (Bethel  is 23.5 kms out of Guayaquil) to get our visas stamped.  A lot of roads don’t have lanes marked  and drivers make up their own lanes!  There is lots of swerving, lane swapping, braking, tooting, pushing in etc, but without the road rage you’d get in Aus if someone tried such things.   Surprisingly there seems to be some kind of method in the madness, as it somehow seems to work.  We were very surprised that none of the cars we saw had scrape marks along the sides! 

 Apparently the president of Ecuador has only recently given the Police powers to make and enforce speed limits, and with the revenue from speeding fines they buy more police cars.  It used to be that if a policeman (on foot) needed  a car, if you happened to be driving along, he could just wave you over, and you would have to let him use your car! 

It turned out that the address we were given for visas was not the correct one after all.   So in the process of finding out where we should have gone, the bro used a “public telephone” – there was an area that had four or five open-air stalls on a street corner – such as prepared  food, a multi-function printer such as you would have at home – presumably for making photocopies, and a couple of telephones, where you gave a person some money and they dialled the number  for you and you talked.  Very strange.  Especially in view of the fact that mobile phones are quite common here.  A juxtaposition of old and new (there’s a big word!)

The bro who drove us spoke some English, but between that and our lack of Spanish, we couldn’t always understand each other, until Brendan and I guessed that the bro knew Ecuadorean sign language (there are quite a few sign language groups and congregations in Guayaquil).  So after that, it got a bit easier, as he and Brendan signed  when the spoken word was unclear.  Some signs are similar enough that the meaning was sometimes made clearer. 

We did a Bethel tour this morning – the Ecuadorean Bethel has been expanded  at least twice since it was built, due to rapid growth.  Ecuador is one of the countries in which kingdom halls are paid for by funds donated worldwide for the kingdom hall construction program.  Around 350 halls have so far been built this way (all to the same basic plan) – the backlog has nearly been caught up -  with a plan to build approx 34 new halls a year.

Bethel is set in lovely tropical gardens and at this time of year (the wet season) is very green and lush.  Apparently iguanas come out in the afternoons and laze around on the grass.  We haven’t seen any yet.

The brothers and sisters at Bethel have been very friendly and welcoming and have managed to cope with our lack of Spanish.

Have attached a couple of pictures of Ecuador Bethel.  (one includes a random brother)