Thomas Umstattd Jr.

Today we visited a university, radio station and Hospital. (more…)

Today we visited a flower plantation a coffee company and a plastics factory. We also almost fell off a mountain in our bus. Some of the roads here are crazy. Some drivers are too.

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We visited the U.S. commercial services today. And by “we” I mean everyone else because I was as sick as a dog with a bacterial infection in my stomach.

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Today we visited a Ecuadorian Baptist church. We missed the regular service and only got to visit the Sunday School which didn’t make a lot of sense since it was in Spanish.

Yes. This is Popcorn and dried banana slices. Its an appetizer and not that bad

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Today we studied micro entrepreneurship by visiting a local open air market.

The breakfast bar at our hotel. The food here is good and amazingly inexpensive. I got a fillet mignon for $6.

Permission
Permission based marketing may be a new concept to us westerners but I know a couple of Ecuadorian girls aged 7 and 10 that are masters of it. We stopped at a rest stop on the way to the market. They offered to ride with us the rest of the way and sang to us in a native Indian language.

The older girl had and a half year old brother on her back and they were adorable. They sang well too. After serenading us they then asked if they could show us their handcrafts. Those girls made more money in that 20 minute buss trip than most American college students make in an entire week.

This girl was six years old and could count back change without the need for a computer.

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I am setting of on one of the biggest, most exiting and dangerous adventures of my life. And I am not talking about my trip to Ecuador.

Grace Chambers and I are now officially courting. And by official I mean Facebook official. After several meetings with her dad he asked her if she was interested in starting a relationship and she said “yes.” If you don’t know Grace yet I’ll just say you’re missing out on an amazing friend.

I don’t really know much about courtship having only observed it from a distance. In other words I have no idea what I am doing. It is fun though, in that top of the roller coaster looking down afraid for you life kinda way that is..

You know when you are about to jump out of a plane and your realize that 10,000 feet is a lot farther down than you thought? You know that as soon as you step off that plane you will feel sheer terror and then either either a happy landing or splat.

Splat is not an ending of the relationship. Splat is dishonoring God. We don’t want splat.

I want this courtship to be fun and God honoring. I don’t think those things are mutually exclusive but blending them is a challenge. We live between two cultures. One values hedonistic pleasure over holiness. The other looks down on others with contempt and pride and sees most pleasure as some form of sin.

I will be blogging occasionally on what I learn as we go. Maybe you can learn from us and avoid our mistakes.

Risk
One thing I do know about relationships is that they are risky. I think the guy especially needs to take risks and that can be hard. When it doesn’t work out it can hurt, a lot. A good friend of mine took a risk in courtship and it didn’t work out. And while he honored God he is still in a lot of pain.

If relationships were easy would we value them as much? Or does the risk and the danger make them special?

Grace and I officially started courting on Wednesday March 12. Since then Grace has the flu and I am leaving for a different continent. The challenges of long distance relationships has just been multiplied by a factor of $2 per minute phone rates and 3000 extra miles.

I can’t wait to get back to Texas

This spring break Cynthia and I are going to Ecuador for International Business. Part of the course requires us to keep a journal of each days events. I thought I would share the trip with you.

Ecuador Trip Day 1
Friday March 14

Today I learned that life does exist at 4am. My dad dropped me off at the airport. He is my hero. The flights while early have been uneventful, save for a few spectacular vistas out the plane. I don’t remember the scenery being this pretty before. On the way to Houston we flew just above a blanket of clouds. The rising sun was shining color though the sky and deep shadows in the clouds. I tried to take a picture of the sun rise but it just doesn’t capture the majesty.

Right now we are flying over the Caribbean and the water is so clear it seems that we can see straight down to the bottom. The shadows of the small white clouds are dotting the ground.

The Panama City Airport had a lot of duty free shops. Some of which were selling jail broken iPhones and iPhone knock offs.

This shop sold only M&Ms and related items.

We had a 7 hour layover in Panama. Here we are chilling waiting for the plane. There I am writing this blog… or watching Stargate.

This crowd is actually the line to get through customs in Quito. We waited for 30 minutes just to see this line.

Quito the City of Roses
One of Ecuador’s main exports is roses. It is not hard to find a dozen roses for sale here for a dollar. because of this we found rose displays at the airport and at our hotel that would have 10 dozen roses or more. And the flowers are so fresh and clean. We each get a new rose in our hotel room every night. The restaurant all have fresh roses as their table centerpieces.

The roses in our hotel lobby. There are displays like this all over town.

General Observations:

• You can’t judge a persons nationality by their appearances. I have met many white, black and everything in between talking in Spanish. Panama seems fairly diverse and integrated racially.
• The men here bring their sons to work along side them. I think this is good.
• Don’t let anyone touch your luggage if you are not prepared to tip them.
• Smiles are universal.