Let the wild rumpus start!

Hi family and friends.  Please feel officially invited to read my writings, subscribe or just check back on prime numbered days of the month. The stories found here will be in part, true.

My lovely bride, of nearly three quick years of escapades, and I have bunked the last two months in the Heartland of America and we're living The Good Life. Yes indeed, our homes of Kansas and Nebraska, where we have kept occupied with working for UPS and at the family farm in Arcadia Nebraska, preparing for our departure to South America with Spanish lessons, walking dogs, celebrating family time, and teaching our fingers to adapt to banjo and mandolin in hopes of starting the Hamel-Schanbacher string band, have welcomed us back like a pancake welcomes syrup. This is known as the sweet satisfaction of the plains. Among our learned picking' and strummin' tunes are the rapturous melodies of Big Rock Candy Mountain, You Are My Sunshine, Wagon Wheel, and the theme song of Davey Crockett, which all consist of the same three chords in a similar juxtaposition. As you can see we have adapted back to life in the Midwest quite well...

We depart with great excitement and anticipation from los Estados Unidos on January the 31st, one day after my beloved brother Louis' birthday. February 1st we plan to arrive in Quito, Ecuador to begin our three point five month stay as learners of the language and culture as well as photographers, writers, mountaineers, instructors, tourists, and farmers. Today our arms are sore. Nothing like immunizations of Typhoid, Tetanus and Yellow Fever.

The South America "Plan"

We will be studying with a tutor from Guayasamin Spanish School in Quito for a few weeks while exploring the city and surrounding mountains, then instruct a service and mountaineering course with Summit Adventure, then... figure out where to go and how to live well for two months. I can't wait to see Javier, a friend in Guayaquil, then head south to a 15th century Incan site in the Cusco region of Peru known as "Old Peak," then consider a bus trip to Chili and...or Argentina to serve on a farm, as long as it has goats.

We plan to wear the above outfits to be sure people know we are Americans.

Your prayers, encouragement and correspondence will be greatly appreciated. In life, be moved to great love or aggravation but do not allow the stagnant taste of apathy to dwell. 

with the love I first received,
Colin