More Medellín Photos

View east from Cerro el Volador, a natural park on the top of a hill in the middle of Medellín, close to the seminary. If you look closely in the middle of the photo in the green area, you can see the raised train tracks of the Metro system.

View north from Cerro el Volador.

View southeast from Cerro el Volador.

View south from Cerro el Volador, looking at the park itself.

View southwest from Cerro el Volador.

View west from Cerro el Volador. The seminary is somewhere around the middle of the photo.

Watching the Colombia-Brazil World Cup match.

After a seminary chapel service, which we have every Thursday.

A street I often walk through on my way to the grocery store.

Metro tracks in the bottom of the valley.

A Catholic church and park I often walk by on the way to the grocery store.

Metro tracks and view of city.

In the city center.

View from a Metro station.

Metro train. They are amazingly clean, modern, and don't have people trying to sell anything on them. (This was a big shock after Mexico City. Busses here are another story.)

Gender Equality Conference

This past Monday evening through Wednesday morning the Biblical Seminary of Colombia hosted a conference put on by Christians for Biblical Equality, an organization that advocates for the involvement of women in all ministries of the church and for gender equality in marriage. I ended up attending most of the sessions and doing some simultaneous Spanish to English translation for some of the introductory comments and one of the talks by Dr. Bill Spencer, a professor from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which addressed debates over Trinitarian theology as it relates to gender roles. This was my first time doing simultaneous translation, and I actually really enjoyed it. Thankfully I was going from Spanish to English, which is a lot easier than the reverse!

Sessions of the conference addressed issues related to interpretation of Old Testament and New Testament texts, theology, church history, and practical issues. Half a day was devoted to workshops, which I decided to use to attend workshops related to women’s standing according to Colombian law and issues of gender violence. These were helpful for understanding a bit more of the cultural context here in Colombia and the challenges and inequalities women still face. While not mentioned in these talks, it’s worth mentioning that one of the big challenges women face in ministry in Colombia is that churches often theologically accept women pastors, but they don’t want to pay them, or at least not at the rate they pay male pastors. It’s quite common to see pastoral teams of husband and wife here, and there is often a “two for the price of one” mentality.

The view from the translator's booth. I listened to the Spanish via headphones and simultaneously spoke an English translation, which was broadcast via radio to the headphones of those who only spoke English.

I know that among my friends and financial partners there is a wide variety of opinion on the often contentious issues related to gender roles. While I consider myself a moderate egalitarian, I respect where people are coming from on both sides of the women’s ordination debate and recognize I very well could be wrong on this issue. I don’t think most complementarians are chauvinists, and I try to challenge people on both sides to defend their views biblically and represent the opposing position in a fair way. The seminary here does not have an official position on the matter, but for practical purposes I would say the vast majority favor the egalitarian side. Our seminary president is a Colombian woman, and as of last semester 28% of the students studying on campus were women and 42% of the students in the online program. I was a little surprised the numbers were so high, given the reputation Latin America has for being machista, promoting male dominance.

One of the primary reasons for the significant presence of female seminarians, however, has to do with the prevalence of Pentecostalism in Colombia. Some significant Pentecostal denominations, like the Foursquare Church, were started by women (i.e. Aimee Semple McPherson), and most Pentecostals have recognized female preachers since their beginnings. For example, I know one male seminarian here whose mother was a pastor who founded a church in the rural outskirts of Medellín and a man who works in the extension office whose grandmother was a pastor. For most egalitarians here, their viewpoint has nothing to do with theologically “liberal” or “feminist” ideology and everything to do with churches that are committed to the Great Commission and have been open to providing opportunities for women to be part of that at every level. Whether one agrees with their exegesis or not, I think that’s worthy of respect. There are awesome opportunities here to provide deeper training to help people committed to God’s kingdom grow deeper in their knowledge of Scripture, and that's what excites me most about teaching here!

The Peculiarities of Colombian Vocab

By and large the Spanish I learned in Mexico has served me well here in Colombia. But there have been a few adjustments, sometimes actually back to words I had learned in Peru and had to unlearn in Mexico. For Spanish speakers or those who just find literal translations amusing, here are the things I've had to learn or relearn to sound a little more like a Colombian:

First, let's start with the truly unusual, the kinds of words that made me stop and go, "Really? You actually say that?" Interestingly, they all have to do with traffic.

1. At the top of the list is "taco," an extremely common word in Medellín to refer not to delicious Mexican food, but to a traffic jam. It's very common to here people say "hay mucho taco" (literally, "there's a lot of taco") when the streets are packed.

2. Continuing the traffic theme, paisas (people from Medellín) refer to a speed bump as a "policía acostado," literally a "lying down policeman," due to their effectiveness in reducing speeds even when police are absent.

3. "Oreja" is a common word meaning "ear," but I was taken aback when I heard some friends using it to refer to an offramp from a highway that circles back in cloverleaf fashion.

4. "Rompoy" is a word I have only heard one person use (my boss), but from looking it up online it's apparently somewhat common in Colombia to refer to a roundabout, which is normally called a "glorieta." The best explanation I've seen is that it is a corrupted version of the French word for roundabout, “rond-point.”

A few words I knew from Peru have reentered my vocabulary in Colombia:

1. Chévere = cool, as in "that's really cool," the equivalent of "chido" or "padre" in Mexican Spanish.

2. Gaseosa = soda, pop, instead of the Mexican "refresco."

3. Cancelar = to pay (but also can mean "to cancel"). For example, if you're at a bookstore, they may ask you to go to a separate counter where they accept the money in order to "cancelar" your order, then return to the other counter with the receipt to be able to take away your item. It gets a little confusing if you try using both meanings in the same sentence, saying, “La matrícula del estudiante fue cancelada porque no canceló el valor de la clase” = "The student's enrollment was cancelled because he didn’t pay [cancel] the value of the class."

Words for food:

1. Tinto = black coffee, with or without sugar, usually served in small cups of about 4 ounces. I’ve encountered it especially after church services or as refreshments at events.

2. Banano =  regular banana, which is called a "plátano" in Mexico.

3. Plátano = plantains, a larger starchy type of banana that is fried before eating, called "plátano macho" in Mexico.

4. Tomate = tomato. They don’t use “jitomate” for red tomatoes, as they do in Mexico.

Other words:

1. De pronto = maybe, perhaps. This is much more common than the alternate words for maybe, such as "quizá(s)" (which seemed predominant in Peru), "tal vez" and "a lo mejor" (quite common in Mexico), or the Argentine "capaz."

2. Afán = hurry. For example, "¿tienes mucho afán?" = "are you in a hurry?"

3. Hincha = fan (in sports). I'm not sure if this is etymologically related to the verb "hinchar" meaning "to swell," but it definitely confused me at first, until I saw article after article on the World Cup talking about the "hinchas" of the different teams.

4. Nevera = refrigerator. In Mexico they use "refrgerador" or "refri" as a shortened form.

5. Barbería = barber shop. I’ve seen both this and the usual "peluquería."

6. Seda dental = dental floss. Literally this means “dental silk,” instead of Mexico’s “hilo dental,” which literally means “dental string.”

On the use of tú and vos (informal words for "you")

There is a mixture of tuteo and voseo forms here, though it seems like only lately I’ve been starting to pick up on people using "vos." Maybe that means I’m meeting more people originally from Medellín or northeastern Colombia, where supposedly it is more common. According to this map on Wikipedia, Colombia is a very mixed bag regionally in the use of voseo.