Taking a Passion Abroad: Drempel.....Suriname!!!!

De afgelopen week zijn we naar Suriname. Het was een geweldige ervaring, en een leuke kleine pauze van onze normale schema in Guyana. Je hebt waarschijnlijk geen idee wat ik zeg. Ik denk dat ik moet stoppen met het typen van Nederlandse en eigenlijk spreken Engels, zodat je niet klikt u gewoon van mijn blog en niet lezen over mijn geweldige week in Suriname. Laten we het nog eens proberen dit ...

This past week the four of us (Eric was here) headed East to Suriname. For those of you who don’t know, Suriname is the country directly to the East, looks very similar to Guyana, and the official language is Dutch. Also, in case you didn’t know, none of us speak Dutch. We were taking a week off as a Spring Break of sorts and also would be doing a few days of music workshops with kids and adults who are members of the Lutheran church (known as ELKS, kerk is Dutch for church).

In the mornings we have about 12 kids ranging in age from 6-16 which was rather interesting. That is a pretty large age group for a music class. We ended up pulling out people for different instrument lessons based on their age. We only had students interested in percussion, keyboard, and general music. Claire would take out the older students who wanted to do keyboard at the same time Dan would take out the students who wanted to do keyboard which left me with 7 kids all under the age of 9 for general music. Those of you who know me and where I prefer to teach may have already figured out I was slightly terrified. General music is not my strong suite at all. It made for a great learning environment for me, plus it felt like I was back at Camp Tanglefoot as a counselor in TW with all the Chick-a-dees! Boom Chick-a Boom was even done during these workshops! These kids were all wonderful and I really enjoyed getting to know them all and playing games with them. It was hard for me to say good bye even though we had only spent three days together.

During the evening hours we had about 14 adults come to work with us. We started with a situation very similar to academy class at GLMA and then broke up into different instrument groups. Claire would go with the keyboards, I took guitar, and Dan worked with the singers. After about a half hour we would all come back together and Dan would take the percussionists while Claire and I did other things with the rest of the group. We decided to work on “Sanctuary” for one of our songs while I accompanied on guitar. We decided to do the refrain, first verse, refrain, and end with the refrain in Dutch. Thursday night I asked if we could record it to send back to Eric and they agreed. That was the best I had heard them sing. I got goose bumps as I played and sang with them. It was a very cool experience to hear them sing and praise the Lord together. Yes, I even sang in Dutch!

We were in Suriname for Easter. Having three musicians arrive just in time for Easter made it pretty obvious that we would be playing at Easter services. There were two. One was at 6:00 am about an hour away from where we were staying and one at 9:00 at Martin Luther Church which was our main stomping grounds. Martin Luther is a beautiful church with great acoustics, so if anyone is looking to do an international tour somewhere this would be a great place! It was fun to hear real pipe organs, viola, trumpet, and voices echoing through the sanctuary.

This trip was not all about teaching or playing music, however. We got to do quite a bit to allow us to feel like we had a little bit of a vacation. We went to a river resort where we got to swim in a river that feeds out of the Amazon and into the ocean. Claire and I went to an art gallery. We went to Nieuw Amsterdam, Suriname which is a former fort that was at the mouth of the river heading towards Paramaribo. We toured a museum with lots of history of Suriname and was another old for. We spent time in the oldest part of the city. We found the I <3 SU sign and took the obligatory pictures. We watched NCAA March Madness games (sadly the team we were going for lost the championships). We listened to baseball. We went to a choir concert for a choir from a college in Trinidad. We took naps. We broke into laughter at a supermarket. Celebrated birthdays. Most importantly we played with puppies! Okay, so that isn’t the most important but you would sure think it was had you read the conversations Dan and I were having about a specific puppy.

Yes, I said we broke into a fit of laughter at a supermarket. The first night in the city a friend took us to a supermarket to buy some things. Now, this was no Walmart or CostCo, but it was about the size of Bill’s in Forest City. The first isle we walked into was the beverage isle. That is where the laughter happened. There was nothing unusual for Americans to see in that isle at all, but having lived in Guyana for eight months we were extremely surprised. We have become acostumed to not having many options when shopping and if we found something we wanted we would buy them all. The first thing I noticed about this isle is that there were about 5 different types of Coke. Woah! The supermarket was also much bigger and had brighter lights than we have been used to. A little culture shock for us.

In a way in makes me really bad that I am going to be back in Suriname for a few days prior to leaving to return home to the States, compared to Claire and Dan. It will be a good transition set for me. Plus, I really enjoy the people there so it will be fun to return to visit with friends one more time before heading home. There is a whole album on Facebook with pictures from our Suriname trip, so make sure to check it out.

My next blog I would like to answer your questions, so please ask away! Ask as many as you would like!