Off to Bariloche!

I finally got to Sheilah's house in Bariloche after 23 hours of traveling. My friends Gaby and Gise took me to the bus terminal in Buenos Aires and saw me off at 1:01pm Saturday afternoon. One lunch of three different ham and cheese sandwiches (why???),

a vasito (little cup) of white wine and a thin biscuit-type ham and cheese mini-sandwich (sorry, no pic)






a "picada" of ham and cheese (go figure),















a dinner of "pastel de papa" aka Shephards Pie (thank you! something other than ham and cheese!),

a breakfast of assorted pre-packaged snacks and instant coffee with powdered milk, and finally I'm just outside of town when our bus breaks down.









Everyone had been telling me that the drive into Bariloche from BA is gorgeous, so I had been excited that I had a seat in front with the panoramic window in front of me, until I woke up and saw all the bugs on the window.

I didn't think my camera lense would be able to focus on anything past them. Then of course our bus broke down this morning so we waited a couple of hours and joined another group's bus. I got a back window seat... not exactly the front panoramic I had had before. At least it didn't have bugs all over it.

I knew we had to be within a couple of hours of Bariloche, so I kept waiting for the amazing scenery. So far it had been wide-open brown fields with a cow here, a horse there, and a dead cow every now and then.

After an hour of trying to keep myself awake to see the sights, I finally let myself doze when I hadn't seen anything new yet. I went in and out of that half asleep mode, checking my window for anything good, for about an hour until finally I saw something worth taking a picture of. The pictures gradually get prettier and prettier as I drew nearer and nearer to the beautiful city of Bariloche.

The nature reminded me of Big Bear, a mountain by my home in California. For a part of the drive I felt like I was on my way up to our cabin, but then I saw this -

which Big Bear definately doesn't have.

Joventud Para Cristo/ Youth For Christ

I had been invited to help out with a retreat for the staff of Youth For Chirst, America. By "America", I mean all of the Americas. Being that most of the countries within the Americas are Spanish-speaking, most of the representatives spoke Spanish and only a couple were native English-speakers (pretty much just the few that came to represent the U.S. and Canada). I had been invited to help out with translating (yes, I can do that now) and being an extra hand for the whole week.

The first couple of days we stayed at a camp called Maximo Paz where we slept in cabins, ate camp food (which was pretty good), had worship, a speaker, and a selection of forums pertaining to leading youth each day. It was nice to be away from the business of the city, but no one appreciated the mosquitos that came with the wide open fields of tall grasses. After three nights in camp bunk-beds, everyone was excited to move back into the city for the rest of the week to stay in hotels. The daily events were hosted at a local church and we used their kitchen to make food for 100 people for the next 4 days. My work really began when we moved back to the city - I was in the kitchen for the majority of each day helping prepare the food (the head chef let me be in charge of the salad!), clean up, prepare the next meal, clean up, prepare the next meal, clean up... you get the picture.

Amongst all of this I was able to hang out with people from all over Central and South America and go on their excursions into the city with them. It was a fun but long week, and I am glad to have had the opportunity to meet such cool people! It was so exhilerating to worship with my Latin friends - they realy get into it! You should see how the Brazilians dance, haha!

This is a picture with someone from each Latin American country that came holding up their flage - a beautiful sight!

This is Vanessa and me - she is actually a student from the institute and was volunteering in the retreat too. This foto was taken the last night at the pizza party (we obviously are on dessert already).

I'm not sure who started it... I think it was the Columbians, but whenever anyone would take a picture everyone would rush over to get into it and start yelling (happily). It seemed like they thought the photo would capture their voices, and you know what? I think it did.

The Columbians taught me the lyrics to the Cucaracha song (which may or may not be the actual lyrics - all of the Argentine's I've asked about it claim that it is something else).

"La cucaracha, la cucaracha

ya no puede caminar,

porque no tiene

porque le falta

porque no tiene

una pata para caminar"

"The cockroach, the cockroach

now cannot walk

because it doesn't have

because it misses

because it doesn't have

a soul (as in bottom of your foot) with which to walk."

This is a cockroach that now cannot walk.

.My City.

I took some photos from the bus and then just wandered around the city snapping shots. I really like a couple of them. I feel like they capture the energy of the city pretty well. Enjoy!

Am I waiting to Start?

Wow, its been over three months now. I can hardly believe it!

This point of my excursion reminds me of the month before the end of the semester; the part where you know your time will sooner than later be coming to a close and you have to start thinking about what your plans for after its all over will be. Its like my time in Argentina has been a semester at school and now I have to make plans for summer, except when it all ends I'll be going back to an endless summer - which in my case will be starting in mid December. "The Rest of My Life", right? Wait, I thought that was what graduation was supposed to usher you in to? I feel like I've postponed it for five months by flying off to Argentina. Maybe its the lack of an income. The thing about an income is that it makes you feel independent, like your life is finally yours. Even though I've been living thousands of miles away from my family, paying rent, and making all decisions on my own, I still feel like my adult life hasn't "started" yet.

I wonder if maybe its the kind of thing that doesn't actually "start", just one day you look back and realize you're in the middle of it... or the end. I think if its going to be like that then it would be quite easy to never start the life that you wanted to because you were always waiting to do certain things until your life "started". I know that's how I do things - If I know I will be doing something temporarily, I want to wait until its over before I begin my "routine", because ya know, you can't mess up the routine. If I keep waiting for my life to "start" to start focusing on what I want to do who knows how long it will be before I do them?

Then again, I could just wait until I get back to the States... Its only a month and a half away. What's a month in a life?

Could mean a lot.

Everyone Should Have Been a Communication Studies Major

The week beforehand I received a text message from the pastor of the community center/church I aid, asking me if I would be able to attend a meeting on Missions the coming Wednesday. I replied affirmatively and thought nothing more about it until... I met with my director on Monday and she asked me if I had anything planned for Wednesday. "Yeah....I'm going?" It was then that she informed me of the pastor's expectation for me to have something to say about Missions, something about "how is the church in the US." Okay, I could do that. Strange that he didn't mention it to me.
So Wednesday rolls around and I make it to the church with a couple of lines of notes to give myself some direction for the meeting. I had arrived early and little by little more and more people started trickling in and taking seats in the main sanctuary. "Oh, there must be another event going on at the same time," I thought. No. I was the event. By "meeting" he meant "service". There was a midweek church service about Missions and I was to address the congregation - in Spanish. Good thing I had notes! Haha....ha.
Regardless of my surprise, everything went fine. I went up, made a joke, apologized for my bad Spanish, spoke for a couple of minutes about the church here in the States, received applause and a little gift from the church, and took a seat. They gave me a hot pink scarf! Just in time for summer :D
I'm just glad I don't have stage freight.

Shopping

My friend Pri and I had been meaning to go shopping together for a while now, so we finally went this last Saturday. She met me along with two of her other friends in Palermo Soho and took me somewhere in the middle of everything. There is a section of shops that are run by independent designers so they are cheaper than the surrounding ones, which are known for their high prices. One of the first shops we went into was kind of crazy - There were a lot of clothes, a lot of customers, and a lot employees wandering around. They didn't have a desk to purchase your clothes at; instead they had roaming employees that came up to you, asked you if you wanted to try something on, took it off the hanger, left you to find an open fitting room for yourself (um, ok), and then expected you to find one of them somewhere in the store in order to buy the clothing. This seemed a bit backwards to me and quite hectic. Seemed like it would be really easy to steal something in all of the business.
Another shop we went into had several designers sitting with their own batch of clothes. You went up to a rack and asked the individual designer to try on something and then took the piece to a fitting room and then paid the designer directly. This place was also a bit labrynth-like but atleast it had a friendlier atmosphere. One other thing I thought to be odd was the fact that many places carried "unique" items - there would be a skirt or shirt that didn't come in any other sizes sometimes. Some stores seemed to carry hardly anything. I wondered how they stayed open!

Mendoza Part 2

Continuing....



Woke up the next morning at 7:30 (as late as possible) and ate a typical Argentine breakfast of a "media luna", which is basically a croissant, and a cup of coffee with milk. I could eat several media lunas for breakfast, but more than two is like unheard of. The van came to pick us up at 8:30 and we were dropped off moments later to start our long day of various tasks.

I was in charge of the Musician's reception room, which meant that I got my own little team of minions! We kept up the supply of snacks and drinks, cleaned up after them, and best of all we got to talk to them. That was actually a part of our job description - chat with the musicians! We wanted to help them feel comfortable, so we just chatted about whatever... mostly music, go figure. I got some band referals from the drummer of DiosNosLibre and gave him some of my own. We're fans on facebook now, haha. I feel special.

The conference for me pretty much just included opening bags of chips, washing cups, chatting with the musicians, going out to eat for lunch and dinner with students, washing cups, eating a media luna for breakfast, washing cups, cleaning up crumbs and spilled drinks, washing cups.... and sleeping very little. But it was a blast!

So, the thing about cups is that unlike in the United States, Argentines actually reuse disposable plateware. I think its great that they do the whole reduse, reuse, recycle thing so diligently but my hands got really dried out from washing dishes so frequently.

I talked to a member of the band Amanecer before they performed and told him I had never heard of his band. Its understandable because before coming to Argentina I didn't speak Spanish! He wasn't offended. He asked if I was going to watch them perform to ya know, "take it all in", so I said I would make sure that I did (I didn't watch most of the other performers). I made my way to the front of the stage to see them perform and video taped their first song. I also got proof of my musician friend waving to me from stage. :)

I was cleaning up after the last session and chatting with my new friend from Chile when I was informed that everyone else from my group had left to get on the bus back home like a half an hour ago. Hm.... I was pretty sure they wouldn't leave without me but I suddenly had a sense of urgency flood over me. On my way outside yet another person informed me that everyone else had left. I went outside and found the bus across the street. I boarded the bus to find that Lean had saved us the good seats again. Good ol' Lean! While chatting with my new friends at the back of the bus before departure, I received a phone call from someone inside the conference center asking me what color my luggage was... I didn't "forget" it; I had just assumed that someone else had loaded it already since I was so "late".

Mendoza part 1

Yep, I went to Mendoza last week. Mendoza is a city north of Buenos Aires where a youth conference called Momentum was held. Many of the staff and students from the institute Youth Specialties attended and helped out with the conference, including myself (even though I'm not technically a student or staff). Thursday night everyone met in front of the institute to load into two "micros". I don't know why they are called micros because they are anything but small. Micros are two-level traveling buses that have reclining cushy chairs and little tv's.
Most of the people I already knew from the institute were taking planes to the conference, so I bribed Leandro (the sectretary, and the only person left I knew) into sitting with me by telling him I had food. Lean, for short (no, not like lean meat - keep in mind its in spanish, so the 'a' is long. More like "Lay-on"). Lean and I got seats up top in the very front so we had the big window in front of us and extra space (this was very important because it would be a long trip).
Shortly after heading out we were served dinner on little lap tables that resembled airplane meals. This meal of course came with a minute salad of lettuce and carrots, but strangely the normal side of oil and vinegar was not included. Mayo was however... Lean said his sister eats her salads with mayo so I thought I'd give it a try. Surprisingly satisfying!
That first night on the micro I really couldn't sleep. The seats didn't recline all the way (but significantly more than those in the coach section on an airplane do) and I was cold, so comfort was completely out the window. I had brought the little blow-up pillow Kaitlyn gave me before I left for Argentina, but it just wasn't enough to give me a good night's sleep.
We arrived 15 hours later in Mendoza only to find ourselves in the middle of busy workers readying the conference site for the big event so we unloading everything at the site and locked it all in a room and dug into our tasks. The conference began that afternoon and went until 10 or later, and then we had to get all of our stuff out of the room and wait for a van to come pick us up and take us to our hotel. Or so I thought. Actually, it was a hostel...hm - more about that experience later. Anyway - after getting situated in the hostel we finally re-grouped for dinner, which meant we didn't get back until 2am. I decided to take a shower then instead of getting up early to take it since I was rooming with two other girls who wanted to do so. You'll never guess what we found out. There was no hot water in the shower but curiously there was in the faucet below the shower. This wouldn't have been a problem if I had wanted to take a bath, or could've taken one for that matter (the was no bathtub). So there I was at 2 in the morning trying to fit myself under the faucet.

I'm going to complete my Mendoza story later.

Ironic

Remember the sidewalks I was talking about and how I am inceasantly tripping on them??? Well ironically last week I was running for my bus (remember how much I like those) with my heavy sidebag in tow, and tripped on the uneven tiles and proceeded to make it all the way to the ground this time. Yes; I fell. I had some speed behind me so I skidded a bit on the rough ground. I even managed to rip two holes in my jeans and skin my knee and a bit of my right hand. It wasn't until the next day that I realized I had a tiny bit of glass in my left hand as well. Of course to fit with Murphy's Law the bus left without me even though I was only ten feet away. I was left to wait another twenty minutes at the bus stop trying to dust myself off and relieve myself of any bitterness towards the bus driver for leaving me after such a dramatic attempt to catch him. Its not his fault he has a schedule to keep.
I still had to go to my Spanish class after this. I'm not going to lie; I was hoping for a bit of sympathy from my tutor, but she hardly noticed my dirty blouse and ripped jeans or torn palm. She did ask if I wanted a glass of water though. I didn't want it.

Ms. Schiller's Neighborhood

I've been wanting to put a picture up of my keys - I think they are so cool! Most of the keys in Buenos Aires look like this. This is my keychain for my house, and it just happens to have Tinkerbell on it, which just happens to be Amber's favorite character.


I took my camera along with me today as I walked to a nearby cafe to have lunch and write this post. I wanted to take some pictures of things that I have found to be quite common in my area.


Ok, so these first pictures are not so common, but I went down a street that I don't normally walk and I found this awesome house - its all old and fun-looking, and to make it even cooler its hidden behind an ivy-covered wall.

This is another home on the same street that is constructed in a style not uncommon in my area. If you will notice, all of the windows have wooden shutters on the outside of the window. Many houses have shutters like these that are multi-purpose. They provide added security and are absolutely amazing at blocking out light, which caters to the Porteño (Buenos Aires resident) youth's lifestyle of coming home very late and sleeping in even later.

Now this, this is a Loquat Tree. There's another name in Spanish, but I don't remember what it is (that's the problem with learning so many words in one day; you can only remember a handfull! Sorry, I was in a car when I found out the name and didn't write it down.). The fruit from this tree happens to be my favorite in the whole world, and I have counted it as a blessing every time I have found one in the states because they aren't exactly common. So far I've seen three of these trees in my neighborhood!!!

We have some family friends that live in Oceanside who had a couple of Loquat Trees in their front yard, and we used to visit all the time when I was a kid. I remember passing the days eating Sour Grass and picking Loquats.

A friend tells me that the sell the fruit in the markets in November and December. I can't wait for them to ripen!!!

The sidewalks are different here because they aren't usually just poured cement like they are at home. The sidewalks are put together with tiles, which may have its reasons, but from what I've experienced isn't such a good idea. The tiles are always coming loose because water settles between them. The result of this is that you are incessantly tripping on the uneven ground or, even more fun; getting squirt from below by stepping on a tile with water currently under it. Fortunately I usually just trip.

All of their soda, and water for that matter, is served in a glass bottle.

You Scream I Scream We All Scream For IceCream

Wow; Argentines really know how to do ice-cream. It is thick, creamy, and rich, and it is not uncommon for families to have it delivered to their door for dessert.

The first week I got here Tim and Annette took me out for ice-cream. The ice-cream-man packed two flavors into a sugarcone and handed me my dessert with a tiny little shovel planted in the side of the ice-cream. As he handed it to me Tim started telling me about Argentines and their ice-cream. "Whatever you do, don't -" and he lept towards me the moment I started to bring it towards my mouth "- lick it!" Its like girls eating a banana apparently. Once you get inside you can eat it however you like, but you never touch it to your mouth in public. Gotta use the shovel.

Tonight I was invited to a friend's home for dinner where we had Shepherd's Pie followed by order-in ice-cream. We ordered four different flavours that we received packed into one container right next to eachother. Interesting... Its a good idea to order flavours that complement eachother! Lemon doesn't go so well with Dulce De Leche for your information.