Back In The United States

Yes it's true, I did not finish my Argentina story.
After Bariloche I went to San Martin de los Andes for a couple of days and did some sight-seeing and then took another too-long bus ride back to Buenos Aires. Once back in BA, I found myself too busy with trying to cram in everything I wanted to do in my last two weeks there to spare any time on filling all of my beloved readers in on everything that was going on. Now I've been back in California for just about a month and finally felt the need to finish my story. Well no, that's not true - I felt the need to do it when I first got back, but I'm finally taking the time to do it :) You should all feel privileged that I care to give you all a sense of closure. I know how hard bringing an end to things can be!

Alright, so San Martin...
After Bariloche I jumped over to San Martin and stayed with a lovely family who really took great care of me and didn't think twice about driving me around everywhere. My first day there I took the mother's advice and took a ferry across the lake to a little village of indigenous people called Quila-Quina. Stepping off the ferry, I soon found a travel buddy in another young single woman who offered to take my picture for me after seeing my attempts at a self-portrait. Her name was Anai, and we spent the day venturing into the forest, finding a waterfall, finding that we had to pay for viewing the waterfall after-the-fact, and holding a good theological conversation. We ended up missing the ferry back because we were so enthrawled in discussion and searching the forests, so we were stuck in this little patch of timelessness for another couple of hours (oxymoron?) until the next one came. We took this extra time to stay close to the harbor so we wouldn't miss our last chance at getting back to reality on the 7 o'clock transportation. I ended up giving her a tract to keep that Dylan, the evangelist that I had met in Bariloche, had given me.
The following day I took a bike ride into the mountains surrounding the lake. It just so happened that I was the only one who signed up for the tour, so it was just me and my guide; Rubi (short for Rueben). Being the only one on the tour, I got to pick if I wanted to take the "easy, boring route", or the "more advanced but fun" route. Of course I stepped up to the challenge.
I soon found out however, that I am not a mountain-biker. My vision of a nice but tiring, pretty bike-ride up a dirt road that eventually would lead to gliding down the mountain with the wind in my hair, was dashed. It all started out innocent enough: a little historical tour around the town followed by making our way up the mountain. But then we went off the road and into the forest... now we were doing real mountain-biking. I found myself on 1 foot-wide bike trails littered by twigs and rocks of all sizes to hazard you below and branches and bushes from above. I was dodging, ducking, and praying all while going uncomfortably fast down unstable trails and trying to keep myself from falling off the edge (yes - the edge!). The first time I fell wasn't so bad. I guess a twig or something had set my wheel off-course, and I leaned into the mountain as I ever so gracefully embraced the earth.
The second time I fell however, was not so pretty. Rubi had stopped to take a phone call (yes, I know), and had advised me to go ahead. So I was just thinking about how glad I was to be on our way back and done with the twigs, when I found myself beside a nice icy creek. Can you guess where this story is going? Since I had picked up a bit of speed on the decline, there was not much I could do when a rock (once again) steered me off course. This time I was not so lucky to be able to lean into the mountain. As the dirt gave way under my out-stretched foot, I could feel my fate coming for me. Somehow I managed to ever so gracefully discard my chariot into the safe hands of solid ground, while I bravely slid into the hands of the chilly water. I found myself sitting in the creek not knowing how that could have actually happened to me.
I had time to laugh, stand up, and turn around before Rubi came riding around the bend. "April!" he choked, as he not so gracefully threw his bike down and came running to my aid. He reached out to pull me out of the water, but found I was immovable. Within the second it took for me to get myself into this position, my left foot had managed to get itself wedged under a sizeable rock. Rubi then bent down on the creek bank and lifted the weight from my foot, allowing me to free myself. He then proceeded to pull me out of the ice-melt. I was sick to my stomach that night and most of the following day.
My next encounter was a day-trip to Volcan Lanin, a nearby volcano. Nothing too exciting happend there, thankfully. I made it back in one piece and with some pretty pictures.
The last weeks of Buenos Aires were full of spending time with friends and taking exursions around the city by myself when everyone else was too busy. Not a moment was waisted, and I don't regret anything. I came to the end of April's Argentina Adventure having attained the ability to speak and understand spanish (no - Castellano), coming out on the other end of teaching English classes (something I never thought I would do), making a difference in the lives of those whom I volunteered with and for, and having gained a world of friends that I never would have had the priveledge to have had if I had not set out on this adventure.

Life is your story, so make it worth reading!


Chau,


Abril

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!