Fiesta de los Naciones

^Some of the ACA girls finishing up the booth for the USA at the "Fiesta de la Naciones" From left to right: Shelby, Megan, Dylon, Vernee, Tiffani, and Rikita.

^Me pointing out the White House and WAU on the East Coast. :)

^The Peruvian students were beast. Apparently there was a competition on the booths and the presentations. Peru won. Clearly.

^The Canadian booth. I thought it was cool. 

^Part of our presentation. We had students pretend to be from various countries and have Uncle Sam accept them as US citizens. The two kids on the right are actually Korean and, of course, respresnted their country. From Left to Right: Marianne, Spencer (as Uncle Sam), Jane, and Christian.

^Me and Uncle Sam (Spencer).

Pictures (Catching up with the first few weeks here)

 ^ The ACA girls I was on the team with in the tournament.

 ^ Me warming up :)

^Those of us that made it to the awards ceremony. From Left to Right: Tina, Molly, Cheryl (on the floor), me, Leah, and Jane.

^Our trophy. Cheryl, me, and Leah.

^This was about a week after the award ceremony. Jane, Tina, and Cheryl with our trophy at Panchos. Panchos is a restaurant that sells hot dogs (aka panchos in Argentina) and hamburgers. And since this is mostly an Adventist town, they have meat and vegetarian options.

^This is Jason with his clown nose at the escuela we sang at for the La Sonrisa trip.

^The ACA students in our group created a skit about brushing teeth. Megan, Andrea (hidden behind megan) and I were BonBons (chocolate candy with different fillings) and our fried Daiana (for the UAP not an ACA student) was our fabulous tooth brush. Kyly (not shown here) was the dentist. 

^This was our whole group that sang and painted at the escuela. I dont know everyone's names so I won't try to identify them. I am, however, in the back row, second from the right in a grey t-shirt.

^The statue here was some form of the Virgin Mary. As you may know, Argentina is predominately Catholic and pretty much every city has some statue of a saint or Mary hidden there. She was kind of creepy looking up from. But I thought from afar and at sunset it was a nice picture.

^This is the entire group of La Sonrisa participants. I chose to take a picture instead of being in this one. There were approximately 250 students that attended.

^This is me in front of the place where we were staying for the La Sonrisa event. 

^On the way home, the sunset was really pretty and I snapped a couple photos out the bus window. This one might be my favorite picture of Argentina so far. 

^Last week (Oct 19-26th) was a week of prayer at the UAP. The chaplain office asked for the ACA student choir to do a special music. We made a smaller group for the special music. I will see if I can post the video tonight since the internet is cooperating here. Sorry that this picture is off center. There group was a little larger but I couldnt see this picture very well when I was choosing which to upload. Anyway, from left to right: Camilla (half cut off), Marianne, Melanie, Hawa,Daryll, Dainia, Cameron, Jason, Me, Symone, Rhondi, and Camile. 

^My pictures are a little out of order. This was at La Sonrisa. We had a bunch of free time in the afternoon so we went down to the flooded river and skipped rocks. 

^These were all the ACA students (plus Daiana there all the way on the left by me) and students from the escuela. From left to right: Daiana, Me, Andrea, Vernee, Marvin, Megan, and Christian. And at the bottom, Kyly and Jason. 

Buenos Aires

Yesterday (Monday Oct 29), today, and most of tomorrow has been/will be spent here in Buenos Aires. We left from the UAP aroudn 6:30 am yesterday morning and arrived at Hotel Victory around 1 pm. We settled into our rooms and then headed to the local mall as a group for lunch. The people I was with ended up not wanting to eat in the mall, so we took off in the rain and down the walking street to see if we could find anything to eat. I ate breakfast really late because I fell asleep on the bus so I didn't eat lunch. We found a Starbucks and I bought Megan and I Argentina Starbucks mugs. I don't really collect things. But we both collect Starbucks mugs and I also collect Coke bottles from places I've been.

Last night for dinner, some friends and I ventured out into the rain again and went to a Thai restaurant a few miles from our hotel. It didn't open until 9 pm so we had to wait out in the pouring rain (under and awning) for 20 min or so. Needless to say, after a full day walking in the rain and then standing on a sidewalk that was flooding in parts, I was soaking wet . Dinner was good. I got some form of curry and then Jasmine tea to try and warm me up a bit.

Today we left the hotel around 9 am and set out to tour the city. The bus took us to La Boca, which is where they have the soccer stadium and I think Haroldo said it was where there was a lot of Tango places. We stopped at this touristy place. It was really cute, I took a bunch of pictures and then purchased a mate cup, bombilla, and yerba. Mate is a kind of tea they drink here. There are two forms: mate and terrer. Mate is hot, terrer is cold tea mixed with juice. I like both forms. The cup is painted with a couple tangoing and the Buenos Aires obelisk in the background. It's really nice and I got all three in a pack for about $9 USD which is really good.

After we went to La Boca, we headed back across town to Casa Rosada (the president's house. It's called the Pink House like our's is called the White House. And yes it is a shade of pinkish). Across the street was this church/shrine for Libertador San Martin. San Martin is the one that fought for Argentine independence...I think lol. It was really awesome inside; very typical Catholic church.

We went to Grantis for lunch. I think that's how you spell the company's name. They are the Adventist company that makes the cookies and crackers packs we can buy at the UAP. It was, obviously, an all vegetarian buffet restaurant and the place mats had an Ellen White quote on them. :)

After lunch we drove buy the Obelisk and then headed to this really cool cemetary. I didn't hear the history of the cemetery, but all the people buried there are in these very elaborate crypts. Some of them look like houses or churches. Most of them have engravings or sculptures on them. We walked around in there for a while taking pictures of them.

After the cemetery we went to a giant rose garden. It was really pretty in there. I decided if by some stroke of luck I got an all expense paid wedding (and the flights of everyone I invited paid for too) I would want to get married there. It was so gorgeous.

Right now, my hotel mates and I are resting in the hotel room until we decide to go to dinner. I'm not sure what the plan is exactly for tomorrow, but I know we have to be out of our rooms/checked out by 10 am and then we are doing something. Then we have free time and we are leaving for the UAP around 6 pm so we won't get back to campus until 12 am or 1 am Thursday.

Classes for Thursday morning have been cancelled. I have some homework due in the afternoon but I never have class on Thursday so it doesn't really affect me at all.

Anyway, until next time.

Pictures

Once again, I've only been able to put up four pictures. I will get what I want up here eventually. It may take some time and lots of patience on my part, but you all will be able to see pictures soon...hopefully. Anyway, enjoy the few pictures I was able to post this time. 

^Me with some of the Mariachi band members the first weekend I was here. It was part of a weekend-long event for "el dia del estudiante" and the first day of spring.

^Me shooting some type of gun at a target that had balloons on it. If you popped a balloon you won a prize. I did not win a prize :(

^The green sign caught my eye as I was speedily walking through the streets of Parana trying to keep up with my roommates. We went on the Wednesday holiday the second week I was in Argentina. The sign says "every day may not be good, but there is something good in every day". 

^This seemed to be about the only thing worth seeing in Conception de Uruguay. We went there the second week we were in Argentina to get our student visas. The office was right across the street from the Shell station. They had wifi, I may have borrowed it while we were waiting. 

Week of Prayer and the Age of the Mosquitoes

This week is the 2nd week of prayer the campus has had during their school year. The Pathfinder World director from the GC is the speaker. He´s from Spain and talks really fast so I don´t understsand the majority of what he´s saying. On Thursday, a group of ACA students from our choir, me included, are singing for the afternoon meetinng. They have a meeting at 7am, 2.30pm and 8pm. The 7am and 230 pm meetinngs are the same so I´m not going to the one in the morning. Our classes are weird this week. They start later but that means I´m in classes much later too. I´m not suree whether to be excited about the extra hour of sleep or sad at my later classes.

It´s rained amost every daday for the last week. Since it´s been so wet, there aree billions of mosquitoes. Last night before I climbed up to my bed, I killed probably 6 or 7 mosquitoes in my room. And then I killed some more mosquitoes oncee I got in bed. I´m a giant mosquitoe bite and they seem to like my feet and ankles better than nanything else. I have aroound 20-30 mosquitoes bites right now. It´s rather depressing.

Next week we are going to Buennos Aires for three days. I´m not sure what we´re goinng to be doing while we areee there but I´m assuming it will be fun. Hopefullly the internnet willl be better at the hotel so I can post picturees. I keep trying to post pictures but either the internet is too slow or my tablet doesnt stay connected to the internet well enough to post. There are a lot of ACA students that have been able to post pictures so I´m not really sure what the issue it.

That`s kinda been life here. Lots of rain, lots of mosquitoes.

Until next time, or untill I get pictures up.

One Month Down, 8 More to Go

It has officially been one month since my feet left American soil and landed in Argentina. It has been a battle everyday since. From being bored the first two week, to placing in a class bellow where I had hoped, to being far more homesick than I had expected, to this previous weekend where things were a hot mess, to my electives where I don't understand most of whats going on, it has been a journey.

Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to write me notes and letters and send them to me. I've gotten at least one letter, some times three or four, every week since I've been here. They are so encouraging and have been a great help for me. I'm slowly gaining the courage to speak  more readily with the students here. While none of you would peg me for being shy, meeting new people (especially in a language I don't know) is extremely stressful for me. Unless I'm in class or talking to my roommates, I spend a lot of time just being quite and listening or tuning things out as opposed to engaging in conversation. Now that I'm getting more adjusted to being here I've decided that lunch time will be my meal where I try to sit with only Spanish speakers or more Spanish speakers than ACA students. That might not seem like a lot, but I don't eat breakfast and dinner I usually eat with my roommate and her boyfriend and they speak English to each other. So lunch is now my practice time. Also, all of my language classes are in the morning so it's an excellent opportunity to put into practice what I'm learning in class.

I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but instead of moving up into the Advanced 1 class, I've decided to stay in Intermediate but I have the grammar book for Advanced 1 and I'll be working on it as much as I can so next trimester I can be in that class. The class I'm struggling with the most right now is Ortografia. It's basically hooked on phonics for Spanish. Right now we are learning about syllables and accented syllables and where there needs to be tildes based on certain rules. I understand the concepts very easily, but I struggle to hear accented syllables in English let alone in Spanish. Hopefully I will be able to bring my grade up from the last two quizzes. I got a C on the first quiz and I'm pretty sure I did worse on this last quiz because the majority of the quiz required me to classify words based on where the accented syllable was, and since I can't hear the accented syllables, I kind of had to guess on all of them. I spoke with my professor after class and we're supposed to be meeting on Monday sometime for some extra help. I'm also going to be going to the tutoring session tomorrow to work on my Ortografia homework and to get some help on the Advanced 1 grammar work.

Next week is Week of Prayer hear. The following week is our trip to Buenos Aires. Tomorrow I'm sitting down with some friends to plan our Christmas vacation travels and will hopefully be booking buses/hostels tomorrow or the day after.

Thanks again for all your prayers and support. I will continue to need them and appreciate them as time goes on. 31 more weeks and I'll be home :) Chao for now!

La Sonrisa

Well, it was definitely the most "interesting" weekend I've had here thus far. My weekend actually started on Friday morning very early. I had decided over a week ago to participate in the La Sonrisa mission trip that happened this past weekend. We were supposed to go to a town about 4 hours away called Federacion and do some little mission projects in the town and on Sunday we were scheduled to go to the thermas (hot springs) in the town. Supposedly the hot springs are famous, I will get to why I'm not so sure they really are later.

I decided to stay up all night on Thursday night with Megan, another girl in the ACA program that was going, because we were leaving at 4am Friday morning. We went to go where we were to meet the buses, and there were no buses -__-
We didn't actually leave until around 6:30 am. The people on my bus sang almost the entire way there, so I didnt get to sleep much on the bus.

Once we arrived in Federacion, we unloaded our bags into random offices outside of the thermas where we would be staying for the weekend. We divided into our missionary groups, reloaded the buses, and set off for our different sites. My group was going to an escuela (elementary school) to sing with the kids and the paint the walls in the hallways. The songs we sang were both about God and about hygiene. The ACA students in my group had prepared a silent skit about brushing teeth and we had cute little props to go with our skit.

After we were done singing, around 12, the kids went home for the day and we had lunch. Then we were supposed to start painting the walls. We had about 2 hours after lunch for free time (siesta) and then there weren't enough paint brushes to go around in our group so I only ended up painting for about 5 minutes at the end and then we were done. I used that time to get on the WiFi internet at the school. It was faster than at the UAP.

After we finished at the school, we went back to the thermas and moved our stuff into the rooms where we were staying. The girls were split between three places: two large concrete rooms attached to the pump room for the thermas, and a room off from the women's bathroom and showers. I was in on of the giant concrete rooms. Concrete is very hard and cold to sleep on. I woke up with bruises on my hips and very cold Saturday morning.

Friday night we had dinner at the escuela I had worked at in the morning/afternoon. Then we had to walk to where the church was. We had maps of the town, but they were hard to read and the group of ACA students I was with weren't sure if we were walking in the right direction. The church, come to find out, was not actually a building, but was more of a blow-up-tent. You know those bouncy house things that have air being blown into them from a giant pump? That's how the "church" was too.


The showers didn't have hot water at all, so Friday night I took a freezing cold shower and then froze in my little fleece sleeping bag all night. It's more of a fleece blanket that zips up like a sleeping bag than an actual sleeping bag.

Sabbath morning we got up early, had breakfast at the school, walked to the church, and had Sabbath school and church. I was so tired from not sleeping well the night before that I didn't get much from the sermon. After church we were divided into groups and were sent to deliver pamphlets and info about the afternoon's health expo door to door in the town. I didnt know what to say to anyone, so the Spanish speaker I was paired with did all the talking.

Saturday evening we had the opportunity to go to the thermas, I chose to take a shower, hoping for hot water but it wasn't. I was really sarcastic about the weekend with some girls sleeping next to me on a nice air mattress. It was really funny. I was talking in my broken Spanish and they were dying laughing. They ended up having me sleep on the airmattress with them. I definitely didn't fight them on the invitation.

Sunday morning we got up, went to the school late for breakfast, and then came back to enjoy the thermas. Since I hadn't gone to the thermas the night before I wasn't sure what to expect. But since I couldn't smell sulfur and I was right on top of the hot springs basically, I wasn't expecting much. The thermas were more like pools with varying temperatures of water than a natural hot springs like what I was expecting. It was still relaxing but not what I expected.

I got all packed up and then had to wait for a long time for us to load our luggage into the buses, get our "sack" lunches, and then be allowed to load the bus myself. We were supposed to be out of the water at 12:30 and ready to leave by 2pm. We didn't end up leaving until after 4pm. My bus was once again filled with lots of singing all the way back. We stopped twice on the side of the rode, but I'm not sure why. We stopped at a gas station so people could pick up snacks, and we stopped again when another bus was stopped at a gas station-waited for them to pray-and then kept going. We didn't get back to campus until almost 930pm..we were supposed ot be back by 6. It was a mess. It wasn't the worst weekend ever, but I got sunburnt again on Saturday. My poor face is very irritated.

There are two weeks until our trip to Buenos Aires. It was supposed to be next week, but since next week is week of prayer on campus, the ACA Admin postponed the trip another week.

I'm still trying to get pictures to post. It looks like I'll have to either figure out how to get pictures to somebody in the States with faster internet or try and stay up till 2 or 3 am when the internet speeds up and try to post then. As soon as I figure out a system to get pictures up I will post them.

Until next time.