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.

Another Week Down

As this seems to be taking an expectionally long time, I will pause in uploading pictures and summarize the last week here.

Monday was the first day of classes. I have class from 8:30am-12:25 pm. I have an hour for break and then class from 1:30pm-4:30 pm. It's a very long day. In the morning, I have two hours of grammar class and two hours of composition class. My composition teacher is actually the grandma to one of my highschool classmates, Sebi. In the afternoon I have one hour of Current Events class and two hours of Folklore. I was very confused in my two afternoon classes. I didn't really know what was going on.

Tuesday doesn't start until 1:30pm for me. I two hours of grammar, an hour of Orthography, and two hours of Bible. I don't mind any of those class. I was still pretty lost in Bible but we didn't really do anything important.

Wednesday begins at 10:30 with two hours of conversation, an hour break for lunch, and ending with two hours of History.

Thankfully I have Thursdays completely free. I got up early this week (5:45 am) in order to gather up my laundry and go to the lavandaria to wash my clothes. The washers and dryers are really old. You have to sign your name on a list to be able to clean your clothes. I was there early enough that I didn't have to wait in line. I washed my clothes, had to wait for a little bit to dry them, and then dried them. I talked with a guy, I don't remember his name, but he taught me a form of Spanish piglatin. It's fun but very confusing :)

Friday I have class at 8:30, geography, and then there are sometimes ACA assemblies afterwards at 10:30. This week they told us about the coming holiday, which is tomorrow (Columbus Day basically); this would be the 4th holiday since we've been here.

I'm planning on reading and studying for my grammar and orthography quizzes that are on Tuesday.

Tuesday evening was the end of the girls basketball tournament at the town gym. We won both our games again, which earned us first place in the tournament. Saturday night was the end of the guys tournament and the award ceremony. We got a trophy and 220 pesos to divide between us.

Tonight, the team went out to a local restaurant called Panchos. They have vegetarian and meat hot dogs and hamburgers. They also have this really good hot sauce stuff for the hot dogs, which I put on my burger as well. We had a good time hanging out.

The ACA group has traditionally had a choir that travels around the local churches. We had our first choir meeting tonight and our first rehearsal is Thursday.

On Friday, I will be participating in a mission initiative called La Sonrisa (the smile). We are leaving very early in the morning to go to a town several hours away. We're going to be doing a lot of different small missionary things in the town and doing church services I believe on Sabbath. On Sunday, we're going to a hot springs that supposed to be a large tourist attraction. It was 220 pesos to participate. The official exchange rate is alittle more than 4 pesos to the dollar. That means transportation, food, housing, and the hot springs cost me $55 dollars give or take. If you exchange money not at the bank you get about six pesos to the dollar. So, it depends on how you look at it.

Tomorrow, this the holiday, will probably start a little later than normal and consist of studying and finishing homework for the week. I have a geography assignment due on Friday, but since I will be missing class I'll need to turn it in early. I'm pretty tired of the food here, but my parents sent me a little bottle of tabasco sauce in a manila envelope along with a few other treats. It's really made the difference in making the bland food here at least taste like something.

I've been pretty frustrated with all of my classes. I was placed in intermediate Spanish courses, but I feel like I could maybe be ok in Advanced 1. HOwever, my ability to communicate verbally is low. My elective classes aren't hard per se but they are very confusing since I don't understand what my professors are saying. I'm not sure what to do about that. I'm thinking about moving up a level of Spanish, but with the difficulty I had in my elective courses last week, I'm not sure I want the stress of having all my classes being confusing. We will see. Of course, I will let everyone know if I decide to move up or not.

I am working hard at posting pictures but it is ridiculously, painfully slow.

Some pictures

Hello Everyone, 

The internet here is being epically slow. These are the first 3 pictures I tried to upload. It took several hours. I'm hoping to set up my computer to upload some more pictures over night. Hopefully it will work. Sorry for the delay but it quite literally an all day affair to upload pictures. 

^Sunrise in the airplane into Buenos Aires.

 ^Stephen doing card tricks in the airport while we waited for everyone to arrive.

Kyly and Khelsea in the bus we rode in or the 6 hr drive to UAP.

Visas, First day of Class, and Homework

I apologize for my lack of communication over the last week or so. Last week was rather uneventful until Thursday. Students with the last names beginning with A-H had to go to the Oracion de Uruguay. We left at 4 am from the bus depot and didnt get back until after 5 pm. It took us a good three hours to get to this tiny little arm-pit of a town. It had a Shell station, a creepy hostel, and this cute little pastry shop that had coffee and WiFi. We had to wait for a long time for the office to process our paper work. I had to retake a picture for something but I'm not sure what. Not everyone that came with us was able to pick up their visas. I have mine and don't have to go back, that's all that matters.

There is a basketball tournament going on at the gym in the villa (town outside of the UAP gate). The ACA girls and the ACA boys formed teams and are competing in our respective sides. I'm on the ACA girls team and we won both our games Saturday night. There was a buy in of $80 pesos. We all contributed and there is supposed to be a small cash prize if we win. It's been fun so far. I've been pretty sore the last couple days but other than that it's been pretty good.

On Friday we got our class schedules. I have class 8:30-4:30 on Monday with an hour break for lunch, 1:30-6:30 Tuesday, 10:30-1:30 (I think) Wednesday, nothing on Thursday, and 8:30-11:30 on Friday. Not a bad schedule. I'm in the intermediate level which right now is seeming to be too easy and stuff I already know. I have 2 weeks to decide whether I should move up a level or stay where I am. I can't decide which I should be doing. Composition class was very easy today. Our professor is actually the grandmother of one of my classmates from highschool which was cool. The grammar teacher was nice, I liked her. But everything we discussed today, I already knew. My elective classes were a whole other story. I don't know if it was because I was so tired from being in class all morning, or because I'd just had lunch, or what the issue was, but I didnt understand anything all afternoon. I have two classes in the afternoon on Mondays: Current Events and Folklore. Current Events was very confusing and I have no idea what we're doing in the class. I do know that I don't have any homework. I think we're supposed to be keeping journals about something, but I dont know what. But Just incase, I picked up 2 journals from the supermercado when I went to pick up a few things this afternoon. Folklore was frustrating. The professor talked too slow. I can't understand spanish if it's very fast, but if it's too slow I end up getting lost with trying to remember what she said at the beginning. By the end of the class, everyone was annoyed and frustrated with her.

After class, a few of us went to the supermercado and the post office. I mailed a letter to WAU and will hopefully have time to write a few more to some people soon. I came back to my room and did all of my homework that was assigned today. I've been really bored so I was glad to finally have to real work to do. However, all of my classes I had homework in only meet on Mondays. And as we have another holiday this coming Monday, I won't have to turn anything in for 2 more weeks. This is good because I won't forget, but expect for Grammar class I won't have anything to really work on for 2 weeks. I'm thinking about doing the beginning exercises in the Composition textbook we skipped over but I'm not sure how far ahead I really want to get.

Tonight I'm just relaxing, reading a little, and will probably go to bed early. We have another 2 games in the basketball tournament tomorrow night so I'll need to be well rested and hydrated for them. The gym was really hot on Saturday night and I felt kind of sick after our first game. Since I don't have class on Thursday I'm planning on doing some laundry and going to the library (where the internet is hopefully faster) and upload my pictures from the last 3 weeks.

Until something else exciting happens, God bless.

Week 1 Down

It has been exactly one week since I left my house in West Virginia. To be perfectly honest, despite having traveled to a foreign country, it's been rather uneventful.

The church on campus runs the Divine service first and then Sabbath School. Yesterday, my roommates and I over slept and didn't make it to church so we just went to Sabbath School. We went to the one in the Medical Building which was nice. I didn't understand most of the lesson study but if I could read the slides I could figure out parts, small parts, but parts none the less. Afterwards, we went to lunch and then didn't really do anything else all day.

My parents attempted to Skype a concert from my home church that a few friends from WAU were doing for them. I only got to see the first part before the internet did something weird and cut out.

It's been several days of not really doing anything, so I've been able to observe some differences in how this school operates.

1. toilet paper rations- No joke, once I got here either the dean or an RA (not sure which) handed me a large roll of toilet paper. That's what I have to use for the month. Everyone gets one roll of toilet paper that they keep in their rooms to use in the dorm bathrooms for the entire month.
2. No flushing toilet paper- I already knew this but some other people may not. The pipes here aren't equipped to be able to handle the toilet paper. You put it in a trashcan in the stall.
3. Pizza- I don't like their pizza, and it's not at all like our pizza. There's barely any sauce, the cheese is thick and weird, and they will put either tomatoes, green olives, or eggs (yes scrammbled eggs) on top with lots of oregano.
4. Dorm rooms- I have two roommates in a room smaller than the rooms at WAU where you only have one roommates. It's really cramped in here which I don't like at all.
5. Greeting- I knew this as well, but in Spanish speaking countries when you meet/greet someone you do so with a hug and a kiss to the cheek. Very different from the US where we do handshakes. I sometimes forget.
6. Juice- their fruit juice is strange too. I tried their apple juice, tasted like green apple Jolly Rancher. I tried their orange juice, not bad but not really orange juice. I tried their fruit punch, it wasn't bad either but not like fruit punch.

There are more things that are different but I can't thnk of them right now. I know I keep saying I will be posting pictures soon, but the interent hasn't been very fast so hopefully it will speed up tonight and I'll be able to upload some.

Tomorrow is apparently a provincial wide Catholic holiday, so there is no class. Wednesday is a local holiday so there is no class again. Not that this affects me much because I don't have class until Friday I think. We were supposed to go to the office on Tuesday to pick up our student visas but that didnt work out so we just have a meeting Tuesday morning. Since I don't have to be up at 4 am on Tuesday, I'll be going with my roommates and some of their friends to Santa Fe. Santa Fe is an hour away from here by bus and is a big enough city to have a Walmart. It will be interesting definitely.

Until something slightly more exciting happens, farewell.

And the Verdict Is....Intermediate

Two days ago I attempted to lock one of my two closets. The key fit so I assumed it worked in both locks. I was sadly mistaken and, unfortunately, locked myself out of the closet that had my towel and toothbrush in it. Thankfully the dean was able to call someone to come open the door since she didn't actually have a key to the closet either. Last night, a different dean came into my room and decided to try a different key, which also didn't work, so I got locked out again. This time it was much later at night, so I had to wait until this morning for the guy to come back and fix the lock. I had a meeting at 9 am. He didn't come until after 8:30. He changed the lock so I could have a key and be able to get into the closet, however I was late to the ACA meeting. -___-

This morning was pretty boring. We had the handbook read to us and a few things explained. By 10:45 we were done. One of the missionaries here, Chinedu, took Rhondi, her mother, Drea, and me to get some money exchanged in town and to show Drea where to purchase calling cards. It was a nice little walk and eat up some of the free time I had until lunch.

Lunch was actually good today. They had rice but they also had pasta. The pasta sauce was a little strange but instead of regular parmesan cheese, they had a different type of cheese for the topping. There was also baked zucchini. I  liked the cheese they had for the pasta so it was actually a decent lunch. The water in the water bottles has an odd taste, so today I added some lemon juice and it was a good idea. Last night I tried their apple juice which tasted like liquid green apple Jolly Rancher. I'm not going to be drinking any apple juice anytime soon.

Our meeting today at 3pm is to tell us our class placements and allow us to sign up for classes for the first quarter. I did really bad on the placement test so I'm in intermediate Spanish learning courses. I have to take Conversation, Grammar, and another class each quarter. Then there are electives I have to take to fill out my schedule. Because of my financial aid at WAU, I have to take 18 credits each quarter. This quarter, only 18 credits are offered so I didn't have a choice in my classes. I'll be taking Orthograhy (a class to help with spelling), a religion, a history, a geography, and a few other classes. I'm not terribly excited about any over them but I don't have a choice in taking them. Haraldo, the ACA director here, told us that if we feel a Spanish learning class is too easy/hard we can switch to another class within two weeks of beginning those classes. If Intermediate is too easy, I can move up to Advanced 1. Or I can stay in Intermediate this quarter and if I have an A or an A- in the class at the end of the quarter, I can move up to Advanced 1 next quarter. I'm not sure whether I want to much up or not. I obviously want to advance and get better at Spanish. But some of my classes are 300 level classes and I'm not sure how I will do in them since I don't really understand Spanish very well.

Hopefully this won't mess up my GPA too much.

Tonight is going to be a special dinner for the ACA students. I think it's supposed to be our "Welcome" dinner. Also, the school is working on getting us student visas. We (students in the first half of the alphabet) will have to travel to a place 3 hrs away from here on Tuesday if all our paper is in order by Monday night. We have to leave at 4 am. Hopefully I will be able to wake up that early and not make my roommates angry.

Anyways, I'm not sure what I'm going to do for the rest of the afternoon since I have nothing to do until 8 pm, I'm going to have to get creative.