duende.

Duende is my favorite word right now. It means "gnome". To call someone a little gnome, you just say, "duendito". There is absolutely no reason to know this word, which is why I think it's my favorite.

The last couple of nights we have gone to tango concerts. They were awesome. Thursday it was tango-electronico and Friday was a concert with a lady singing. Every time they finish playing and start talking we are thrown off they aren't speaking in English. The instruments they use are great...I think the best though is the acordion. I wish several of my friends from home could have seen these shows because I really think they would have had a much greater appreciation for all of it. At the one last night we had a drink called a submarino. It's like a hot chocolate but way better because it's steaming hot milk served with pieces of dark chocolate that melt in your milk. I'm convinced it will change your world when you taste this bad boy.

If I could have a random pastime while I was here I am pretty sure it would be riding in taxis with Kasey all day. The best is when we get in the taxi and start a conversation with them and 4 seconds later we can't understand what they are saying because they talk WAY too fast and Kasey just starts laughing. Fact you should know: Kasey has the best laugh in the world. So as soon as she starts laughing, I start laughing and then it just gets silly, really.

And during the day Saturday Kasey and I went for a run, which was perfect. I felt like I was being set free to go crazy. We do a lot of walking but we also do a lot of sitting so it was freedom to run in the park. On Saturdays there is a HUGE market really close to where we live so a big group met there for a while and then we went to the cemetary where Evita Peron is buried...trying to find a grave here really is like going on a giant scavenger hunt, only the reward at the end is a tomb instead of a giant prize. I hope that's not disrespectful.

On Saturday night we went to a crazy little place to for dinner. This place was out-of-this-world ridiculous because they have every game you could ever imagine. So while we waited for dinner we played JENGA. Genius. Whoever thought of this deserves a very high "high-5". Remember me mentioning that dinner is late here?...we got our dinner at 12...aka midinight. What?!

y suena con los angelitos.
and dream with the little angels.
-our most recent taxi driver

job change.

When I first got here I was working in the childrens hospital. But as of this week both Will and I had to leave. The fear of swine flu is growing here as Argentina gets ready to enter their flu season. The greatest reason for leaving was that we might have had some trouble getting home in July if customs knew we had been working in a hospital. I am going to be working in a reading foundation instead. I went this morning for my meeting and to set up my schedule and will start work Monday.

I'm going to try and tell you where my heart is in this because it was a change I didn't see coming and it has really thrown me for a loop. I completely understand why the change was an absolutely necessary change but it doesn't change the fact that I have spent the last couple days frustrated with God. I don't think I had ever been so certain I was suppose to be somewhere. I had prayed so many times all last semester that I could work in the hospital and then it was answered. And now it's changed. Do you know the feeling I'm talking about? I thought this was going to be an answer to a lot of things I have been asking the Lord for a very long time, probably since I started college. But also one of my greatest prayers coming into Argentina would be that my only expectation would be for Jesus to show up. Well, he's here. He knows me better than I do. He knows me better than you. I keep asking him why the change to a reading foundation had to happen. This is not where I would say my heart is...not even close. I guess in writing this I am seeing that I have a lot of pride. It should be so simple to go where he leads and believe it's best. I really do know it is and I fully believe this is the Lord yet again reminding me of his goodness, his sovereignty in my life and his deep desire to remind me I am His, not my own. I'm sure this little job change sounds silly and like I'm making a big deal of nothing if you hadn't heard me talk before I left about how sure I was of everything falling into place. I hope you understand where I am coming from and even if you don't, please pray that my heart would be made right in thinking and trusting. I have been reading Hosea and this is my prayer:
Let us acknowledge the Lord;
Let us press on to acknowledge him.
As surely as the sun rises,
he will appear;
he will come to us like winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth.
Hosea 6:3
I believe that this is God's. This is his way of showing up in my world in a very real way. Let me trust in that with everything.

greta! greta! greta!

I forgot to tell you we have dog named Greta that lives with us. She looks like a cross between a guinea pig and a grimlin. She's just a little nugget but she's fierce. Everytime someone goes in or out the door she attacks. Greta goes bananas and bites at your feet and barks like crazy. A couple of examples...last week Meganne and I decided to go be friendly and pet Greta. Bad idea; she bit my hand and went crazy and then attached herself to my sweatshirt. Game over. Meganne and I were done trying to make a new friend. And then, this morning I was trying to leave early and had not had the chance to tell Adriana (house madre) that I would be leaving early for a meeting. I tried to be so sweet to the Grimlin and keep her quiet and then she went balisitic. My madre came scuffing around the corner in her pj's and refused to let me out the door until I had a cup of coffee and a media-luna. I felt so bad. Blame it all on the dog.

Another story from dinner the other night. Here is a prime example of what happens when Meganne and I get our words mixed up at dinner. Everynight we have some sort of fruit for dessert and this night it happened to be oranges, which by the way they do not call them oranges, they call them "mandarinas". Apparently there is a significant difference. Our house brother, Scott, was pealing away the skin from his mandarina in one long strand. I tried to draw attention to what he was doing but mixed up the words for "hair" and "skin". Skin is "piel" and hair is "pelo". So I ended up asking him what he was doing with the hair of his orange. Oopsies. And after that, naturally, Meganne and I try to make a nice casual recovery by pretending to be oranges with hair. We lost it. There was no coming back. We laughed for the rest of dinner. And our other house brother is from here and we don't think he is as easily entertained as us. He just looked at us like we were Martians invading the dinner table. I don't know if this makes any sense at all, but I PROMISE you it was outrageous.

Allow me to also tell you what we have eaten for an appetizer the last couple nights. Twice now we have had some sort of "lets-go-crazy-with-the-mayo" treat where Adriana puts left overs from the night before in the blender and sends the food for a ride while adding a huge amount of mayo. It's then put on our plates to eat. Enough said. And then 2 nights ago we had some kinda beet salad. Did you know if you cook something in beets everything turns bubble-gum pink? If you didn't, now you do. In this pink lovliness was beets, hearts of palm, egg and tomato. And all of these ingredients guesses because we couldn't actually see what it was. Did I mention it was all pink? Just checking.

goals for the day.

meganne and i made a crazy to-do list today. all was accomplished.

1. misorder yet another confusing meal. check.
2. chase a pigeon down the street. check.
3. remember dinner last night and lose all control. check.
4. be rudely told we couldn't have bread at lunch. check.
5. operation secret stealing of knife from the kitchen. check.
6. eat PB & J on bedroom floor. check.
7. take pictures of said PB & J. check.
8. think of amusing this to write on this blog. check.
9. get squashed in the subte. check.
10. speak spanish for a solid hour. check.
11. laugh hysterically at our own jokes. check.

photo op.

our hiking treat.


Andes Mints in the Andes Mountains!


next to where we zip-lined. pretty crazy.


this picture says it all. the little girl wasn't happy, mom tried to make her smile, and i tried to pull it together for the camera. lesson learned: be content and don't set an expectation for picture. this is also one of my favorites...just check out that cute little things face. she has cancer and was getting ready for treatment.

this is a picture of will and i at the hospital. from what we understood, this little girl had just had her first surgery and was getting ready for her second. i'm not sure if it was cleft palate but i know it had to do with her mouth.


this is a picture of kasey and i'm pretty sure its my favorite picture taken so far.

this is a picture of the houses in one of the areas called "La Boca" just outside the main area of the city. we went here on our city tour.

viaje a mendoza. day 2 and 3.

We woke up and had breakfast at the hotel on Sunday morning. Then we got on the bus to start our trip to the highest point in the America's. On the way up we stopped at several spots to take pictures. Also for you to know in case you one day do this...go to the bathroom before you start and don't drink anything for a very long time. There are limited bathrooms. I learned this the hard way. Ha. Several of us sat in the back of the bus and listened to sermons on our i-pods since we couldn't be in church. I listened to a John Piper sermon on John 3: 14-15 when Jesus is talking to Nicodemus about not being able to understand heavenly terms. Never once did Jesus grow angry but he simply loved. It sounds so simple. Why do I make is so much more difficult than this? Piper referenced the story in Numbers 21 where God tells Moses to make a snake. Through this snake God answered the peoples prayers in a way they did not understand, much like he does of our own prayers. Through this snake he saved his people and the poison of death was taken away. How true of a promise is this to the hope of the cross to come. These passages related so much to what i had been reading in "Crazy Love" and conversations I had just recently had. Continue to pray for conversations and that the Gospel would be proclaimed through our lives. Several of us have gotten to have conversations where our prayer is that these people would know Jesus. We so badly want their to be purpose and joy to their life. But continuing on with what we did...we finally got to the last stop and got out and hiked. It was more beautiful than I could have imagined. AND...remember that we were in the Andes Mountains??? Well, we ate ANDES MINTS while we were there. Wahoo! We are a crazy little bunch. On the way down we stopped at a couple of places that I don't really know the details of; one place was a bridge made of rock built by the Incans. I'm pretty certain of this but I do know that it looked like a big pumpkin. I'll put a picture up so you can see. The next day we got to go horse back riding. This was my first time on a horse and I was pumped! We rode all through the mountains where I have to say I was so nervous all I could do was pray my horse, Black Soul, didn't slip. The view from the top was crazy and I would do it again in a heart beat. We left there and went to a Winery for lunch and wine tasting. I'm still a baby and the only way I can drink wine is with Sprite for a spritzer...they didn't have any so i had to try to be a big kid. I didn't really succeed at this. I'll be a spritzer for life and I'm perfectly ok with that. Oh, I forgot to tell you about the camelish like animal that was at the place with horses. We went to go feed it grass when it decided to blow all of its food onto one of the girls in the group. We were all laughing so hard and I wasn't paying any attention so when I turned back around the creature thing blew more all over me! This stuff was green and lets be honest, it smelled and looked like it had come from the other end. Ew, grouse. It was hilarious!! When everything was done we headed back to the airport and came "home" to Buenos Aires. This trip was the greatest and was filled with more adventure than I could have ever thought.

viaje a mendoza. day 1.

here are the details of our trip to mendoza. it was awesome to say the least.

We left Montevideo (our street) at 5:00 Saturday morning and Meganne, Kasey, Holly and I rode to the airport together and met up with the rest of the group. We jumped on the plane and landed in Mendoza around 9ish. Little did we know we would be conquering the world between that time and the time we hit the pillow that night. When we got there we immediately put our stuff in the hotel and then drove off for the adventures to begin. On the bus we ate a tasty bunch of treats and enjoyed every delicious bite. We got to the place where we were about to go rafting and went to change into our awesome body suits. We all looked real good. I mean really really good. When everyone was ready we broke into groups and hopped into our rafts. Then we took off down the Andes River. It was CRAZY. I loved it! When we finished dominating the river we were fed a huge lunch that had been prepared for us. Once our plates were licked we got back into the bus and drove down the rode to go zip-lining through the canopy. This was the GREATEST. There were 5 or 6 lines that we rode on and went through small parts of the mountains and then across the river on the last couple lines. It was crazy to look around and be reminded that our God made all of those mountains. He is so good to give that to us. These mountains sing to him and are more evidence of his great desire to pursue his people. After we zip-lined we were all wiped and we went back to the hotel. A group of us went to dinner and then called it a night. You might like to know that at that restaurant and all over Mendoza the napkins are the size of a finger puppet and made of tissue paper. Useful right?

things the argentines LOVE.

1. dulce de leche. it's everywhere and in everything. not a joke.
2. coffee, coffee and more coffee. and they like it strong. real strong.
3. media lunas. like a croissant but not. they are sweeter. and even more delicious.
4. they stinkin' love american music.
5. empanadas. we will all be little fat empanadas when we come home. don't be startled.
6. driving like maniacs.
7. long lunches in the middle of the day.
8. late dinners. we're talking 10ish or later.
9. dressing in dark colors.
10. late nights in general. i'm convinced they may not sleep at all.
11. the tango. it's pretty sick.
12. professional dog-walkers. these folks are all over the place.
13. the side cheek kiss...we'll try to bring this home and see how it goes. ha.
14. they love not sharing coins. these little guys are in a crisis with change.

before i decided to blog.

Friends. Hello from Argentina.I hope that y'all are doing so good. I've made it to Argentina and was assigned my house on Sunday. My roommate, Meganne, and I live in an apartment in the city with a lady who has 5 study abroad students living with her. This sounds like a HUGE number of students to have at once but everyone in the group has big "families". The other 3 in the house are guys, so for the next 5 weeks we have 3 "hermanos" or brothers. Our "madre" is a lawyer in the city and she lives with her mom and claims to speak no english. But...coming in tonight we found out from another conversation she was having that she DOES speak english and understands everything we are saying. That tricky little lady. Today we started classes and are slowly getting adjusted to the city. There is a major culture shock in all of a sudden having to speak, think, translate, understand all in spanish. I'll be working in a childrens hospital in social services. We had a meeting with the head of the department this morning and she talked for a very long time about the history, the situation and the standing of the hospital. My friend and I were way overwhelmed walking out and needed a long time to think through everything she had said and then had to understand what that meant to us. Its the largest and most respected childrens hospital in the country and I can't wait to start tomorrow and see what our role will be and get to start meeting patients and their families and knowing the hearts of the people here. I'll tell you more once we start getting stories and experiences there. Every afternoon we'll have class until earlyish evening and then Meganne and I come home to rest. We don't eat dinner until 10:00 PM!!! But...I do LOVE dinner here because we all eat together, all 7 of us, and it lasts about an hour and its all in Spanish. Its a good time for getting to know each other and where all of us come from. The things that Meganne and I say and do when we don't understand whats being said are outrageous! Craziness really. We always end up laughing. It's fun figuring this city out and everything being a new adventure. I'm pumped for work to start and for us to start traveling as a group! Tomorrow we have our first tango lesson and then this weekend we go to Mendoza to go skiing, rafting, zip-lining through the canopy and a bunch of other crazy stuff, too!

I'm excited for everything the Lord has prepared for this summer. There is no doubt in my mind that He is going to do big things. Please pray for rest. Right now the sleep at night is enough to rest our bodies but not our minds. Meganne and I were just talking about this strange feeling where we would normally be good to go after sleeping but our heads and bodies are still tired when we wake up. Also, I'm praying for opportunities for intentional conversation and not just surface conversation with our family which is sometimes difficult when there is no english spoken. My roommate and I want to know them and the details of their hearts and lives. One of them comes in our room every day to talk to us in english and he is so fun. If you could join with us in praying for that, it would be awesome! What are y'all learning and how are you being stretched? Please know how grateful I am to have each of you in my life. I love all of you and can't wait to see your faces.

As they say here in Argentina,

Besos y Brazos (Kisses and Hugs)