Argentina: Primavera!

Spring has sprung here in Argentina (which is a very odd after leaving Georgia summer and then enduring a few weeks of Argentine winter)! The last week was very exciting, and very busy! We started our regular class schedule, BUT it was anything but a normal week for PBB. Monday we were finally able to go to Buenos Aires which meant one important thing: WALMART! This was really important to all of us because after living out of a suitcase for 3 weeks you realize all the things you forgot, what you need to get settled and organized, and what common everyday items are not so common after all (like hand soap)! After our much needed visit to Walmart, we went down to the main plaza and viewed a few historic sites such as “The Pink House”, The First Catholic Church of Buenos Aires, and the Monument of May 25^th (it’s kinda like the Washington Monument, but much much smaller). Then we spent the rest of the day on Florida Street just window shopping, it was a lot of fun! (For pictures, check my facebook J)

Tuesday we started our classes, Spanish and James. It was nice to start out Bible classes with a book that I’m already know and love! It’s also only 5 chapters long so it isn’t an overwhelming amount of information to retain. Wednesday, September 21^st was the first day of Spring, also known as “Students’ Day”! To take advantage of the day, all the students were divided into 7 groups and spread out across Argentina to evangelize in different ways. We went to schools and parks and did different ministries like skits, games, illustrative, door-to-door, and open-air evangelism. My group went 4 hours away to a city called Escobar. While we were there we partnered with a local church we divided in to two groups and went to two of the main plazas. We went around and invited people to come watch an illustrative gospel presentation. Afterwards we went around and talked with some of the people individually about the presentation and give them tracks with the church’s information on the back. I was partnered with a girl named Courtney as my translator. She is from North Carolina and she did PBB last year. It was cool to go around talking to the people, but it just makes me want to hurry up and learn Spanish! She ended up doing most of the work because since I don’t know enough Spanish to understand their questions and stuff and so she would just respond when they would say something and I didn’t even know what was going on sometimes :/ The good thing is that as a result there were 52 decisions made just in our city! The next day we found out that as a result f all seven groups combined there were over 600 people who made decisions for Christ!!! It was so awesome! :D

The rest of the week was normal, I started work and sports finally! My job is “Mayordomia” (which is just cleaning) and my sport is Volleyball. So this is what my schedule is like: (In Argentine Time, which is one hour later than Georgia).

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
6:00		Wake Up	Wake Up	Wake Up	Wake Up
7:45		Class	Class	Class	Class
9:30	Class
10:00							Church
10:20		Chapel	Chapel	Chapel	Chapel
1:00	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
2:30		Study Hall	Study Hall	Study Hall	Study Hall
4:00		Work	Sports	Work	Sports
7:00		Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner
8:30		Study Hall	U.M.E.	Study Hall	G.E.A.	G.E.A.	PBB Service
11:00	Lights Out	Lights Out	Lights Out	Lights Out	Lights Out	Lights Out	Lights Out

So that’s my life lately, if you wanna chat on skype or something I would absolutely love it, just check the schedule I posted to see an idea of when would be best!

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Update from Argentina...

It’s hard to believe that I have been in Argentina for 10 days already!! I feel like I’ve been here for a long time, but at the same time it has gone by so quickly! I would be lying if I said that each and every moment has been perfect, but even with the difficulties of adjusting to a new culture, I am learning to depend on God and let him teach me in every situation. This week has been very….challenging… lol We are supposed to be at breakfast each day before 7:20 (which is 6:20 Georgia time) and if you know me you can see the problem! Aside from the issues of adjusting, I love being here! The campus is such an interesting and diverse place I just love meeting all these new people and hearing their stories!

This upcoming week we will be going to Buenos Aires to do some open air evangelism on the 21^st for “Spring Day”. It’s the first day of Spring here in Argentina and everyone takes a holiday to just go out to parks and enjoy the weather. Pray for us as we prepare to share the Gospel in the city and also for those who we will be talking to that God would prepare their hearts to receive the message!

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La Vida de Argentina!!!

After a long, stressful summer of working, fundraising and preparing, I am finally at Word of Life Argentina!! God definitely blessed the fundraising and I was able to raise the entire cost of tuition and my plane ticket here and then back home in December. I am still trying to raise the next $1,500 to come back in January, but that doesn’t need to be done until December. I landed in Buenos Aires at about 9:30 Wednesday morning and since then I’ve just been trying to get to know as many people as possible and just get adjusted to everything. Everyone here is really nice, and I know it’s going to be a great year! Hopefully I’ll be able to write every Saturday to add some normalcy, but I can’t make any promises because the internet here is really sketchy so sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. So far so good, my only bilingual roommate is out doing ministry in Buenos Aires for the weekend, so it has been very interesting trying to communicate with my other roommates in Spanglish, but its getting better. I’m also just trying to adjust to the water and everything here, so that is always so much fun as well… Next week we will have our official orientation week and get into a normal schedule, until then it’s mostly up in the air and a lot of free time that we don’t know what to do with! I’m going to try and post pictures on facebook after this, but it didn’t work out for me yesterday, so fingers crossed! J

Here are some quirky tid-bits just for fun!

-Argentina does not have Peanut Butter or Ranch Dressing!
-We eat bread. LOTS OF BREAD! Lol! Even on the plane the meal consisted of pasta, crackers and cheese, a roll, and a cookie.
-Dolce de Leche is the bomb! They use it a lot too, kind of like peanut butter or nuttella…
-Girls aren’t that into sports, and if a girl plays soccer she is considered “weird and macho”

(I’ll be sure to give you some more random quirky information as I find out more of these things. :)

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