ESTOY EN ARGENTINA!

September 14 , 2014. I flew into buenos aires, ARGENTINA on Thursday morning September 4th. 10 days I’ve been here and it already feels like home. And now welcome to my blog where I will share my jumbled up but sincere thoughts or at least inform everyone (who cares) that I am alive and loving my Argentine life. Oh and argentine is actually pronounced with tine like the tine of a fork contrary to popular belief or more accurately my belief which was pronounced more like ar-gen-teen. So yeah, there’s some edumacation for you. Also, when Argentine people greet you with a kiss on the cheek, it’s not actually a kiss but more of a making the sounds and touching cheeks kinda thing. I made that mistake a few awko-taco times.
When we first arrived at the campus of palabra de vida bible Institute, we put our things in our rooms and later were able to meet our roommates. There are actually 21 students in this PBB program (programa biblico bilingue) and we are all spread out in separate dorm rooms with other Latino students attending the bible institute. I loved my roommates from the very beginning and have since loved getting to know them more even just in this one-ish week. There is one girl in my room who speaks some English but she and the rest of the girls were so excited to know that I speak at least some Spanish. So we’ve been speaking Spanish and it is amazing. And if I don’t understand a word, (which happens a lot), they will even act it out for me or think of a different way to explain it. And they been so patient with me. So patient. But I also love having Latina roommates because I speak Spanish so much with them, since of course you must communicate with the people you live with!
I love adjusting to living in a new place and learning about a new culture, and eating has been a lovely new adjustment. It is a bit different because lunch is at 1 and dinner is not til 7 (and usually eaten later in most of argentina). But that’s just more of an excuse to eat some snacks amirighf? Hah but breakfast is always bread with dulce de leche (a caramel like spread with similar uses as United States peanut butter) and sometimes bananas and/cereal. And coffee and tea, always. Lunch and dinner are usually more bread (optional of course) with rice and chicken or pasta or beans. And hamburgers are also thrown in the mix along sign other things I can’t recall. But some of my favorite times are in the comedor (literally dining room but in this context means cafeteria), because of the fellowship and conversation. Although it’s so easy to just sit with the other gringos (white people) that also speak english (and I really do love then all), it’s been really neat to sit with students from the institute I’ve never met before who speak a language I love but am still learning, and be able to share life stories.
There are so many things to share with you peeps on these interwebs but I’m sure this internet space with full up soon and so will your brains so I’ll only share a few more things for now, but kudos to making it this far.
One of my absolute favorite moments was last Sunday when we attended chapel for the first time since being on campus where we sang worship songs in spanish and listened to a Spanish message. Worshipping in Spanish was phenomenal. I love how some things translate so differently from one language to another, and how reading or saying something in another language can bring a new meaning or life to it in a really refreshing way. One lyric I’ve been thinking about since then is “no era nada y tu me diste valor”.
(I was nothing and you gave me value).
I hope to write more soon and share more information about my roommates and the other people I am meeting, but Chau for now and let me know what else you want to hear about. Love you all!