This Past Week

So you all have Lacey and David to thank for this because I keep on forgetting to blog.

There's so much to talk about this week, so I'll just give you a day by day thing. It was a rather eventful week.

Last Sunday was a wonderful Sunday, I'm not sure why but I think I like musical worship better in Spanish, maybe it's because I have to concentrate harder to understand what I'm singing so it's harder to get distracted, or maybe it's because Spanish is so beautiful.  Maybe it's both.  Sunday afternoon the Radi's house was filled with people from church as we had a cook out in honor of the River Plate game.  I got to try the world famous Argentine steak and let me tell you, it was amazing.  They don't put any spices on it, they just let the fats ooze into the muscle of the meat and put salt on it, nothing else. If I'm going to spend the last two months of being an omnivore anywhere in the world, I'm glad I'm spending it in Argentina.

Monday was our day off and we basically had an Argentine version of what we would do in the states. We got to go to a mall, which wasn't that different from the Lloyd center and there we saw X-Men.  It was in English, but with Spanish subtitles.  Afterwards we went to Burger King (stay with me!) because they have a Quinto burger. That's right. 5. 5 patties. 5 pieces of meat on one burger.  Pat wanted to try and eat it.  After that we got to try Argentine ice cream which was soooooooo good.  They even had dulce de leche (which I am in love with) but it was too incredibly rich to eat the amount they were giving us.

Tuesday we headed back to the church to work more on the ceiling. It's looking better and better every time we go.  I'm pretty sure something happened in the evening, but I can't think of what that was. Maybe it didn't. Who knows.

Wednesday morning we spent in the office and in the afternoon and evening we spent it working on two small bits for Industria X which is a TV show the Nazarene church is producing.  I got to do the clicker job (that might not be what it's called in English, but I can't remember what it is, in Spanish it's cliqueta, that's all I know), which was exciting.  It was a long day, but we got a lot done.

Thursday Katie and I got to go to the doctor. Wednesday morning she had woken up with a swollen eyelid that had worsened during the day and I have had a cough for the past couple of weeks that has come around again full force.  Robin went to serve as a translator but not much translating was needed as the doctor spoke English pretty well, even still I tried to say as much as I could in Spanish. He was great and gave me some antibiotics that seem to be working. We spent the rest of the day resting.

Friday was some more office work in the morning and in the afternoon we went to the church to help a few of the teen girls with their English homework.  Katie, Eliott and I each got a pupil while Pat cleaned the sanctuary (with all the construction going on it badly needed it!).  My student's name was Rocio and she is very bright. It was very interesting for me to try and explain certain things to her, such as how to make the 'th' sound. It doesn't exist in Spanish and words such as 'have' confused her because it Spanish it would be pronounced in two syllables because you pronounce everything. In English you combine sounds together, which doesn't really happen in Spanish.  Needless to say English is a much harder language to learn than Spanish, Spanish having more in the way of rules and more in the way of consistently applying those rules. I wish I could have taught her more about how to read the words on the page, but all I really knew how to do is to teach her to say them after me enough times to where she could pronounce them and how to move her mouth to make our weird English sounds.

I must admit something that will greatly soothe the minds of all my family and friends in Portland. I tried some sort of coffee thing last night and I liked it. Now, it was fofo coffee and more like cocoa than coffee, at least when the proper amount of sugar was applied (when it wasn't, it was too coffee-esque).

Ok, segueing back. After our Bible Study, we rushed around Moreno to find a place to watch the opening game of the American Cup (soccer championship for Latin America).  We finally found a gas station that had a TV along with a sitting area with a growing group of people gathering to watch the game. There was a lot of stake in the game as Argentina was playing Bolivia. I'm not a big sports person but if I was one to watch them I would watch soccer. American football aggravates me, basketball is boring and my family can attest to how incredibly dense I am when it comes to baseball. I wasn't paying attention the whole time, though a nice chunk, and whenever I asked Katie if someone had scored she said, "No, you will KNOW when someone has scored." and true enough, when Argentina scored people were out of their seats including Carlos, one of our missionaries, who was charging towards the screen clapping and then went around shaking people's hands. You do not mess around when it comes to fútbol here. Edgardo was shocked that I talked during the game.  

Today I'm home to rest up and help the antibiotics do their job. I was coughing rather badly last night and scaring people so when Carlos suggested I perhaps stay home today I thought the idea was a good one.  I'm never this sick, but then again Argentina has given me a new definition of winter. In Oregon and Idaho I don my giant green peacoat and everything's fine, here I have two pairs of socks underneath my boots, leggings under my jeans, a shirt, two sweaters and then the coat I made with Nana and that keeps me pretty warm.  The humidity here makes the cold get into your bones, Robin says, and I can see what she means.

So that's the week, rather eventful but the lesson I've been learning is pretty simple. A lot of times I don't feel terribly useful, but that's becoming ok. Mother  Theresa said that we are not called to do great things, simply small things with great love and that is what I have been trying to do. There's not much I'm good at and fewer things that I'm great at, but if I do whatever I do with the love God has poured into my life He can use it for good. Nana always says that God never wastes anything and I think she's right. So when I help a girl with her homework I need to try and encourage her as much as I can with my limited vocabulary and to teach her as much as I can. When I have to clean the sanctuary again I can clean it as well as I possibly can, even if I'm tired of moping those floors. When it comes down to it the only thing that will make a difference is love. Well, bad things make a difference too, but that's not the kind of difference we're going for here. One time I told God, "But I don't like him!" referring to someone I had to interact with and His immediate response was, "I didn't ask you to like him, I asked you to love him."

(oh, and speaking of loving people you don't like, I found out once that if you treat someone you don't like very much with love, honestly and truly treating them with love, the liking part will come along, just as another thought for y'all =D )