5.5 in, 5.5 to go

I have now been gone on my YAGM year for 5.5 months.  I have 5.5 months left in Argentina before I head back to Minnesota.  Here are a few of my current thoughts and emotions…

• Have I really only been gone for half a year?
• Wow, how I have already been gone for half a year?
• I would pay a lot of money for some Mexican or Chinese food right now.
• This is the longest amount of time I have ever gone without seeing my parents and sisters.
• I really miss my parents and sisters.
• It’s crazy how I don’t have one friend my actual age here- my friends’ ages range from 7-years-old to 64-years-old and are all beautiful, amazing friends in their own unique ways.
• I love the warm weather.  I’m sorry but that -23 degree windchill ya’ll are having…not missing that.
• Wearing the same clothes over and over sure wears them out fast.
• It’s crazy how ‘normal’ life here has become for me.  Shows how no matter where you are, life is just living out each day.
• Spanish is still such a struggle.  Some days are great, others I literally can’t speak/hear a word.
• I’m so moved by how many people are still following along so closely to my blog, photos and life here- it means so much to me.
• No matter how much you mentally prepare for something hard (such as this year)- you’ll never be able to fully prepare yourself for the unexpected challenges that will pop up.
• It is really hard to miss out on family get-togethers, friend reunions, bachelorette parties and weddings.
• I miss driving.
• It is amazing how God has revealed Himself to me so far this year.
• The second I’ve ever started to lose heart here, something has happened to remind me there is a reason I am here.
• The ‘reason I am here’ is a constant fill in the blank question for me- some days I know exactly why, other days I have zero idea and other days I feel comforted just knowing there is a reason regardless of what it is.
• I’m constantly in awe of my boyfriend’s support and belief in me this year, regardless of how not fun doing long-distance can be- he doesn’t waiver, it’s unbelievable to me.
• I don’t know if I can eat one more empanada.
• It’s unreal how a part of my host family I feel.  How will I ever say bye to them?
• I find myself craving mate if I haven’t had it in a day or so.
• It is so nice seeing the other YAGM volunteers once in a while- I can’t wait for our second retreat next week.
• Thank you God for this unreal, amazing, incredible, life-impacting year I am having.  Even on the hardest days, I have never once regretted doing this and know that will continue to remain true.

Nancy.

Nancy is a woman that I met about 3 months ago now.  She is loosely connected to one of the comedors that I work at.  One day I stopped by her home with another staff member of the comedor to be introduced to her- ever since I have been going back alone each Tuesday afternoon to spend time with her at her home (as well as any other random days that I feel like or have time to stop by).

Nancy lives in a two bedroom home with 3 of her kids (ages 22, 15, 9), the 22 year-old son’s 2 year-old son and her oldest daughter’s 2 year-old little girl (the oldest daughter is 24 and left home about 8 months ago, leaving Nancy with her daughter).  Nancy wanted to volunteer at the comedor so they provide her with milk and snacks to give out to the local neighborhood kids- Monday-Friday at 5:30 any kids can stop by her home to get a snack if they are hungry.  But there hasn’t been a time of day where I have visited Nancy’s house and less than 12 boys have been hanging out there.  Nancy’s house has become the safe house for any local kids to hang out- all of her children’s friends spend their free time there.  They are always playing soccer out front, drinking mate or tereré, playing in their little pool, or just hanging out listening to music.

The group of boys that hang out at Nancy’s house are some of the nicest, most respectful and well behaved kids that I have met so far during my time here…actually that I have met anywhere.  The older ones take such good care of the younger ones (they babysit the younger ones when Nancy or the oldest brother has to work), they all look out for each other and treat one another like a giant family and they all are so nice to me.  Every time I show up to visit Nancy or them, they all greet me with a cheek kiss, sit and talk to me and ask me if I want to play soccer with them.  On Saturday I showed up, specifically to spend the afternoon playing soccer with them and they were SO excited- they all changed into their soccer jerseys of their favorite teams and went to gather more of their friends to make sure we’d have a solid game.

I love the relationship that Nancy and I have formed.  I show up and right away I am offered a chair and mate.  We sit and talk about everything- sometimes paint our nails, sometimes her friends come to visit and she introduces me to them.  She tells me all about how much she misses her parents (they live in Paraguay still- Nancy moved here about 11 years ago), about her 15 year-old son’s dream to become a lawyer, about her oldest daughter who won’t come back for her little girl, about how much she misses her kids when she goes to her job of cleaning houses 3 days a week.

The other day she said to me, ‘Andrea, I usually don’t really like people very quickly- it is hard for me to warm up or feel comfortable with them- but with you, I liked you right away.  I hope you keep coming to visit me.’  With the biggest smile ever, I told her of course I will keep visiting her.  It is a relationship like this that makes everything worth it 🙂

Quinceanera

This past weekend, some of my good friends here invited me to go with them to their friend’s Quinceanera.  A Quinceanera is a girl’s 15th birthday party- it is where her parents officially present her to their social circle as a woman- basically one giant (over 300 guests), all-night party filled with traditions.  (Even if families do not have the money for these parties- they take out loans and pay them back for years.)

Here is the schedule of my night:

6-9pm: Go over to the girls’ house to get ready with them (they are 15 and 16 year old sisters and their 17 year old cousin)- they do my hair and makeup and lend me a dress and earrings to wear.
10pm: The girls’ dad borrows a car to drop us off at the party.  It is at a giant white mansion- outside is a giant yard filled with tables of hors d’oeurvres and drinks
11:30pm: The birthday girl arrives in a new car with a giant bow on top (not that this car is her gift, they just borrowed it from someone to use for the night)- she walks in on a red carpet to the songs ‘I don’t wanna miss a thing’ by Aerosmith and ‘My heart will go on’ from Titanic.  Her 15 closest friends/family give her roses.  Everyone is crying.
12am: Everyone goes in and sits down at assigned tables.  She enters the room walking down a giant staircase in the back.  We are served potato salad to eat while she goes around and takes a photo with each table.
1am: We watch 2 videos of her.  One filled with photos of her life up until now.  The other filled with photos that look like senior photo model poses.
1:30am: Everyone claps and chants as 20 servers bring in the dinner (asado- lots of meat).
2am: Father- daughter dance.  Then all the men (friends of the dad and her guy friends) come dance with her.
2:45am: The regular dance begins- all types of dancing, reggaeton-cumbia-music from U.S.
3:30am: We watch another video of her friends/family saying happy birthday and how much they love her.  She gives speeches and gifts out to her best friends, boyfriend, cousins and parents.
4am: All the unmarried girls come pull a long string out of a box she is holding- if you pull out one with a plastic ring on it- you’re the next to get married.
4:15am: Dancing resumes
5am: All the tables are passed out giant bags filled with dress up costumes, masks, noise makers.  The bday girl enters down the stairs again wearing a giant headdress.  Everyone runs to the dance floor to dance absolutely crazy (mosh pitting, getting trampled) to fast Brazilian music.
6am: We receive souvenirs of a photo of her and a candle.  The girls’ dad comes back to pick us up- the sun is now up.
6:30am: Arrive back to their home- sleepover time in a room filled with all of us girls- basically sleep the whole day away.

Video clips of her grand entrance and of us on the dance floor 

I can understand tears

Yesterday I was riding the bus back from a Spanish class I have started taking here two times a week.  A women from my church congregation used to be an English teacher (she is now retired) and she offered to help me work on my grammar and sentence structure so I can speak with more confidence.  It had been a good class that morning, but I still found myself feeling frustrated that after 5 months of being here I still was missing out on some things people were trying to tell me or on some really great conversations I could be having if my Spanish was at a higher level.

I was zoning out thinking about this when I happened to look up and see two women across the bus aisle from me, crying pretty hard.  They had tissues and were comforting each other with light pats on the back, but the tears kept streaming- their faces scrunched up in that way that you can just feel the pain they are going through.

I found myself thinking about the fact that tears are 100% universal.  Everyone, in every corner of the world, feels pain in some shape or form and their response more often than not, is in tears.  I have cried here- my host family has seen me cry.  I have seen many people cry here; I’ve seen a group standing outside of a funeral home crying, a family outside of a hospital crying, my host siblings fighting with each other crying, people at my church praying for another member who is sick crying, a woman telling me about her husband leaving crying.

I don’t need to be fluent in Spanish or any other language for that matter, to understand pain.  And I hope that sometimes, when I am feeling down on myself for not fully understanding a life story that someone here is telling me….that I can remember that just me being here, fully able to empathize with and trying to relate to their pain….maybe that can be enough.

summertime in Argentina

• the week before Christmas, kids get done with school for the summer- very busy week for everyone because each child’s grade has a final ‘Acto’ (play or presentation for the parents) and many kids take a year-end English exam that they have a lot of pressure to pass
• for guys it’s acceptable to take your shirt off about 95% of the time, when inside a house it is the first thing you do
• people love to take their kitchen table and chairs out into the shade in their front lawn or sidewalk and drink mate
• almost every house has some kind of little blow up pool out front/back to sit in
• little kids are wearing just their underwear the majority of the time
• people’s favorite thing to talk about is how hot it is out
• a lot of fruit salad is eaten
• the second you get anywhere you are offered a cold glass of pop or juice
• many families take a 15-day vacation to somewhere along the coast or to the mountains (this year the economy is the worst it has been in years so there are much fewer affordable vacations available to families)
• if you go to the beach you will see a sea of beach umbrellas- almost everyone brings one
• almost all girls ages 13-30sh (sometimes 40) wear a thong swimsuit bottom with their bikini top
• if you go to any public pool they have a nurse on duty and before entering the water you have to have a quick medical exam to ensure you don’t have fungus or lice- many girls wear shower caps while swimming
• people bring giant ping pong paddles and a ball or a game like bocce balls and draw courts into the sand to play on the beach
• they still drink mate all the time, but sometimes people switch it up and have ‘tereré‘- originally from Paraguay, it is the same as mate expect instead of a thermos of hot water they have a thermos of cold water or juice with ice
• riding a packed bus or train when you don’t know who’s sweat just dripped on your face- not the most fun thing
• people eat ice cream on the daily
• frequently people bring camping tents to the beach or picnic areas and set that up to take naps in or escape the sun
• many teenagers become completely nocturnal- going out all night til 7 or 8am with their friends and coming home and sleeping until 5pm
• going outside between 1-4pm continues to be looked at as crazy due to the intenseness of the sun
• Sundays are usually spent having a family picnic somewhere- anywhere you can find grass…maybe even the patch on the side of the highway
• they love summer almost as much as Minnesotans do

Enjoy the journey in My presence

A quote that I am loving from a new devotional book, Jesus Calling by Sarah Young, that I received as a Christmas present (thanks Denise 🙂 ).

“Much, much stress results from your wanting to make things happen before their times have come.  One of the main ways I assert My sovereignty is in the timing of events.  If you want to stay close to Me and do things My way, ask Me to show you the path forward moment by moment.  Instead of dashing headlong toward your goal, let Me set the pace.  Slow down, and enjoy the journey in My presence.”

Feliz Cumple!!

24 years old.

I remember last year on my 23rd birthday…I was in a hotel room in downtown Chicago surrounded by all of my best girl friends from college- we were having a weekend reunion visiting one of our friends who had moved to Chitown.  It is classic of these reunions for everyone to give a life update on ‘what is new’ and what is the current ‘life plan’…I remember sitting there telling them that next year I was going to make sure I was in South America.  I didn’t know where yet, but I was going to be living there.

Well here I am, just celebrated my 24th birthday in Argentina.  It was a birthday like I had never had before.  For one, it was 90 degrees…typically my birthday parties are moved from an outdoor skating or sledding party to an inside slumber party due to a windchill of 20 below 0.  This year I spent the day outside, over in a neighborhood that is near one of the comedors (dining halls for kids to come get free meals) that I work at.  I sat and chatted with a mom I hadn’t met before- I have spent many nights hanging out with her two sons at the comedor, I played soccer with a big group of boys and drank terere (mate with cold water or juice instead of hot water) with the older boys.  When they found out it was my birthday they were SO excited, they all gave me birthday hugs and kisses, cranked the music so we could have a ‘fiesta’ and brought me presents (a pink bracelet one of them had in their house and a little 5 year old boy brought me a rock he found).  That night I could tell my host parents were feeling a little bad that my host siblings and relatives were all out of town for a vacation, so they went out of their way to make the night special for me.  They invited some of our family friends over, made tons of pizzas (especially bought bacon for me which we Never have), our friend made me a delicious mocha coffee flavor cake (she also knows I Love coffee flavor), and they gave me a pair of sandals and a side purse because they knew that both my sandals and purse had recently broken.

I received so many amazing messages from people back home, was able to Skype with my parents, sisters, boyfriend and besties, and was treated so amazingly by everyone here.  I was so nervous going into this holiday season of Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and my birthday…thinking it would just be too painfully hard to be away from everything…but it has surprised me in so many ways.  Don’t get me wrong, I miss everyone so much, but my host communities here have been so so great to me and it has really caused me to rely on them and just allow myself to be loved on- which takes a level of vulnerability that is sometimes hard for me.

A visitor

Last week my boyfriend, Brady, had the opportunity to fly  from Minnesota to the other side of the world and experience a few days of my new life here in Argentina.  Yes, it was a wonderful reunion after 5 months of not seeing each other, but to me especially it was even more than this.  It was unreal to watch how my host family went through the entire process with me- from counting down the days until he was getting here, to going out of their way to pick him up and drop him off at the airport, and while he was here truly treating this complete stranger like he was a part of the family.

I have been continuously impressed this year with how my host family has done such an amazing job at recognizing that even though I love being here and want to be here, I did indeed leave an entire life full of people I love back home.  They are always asking me how my family is (they know them each by name, when their birthdays are (we always make videos of us singing ‘happy birthday’ to send them), where they work/go to school, they even know how much my dad hates the Packers and love to talk about making fun of him), they love to say hi to my friends on Skype when I’m chatting with them, and they were always bringing up Brady as if they knew him.  So I should not have expected any different for when Brady arrived here.

Brady’s visit to my world here was a whirlwind of experiencing the different walking, running, train, bus, and metro routes I take, visiting my host grandparents house, meals with my host family, trying the delicious ice cream here, attending a church service at my church San Pablo and getting to know the congregation members over coffee, going to a picnic asado (bbq) with my host family, relatives and friends and trying mate for the first time.

One experience that will forever stick out to me is when I brought him to a family’s house that I spend a lot of time with- I met them through Mision Emanuel.  They are a family that has continuously shown me so much love here- a mom, dad, 3 daughters, one girl cousin, and 3 of the girls’ boyfriends.  All of them, except the boyfriends, live in a 2 bedroom home near the Mision and whenever I come over they treat me as if I’m one of their daughters.  It was so fun to watch the dad try to have some ‘man talks’ with Brady- both of them trying to understand each other’s English and Spanish with a little translation help from me, they wanted to ask us a million questions about how we met, how distance is going and wanted to hear more about Minnesota, they showed Brady lots of old family photos, the dad played guitar for us, they got us snacks and wanted to share beer and mate with Brady- it was just a given for them to instantly take him.

It is an amazing thing to watch your two worlds collide.  Especially to watch each side struggle through the language and cultural barriers just because they have this middle ground in common- me.  I am feeling so blessed that I had the opportunity to show my life here to someone back home and that my life here was able to meet a piece of my life back home 🙂