Sunday, October 31st, 2010

Today, while America celebrated Halloween, we celebrated our friend's birthday! Nelson turned 23 and we got to share in the celebration with other friends and family. Here is Nelson with his mom and grandma.

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

Steph and Joy (but mainly Steph) made an awesome lunch today at the Cultural Center. The highlight was the rare grated mozzarella and cheddar cheese, which we spotted at the grocery store. As demonstrated by Steph's apron, it seems at least one of us is becoming more domesticated here in Argentina. Quote of the day: "Is it bad when you want to make juice?"

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

Today we enjoyed another glorious Thursday which is our free day every week. We saw the facebook movie "Red Social" at the theater, got ice cream and hung out at Buen Pastor, a beautiful area with fountains and lots of benches, to play cards and guitar with some of our friends, enjoying the beautiful afternoon. Due to a lack of space we were sitting on some grass that may have been partitioned off with caution tape, and chaos ensued when the grass started getting hurled around by our mischievous male companions.

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Today was el censo/the census in Argentina, which meant that nearly everything was closed down for the entire day and people have to stay inside their homes until the census workers come by in person, which could be at 8am or could be at 4pm.

We meandered out into the deserted streets during the afternoon to meet up with our new friend Candy from the university. We hung out in the park, and afterwards stopped for yogurt on our way back to the bus. Yogurt here is most often sold in bags rather than cups, and consequently is very easy to spill when you set an open bag of yogurt down on the sidewalk without any support. Steph, normally the more graceful one, found this out the hard way.

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

Today our theme at English Talk was "When I was a kid..." We discussed stories from childhood, showed a clip from "Little Rascals" (the epic mis-communicated love letter from Alfalfa to Darla), and of course, played an energetic round of Limbo to close out our time.

Monday, October 25th, 2010

Today we had a case of the Mondays. For Steph, this meant she had a nice little siesta. For Joy, this meant she couldn't stop laughing and feeling "empathy butterflies." We are ready for Tuesday.

Sunday, October 24th, 2010

Today was the Alpha Course Picnic! It was a blast. But let's just say our American genes couldn't be disguised this morning as we arrived 2 hours before everyone else. To make matters worse, it was pouring at the time. Thankfully we had a friendly feral dog to keep us company. Later in the day we experienced our first Murga, a dance and festival inspired by the liberation of African Americans from slavery. Here's Steph at the Murga with friends, left to right: Noe R, Noe A, Steph and Mely!

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010

What better way to spend a Saturday night than enjoying three of our favorite things: wine, chocolate and Bananagrams. If you haven't played Bananagrams with us in the last three months, we've made the game a little more interesting. We've added a musical challenge to the end of each round. You'll have to join us in a round to find out what that means.

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

Today was Joy's day to cook. Lovely. Unbeknown to her, she prepared "hígado" or liver. Not until everyone had a mouth full of the strange-tasting meat did they discover the meat's true identity. As Steph and Joy often say, Joy would rue the day she decided to be adventurous with the meat.

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

After 7 weeks of great anticipation, we finally have a CELL PHONE!! Steph also has an alarm clock again. But perhaps the most exciting feature of the little guy is the radio. Apparently this is basic for all cell phones here, but we still think it's pretty darn cool.

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

We started out this morning arriving early to the Cultural Center to spend time with God before starting our workday. It's amazing to have a time of peace amongst the natural beauty, even within a bustling city like Córdoba.

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Today marked our third week of English Talk!! We chose to do a music theme complete with running charades, a music video montage, different chat groups about music, and a variation of musical chairs. Here are some of our new friends, left to right: Heather (our teammate and house mate from Nebraska), Denise, Agustin, Larisa, and Steph.

Monday, October 18th, 2010

Today Steph and Joy struggled to wake up after the crazy weekend full of BIRTHDAY ADRENALINE!!! The alarm clock just wasn't enough. Our language classes started a tad late...even for Argentinian standards.

Sunday, October 17th, 2010

Today, Steph's actual birthday, we hung out with friends after Alpha Course at a nearby bar. Love, life and philosophy were shared. But mainly peanuts.

Saturday, October 16th, 2010

Today we celebrated Steph's birthday!! Joy and new Argentinian friends planned an amazing party in the plaza for Steph filled with Argentinian Trivia or Dare, a delicious cake, and fun with friends. Definitely the best birthday in a long time!

Friday, October 15th, 2010

Today we spent the afternoon preparing for English Talk and making our first new video in several weeks (due to technical difficulties and robberies). In the middle of this video a spider appeared on the ceiling, ready to drop at any moment. Despite how fearful both girls were, Joy would not allow Steph to leave the shot in order to kill the spider. Thankfully, after several minutes of sitting like this in terror, our roommate Sharayah came in and killed the spider for us.

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

Today Joy received a care package from her family, which among other things contained some of her favorite treats: peanut butter granola bars, peanut butter m&m's, pretzel m&m's and candy corn! Unfortunately we found out some bad news while picking it up at the city post office: for any package we receive, we have to pay a fee of 50% of the listed content cost . Boo. But yay for family and American goodies!

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

So we forgot to take a picture today. Instead we wanted to introduce a good friend of ours here in Córdoba: Grido. Grido is everyone's friend really. Grido is "that guy" that gives you amazing ice cream for really cheap whenever and wherever you want it. There are probably 50 Grido's shops in all in Córdoba. Favorite flavor (of the week at least): Chocolate Suiza, which is chocolate with dulce de leche. Riquísimo :-)

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

Today was our second meeting of English Talk at the Cultural Center! English Talk is for anyone who's interested in learning English to come, learn, play games, and have a chance to practice conversation. Every Tuesday we have a different theme to focus on and to teach our favorite word "awkward" we show a different Awkward Moment video clip each week.

Monday, October 11th, 2010

Today we celebrated the birthday of one of our new friends from the OM course, Jonaton, as he turned 26! We made this baller honey cake, which we were nervous about at first but ended up coming out really...sweet.

Sunday, October 10th, 2010

We spent most of Sunday at Iglesia Crisol helping with and participating in OM's course for people considering serving in international missions. Here is our friend, Carol, taking a picture of our beautiful friend/housemate, Heather, during an afternoon break.

Saturday, October 9th, 2010

We had an amazing night celebrating with our friend, Noe, on her birthday! Nightlife in Argentina starts after midnight and ends when the sun comes up. We got home at 6:30 AM.

Friday, October 8th, 2010

This afternoon we went out to one of the city's awesome tourist spots called Buen Pastor. A lot of people go to share mate and hang out, so we decided we'd bring Steph's guitar to play and chat. As we were singing a Taylor Swift song, a group of ~25 middle school-aged girls suddenly materialized to listen, surrounding us! We got to talk with them and learned they were here on a field trip just for the day. We talked a bit, played a few more songs and got to share some real life stuff-all in Spanish! It was awesome. Also we kind of felt like rock stars.

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

Oh Thursday...what a gorgeous day! We spent our free day for the week on our first excursion outside of the city to visit las sierras where we enjoyed some fresh air and hiked up one of the hills. On our run back down the hill, we stumbled across the carcass of a dead horse. We have no suspects yet, although we did see a few suspicious-looking squirrels along the trail. We won't stop until this mystery is solved.

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

Today we got to check out a sweet residence house near the university campus-here's the main hall on the first floor. This place was pretty darn sweet...there was an entire little house out back just for asados (grilling out Argentinian-style)!!

Monday, October 4th, 2010

Every Monday we have Spanish class and teach English with our teammate, Ezequiel. What better way to learn a language than with the Word of God in bilingual form?!

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

Fourth week of Alpha Course this week. WOOOOO!!! The first picture sums up the message and discussion from tonight. In reference to God's desire to have a relationship with us, the slide says, "Dad tells you: I love you."

After Alpha we hung out with some of our friends again and learned an important cultural "truth" (spoken by a young Argentinian man): "Flowers do not play football." And by flowers, he means women. And by football, he means soccer. Stephanie was not pleased.

Saturday, October 2nd, 2010

Tonight marks our first big event at the Cultural Center. The band "Testigo" played. Some of our popcorn was eaten. Good conversation was had. We're stoked to do it again!

Friday, October 1st, 2010

Today we spent the vast majority of our day brainstorming about how to serve mass quantities of popcorn for the big event tomorrow. With 2 laborers, 1 pair of scissors, 9 large pieces of paper, 1 large roll of tape, and 4.5 hours later, we came up with our solution: 152 handy dandy little cones!