Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

This morning we met one of our friends, Candy, to help her make her video which will go with her application to be an Au Pair for a family in the US next year. We spent the morning in the park with her before starting to prepare for English Talk.

Today's theme in English Talk was "Summer"! We played beach(ball) volleyball, showed a clip from the "Parent Trap" and chatted about summer activities. At the end we sent the boys out to the patio to play a guys-only volleyball game "because they play so much better than us", we said. Meanwhile, the girls ran up to the balcony to where we had prepared about 20 water balloons and with the cheer "Girls Rule, Boys Drool" we pelted them down on our unsuspecting victims (the photo above is the guys' attempt at revenge).

Monday, November 29th, 2010

Today we FINALLY caught up on Like a Sun Cat...as shown by the last 24 new posts. It was practically an all-day effort. I know Joy's mom,Steph's dad and our 3 other Followers must have been thrilled:-)

Sunday, November 28th, 2010

Today we started off at midnight with 7 of us packed into a cab (8 with the cab driver) singing Happy Birthday to Noe, who turned 23 today! We improvised with matches into a cracker for her first "birthday cake", and look forward to celebrating with her officially next weekend.

Saturday, November 27th, 2010

Today we celebrated Thanksgiving with our house mates with a feast filled with stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, macaroni corn casserole, rolls, fruit salad, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, pumpkin bread, chicken (ahem turkey is hard to find and way overpriced), and a whole host of desserts (apple pie, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake...)!!! Needless to say, it was amazing. After sitting down for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, we had friends over to share in the food and traditions. We spent the day playing signs (yes, we brought it to Argentina!), jamming out on guitars, playing cards, having awesome conversation and of course eating entirely too much food. The party only ended when we lost power due to a thunder storm.

Friday, November 26th, 2010

Today we woke up and spent the vast majority of the day in the kitchen. Steph cooked 3 apple pies (that's 25 apples peeled, cored and cut) in preparation for tomorrow's Thanksgiving Day feast at the house, and Joy cooked a delicious empanada lunch.

This evening after the Luz Urbana meeting we got together with friends to eat pizza on the rooftop, hang out and watch a movie. Here are some of the chefs...well really the expert chef Cris along with Cacho and Pablo, who were helping, or "helping" :)

Thursday, November 25th, 2010

We spent another beautiful Thursday afternoon in the park next to the water, and this time our friend Valen came to hang out!

Tonight we had our 4th week of English Talk: Charla Espiritual in Bar Classics, with a lot of new faces, a few new songs, and a discussion by David on how salvation = Jesus + nothing. Awesome day, amazing night.

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010

Today we spent the afternoon planning at Luz Urbana and then met some of our English Talk girls at Buen Pastor for some terere, English studying (they all have finals coming up), and discussions about life. Beautiful friends in a beautiful place :)

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

Today was perhaps the most exciting English Talk to date, with ENGLISH TALK KARAOKE! We were Kerri and Kimmy, the "Koolest Karaoke Kouple" that ever lived. Most of the people sang at least one song and everyone had fun jamming out to Coldplay, Avril Lavigne, Queen, and many others!

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

Today we took a break from pizza Monday and Steph cooked a house favorite, milanesas! Our teammate Ezequiel took the heart-shaped one, which is hopefully foretelling of an upcoming engagement in his life.

Sunday, November 21st, 2010

Today on our way to Alpha it was raining hard and the streets were flooding. We waded through knee-deep puddles on street corners to make our way up to Luz Urbana from the bus stop. On our way down the street we looked up and saw 2 beautiful rainbows! By the time the camera came out the top one was disappearing, but it was an awesome reminder of grace over our lives.

Saturday, November 20th, 2010

Coming off of 2 hours of sleep, we spent all morning/early afternoon making empanadas to sell in order to raise money for Luz Urbana. The best part of the morning? Wearing these awesome hats.

Later tonight we finally saw....HARRY POTTER 7. Well, the first part anyways. It turns out the 2nd part isn't coming out until July! Thankfully, Lord willing, we'll still be here in Córdoba at that time, and are already VERY excited for the great things July will bring.

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Tonight we went over to our friend Dani's house for a pajama party with 17 of the girls from the Alpha course! We arrived late after our meeting at 11:30, but, as this is Argentina, we were still early for dinner, and for what would still be several hours of hanging out. Though some of the girls didn't sleep at all until daybreak, we had to awake at 6am in order to taxi across town and make empanadas for a fundraiser. Needless to say, one (or both) of us was more than reluctant to awake.

Thursday, November 18th, 2010

Today we spent anotherThursday afternoon (our free day!) at the park. We played cards, the guitar, drank mate, and then played a little 3v3 soccer match. The only hitch in the day was when a misdirected pass sent the soccer ball into the middle of one of the ponds. Thankfully one of our friends is a swimmer, and braved the disease-filled waters for several seconds to retrieve the ball.

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

Today we got together to watch the Argentina vs. Brazil soccer match at David's house, and afterwards went to Buen Pastor to meet people. As always, the Martin guitar, this time along with our friends Javier (from Argentina) and Heiner (from Germany), rounded out a great team.

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

Today we spent the morning at the Facultad de Ciencias Economicas (School of Econ), and this picture is proof of the reason that Joy and I are not currently supposed to be in college.

We had a special English Talk today because 2 of the most popular Argentinian club teams were playing in the Boca/River soccer match, so we took everyone to a bar and watched the game together. Here are Joy and I with Mariah, a girl who was down from TX serving for a week with her husband, and Nati, one of the girls who comes regularly to English Talk.

Monday, November 15th, 2010

Today was a non-pizza Monday, but this day was spent feeling such a lack, we made a gourmet, fully-loaded pizza for lunch the next day at Luz Urbana.

Sunday, November 14th, 2010

Today was the last official day of the Alpha Course! We celebrated with time together, champagne, and of course, a pillow fight directly after this group picture. Thankfully we'll actually be continuing to meet for several more weeks to grow together as a group and explore more about what God says through his Word.

Saturday, November 13th, 2010

Today we started out our morning with some quiet time with God at the Cultural Center. We're so thankful to have the patio to enjoy God's goodness while getting some fresh air.

Friday, November 12th, 2010

Today we went to El Refugio and helped a couple high school girls with English. They had to make a poster for an invented movie with their favorite actors in English. We had fun getting to help them and get to know them, even though English turns out not to be their favorite subject :-)

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

We spent the afternoon today at el Parque Sarmiento and our mate, which we bought several weeks ago, was finally inaugurated and used for the first time with terere (juice based cold herb drink). We learned Truco (a popular Argentinian card game), taught Texas Hold 'Em, and enjoyed spending a relaxing afternoon outside.

Wednesday, November 10th, 2010

Today we went to Buen Pastor with some chicas and enjoyed the weather, some mate and some music. Although the grass was being fertilized and was roped off from the public, we thought that if we stayed on the cement part but surrounded by grass we could enjoy the best of both worlds. We were proved wrong when a nice but passive aggressive worker had us move and then not-so-subtley roped off the area where we ended up sitting (as shown in the picture). Meanwhile, Marianela showed us her awesome music skillz with a guitar and her beautiful voice.

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

Today at English Talk we talked about work and jobs. To finish off the session, we played a typical work game of paper ball basketball in teams. After a sudden death shoot out, a spontaneous game of paper ball dodge ball commenced. It was awesome.

Monday, November 8th, 2010

Today was a typical Monday of English/Spanish lessons, pizza for lunch, catching up on communication in the afternoon and taking part in our prayer meeting at night. We were a couple of tired sun cats once again.

Sunday, November 7th, 2010

Today we spent part of our day escaping the heat in the Patio Olmos shopping mall. While sitting in the food court we were shocked to see a man to our left holding a GUN at his table. He looked like he was either cleaning it or preparing to load it, and we snapped a picture before the massacre began. Thankfully, after more careful observation, we realized the gun was, in fact, only a toy.

Later on tonight after Alpha a group of us went out to celebrate Rodrigo's birthday. Here's a (tame) example of how cariñoso (loving) Argentine men are to each other :) Feliz Cumple, Rodrigo!

Saturday, November 6th, 2010

Tonight we invited a group of our friends over to the house for an outdoor movie night! We brought out mattresses, beds, and projected "Slumdog Millionaire" up on the white wall of our patio. With 4 pizzas, homeade chocolate peanut butter fudge, a little guitar and soccer on the side, it was an awesome night that is sure to be repeated many times this summer.

Friday, November 5th, 2010

Today we had our third official Luz Urbana event. The Gospel Choir "Coro en Vivo" came to perform at Luz Urbana and rocked the house.

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

Today we held our first meeting for the five-week series of English Talk Versión Logos, A Spiritual Chat. We got together in a local bar in and had the entire upstairs to ourselves to eat, hang out, do some worship songs (in English) and have a talk about who Jesus is. Our friend, David, led the discussion and threw out a lot of good things to think about. We are stoked to keep hanging out with these friends and see how the rest of the series goes!

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Today we went to the Facultad de Lenguas in the morning and hung out with a few of our friends there...most classes in this facultad are now over and all the students are finishing up their parciales (final regular term exams), make-up exams, and starting to prepare for their finals, which begin in late November/early December.

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

Today we had another epic English Talk with the popular theme of FOOD. We played food pictionary, watched some relevant food video clips from "Friends" and "Hook", chatted about our best and worst food experiences, and then finished off the night with a classic American food game: Chubby Bunny. We had four valiant competitors, one from each chat group. This picture shows just two of these fierce food warriors as they struggled through the mental challenge of stuffing as many marshmallows into you mouth and uttering the phrase, "chubby bunny".