Daily life

The usual group. It’s great, I just happen to make friends with the one group that sits in the very front row for church, or concerts, or pretty much anything….. yay, just like home!

The signs are just fun here, always something different than home.

Random birthday party, works great to have a friend of a friend of a friend… I’ve been to so many birthday parties since I’ve been here.

Everyone at the fountain in the town park

Bus trip to Parana, Mateo fell asleep, as usual

We all took the day to go shopping, Parana is the closet city (not counting the small towns nearby), about an hour away by bus.

Not all of us are vegetarians…

Good ol’ Wal*Mart. The only new addition, there’s a mate aisle instead of a coffee aisle

…and of course we had to test out the patio furniture

We walked to the river to enjoy our ice cream, but we had to go through the bad part of town. Gabby told us, “no habla fuerte, y no habla ingles” … basically, keep your mouth shut so it’s not obvious we’re foreigners.

Enjoying terere at the bus station, since we kinda missed our bus by like 5 minutes… oh well, it’s Argentina, nobody is really ever in a hurry to get anywhere

This is the way we do potluck, grab a tray from the comedor, and just kinda carry it around town

Enjoying lunch at Gabby’s house

Group picture afterwards…

…and we’re all ready for a siesta

Outside the Sanitorio (the hospital), there’s a big group that goes there every Sabbath after church to sing to the patients

Did I mention they love taking pictures here?

Ok, ok, pine trees are much easier to climb!

Gotta have some random scenery pictures in there.

Gisel’s birthday party

“Oh, if only I could speak Spanish…”

Funny story… so we walked all the way across town to go check out a bike in our ongoing quest to find bicycles for us hombres… this one sounded promising, good price, the lady was nice, she goes into the other room and returns a short while later with….. and exercise bike. Ahhh… that’s what fija means! Good to know.

Ok, I’d rather climb the palm tree!

Success… at least for two of us… or the two of them rather. Mateo spent some money, got a new one, Dustin went for the rústico effort, got an old hooptie, but guess who has to stress about locking their’s up, not Dustin…. who would steal his??

The People

So it’s not quite a tropical paradise, but there have been some parrot sightings on the front lawn of the library. I saw a small flock of them fly over my head the other day while I was basking under a palm tree!

Everything’s a little different here.

I guess long dresses aren’t part of the culture here.

Here we have all the Americans gathering together to try to find the best Wifi signal to communticate back home… this particular time, we found a room in the library… a bit harder to ask if we can use it, since we don’t have a clue of what the guy was saying… everything is quite the adventure around here!

Campus wildlife… lots of birds frequent the library lawn

Some people I met after the concert. I’m terrible with names, especially now that they are in a different language.

This is Paula. People really look American here. I guess I just had this stereotypical idea that everyone south of Texas looked Mexican… guess I need to get out more. Some of our group from the US look more Hispanic than the locals do.

Church outside, we walked a mile or so to the place where the first SDA service in South America was held 110 years ago, another reason for a holiday… they like those here.

Walking was fun, but it was more fun to hitch a ride back from some random people with a pickup truck. What a great way to meet new people!

This is Teo, Matt’s roommate (companiero de pieza). He’s from Brazil.

So people like to take pictures here. They really get into it.

One of the rarities of the caf, a huge tub of parmesan cheese

It’s pretty easy to make friends here…

We went to Giselle’s house (everyone calls her She-she), had some fellowship, and snacks, of course!

How ironic, we played Uno…

…then off to the amphitheater for the Mariachi concert.

Matt and Sheshe

So here’s the group I’ve been hanging out with all the time, clockwise from the empty seat: Gabby, Sheshe, Romi,, Vevi, Eric, Judeet, Dustin (US), Erica, and Matt (US – now Mateo)

Posing in front of one of the beautiful flowering trees

Dia del Estudiante – Student Day, …and another excuse for a holiday. Lots of games and fun…and torta (cake). We were out playing some volleyball

Metagol – AKA foosball…they really like that here. Me and Gabby were team Avestruz (ostrich).

Fran – met her where we meet most of our friends, in the comedor (caf)

Ganadores – the winners

What party is complete without a bounce castle?! They had a trampoline too! This is Teo beating Mateo

Not sure what we were doing or why, but that usually makes for some good pictures!

Did I mention they like to take pictures here?

A couple of new faces, Marcella and Jason.

The day was very exhausting. There’s only one solution to that problem here in Argentina…

That’s right, a Siesta!!

And a refreshing cup of Mate.

So that’s one of the big customs here, mate, it’s this herbal tea kinda stuff, pass it around, everyone drinks from the same straw, it’s metal, with a special filter thing at the bottom.

A few different ways to drink it: hot (which I hear is pretty bitter) or with juice, like apple juice, good stuff. It just goes round and round, supposed to be a symbol of togetherness or something.

So it turns out they are just as immature here as we are back at SAU. Shananigans I tell ya!

Awwww, que linda!

Vevi partaking of some mate. The funny thing is, after our nap, we Americans were the only ones still down. The locals were calling us lazy bums… hey! We’re just trying to fit into the culture. That excuse works great for showing up late for things too, haha.