Week 11: Spring Concert!

I was lucky enough to be invited to my country coordinator's children's spring concert this past weekend.  I had a great time getting to see the kids preform and enjoy themselves.  It was also interesting to see how a private bilingual school operates in Argentina. 

In Argentina it is very common to find bilingual or even trilingual schools.  In the community that I live in there are at least three schools close to me that include German, English, and Spanish in their academic programs.  The Argentine public schools only have half days of school due to lack of resources such as funding, teachers, etc.  Due to this there are many private schools and they are mostly bilingual; having classes all in Spanish in the morning and the afternoon classes all in English.

As a potential future parent I would love to be able to find so many bilingual schools around.  To me, at least where I live, it is not common to find private bilingual schools.  Most of the middle to upper class citizens can speak more than one language in Argentina.  My coordinator's kids can speak flawless Spanish and at the same time are able to maintain perfect English.  It is interesting to note some of the differences between Argentine and American education systems.  I could go a lot deeper into discussion of the positives and negatives of both systems but I will just leave you with some cute pictures of the concert instead :)

The concert's theme was "save the environment."  Each class had special costumes relating to topics such as: air pollution, water pollution, and noise pollution, and danced a coordinated dance they planned.   

Emily is in the purple, the girls in her class were dressed up as a rainbow.

Matt was part of a pollution clean up crew of the ocean as his costume

Emily dancing her part

 
 

Week 10: Church Weekend Conference and San Telmo

This past weekend I spent the whole weekend at a conference of the IELU. The main idea of the conference was to discuss service that is happening in the church, define some abstract aspects of what service means within the church, and how we can continue to include it in our church's plans for the future.

It was a fun weekend because it was nice to have a change from the normal schedule and I got to see 4 of the other 5 volunteers (3 of which I have not seen since September orientation). People can from all over for this weekend event. Some traveled over 18 hours by bus.

Opening worship...washing of the feet. We discussed this theme/idea throughout the conference and how it relates to service.

During the seminar

Many churches gave presentations on what they are doing that involves service in their congregations.


My discussion group

After the seminar, Emily (other volunteer that lives near me) came to my apartment and we traveled into the center on Monday to visit the barrio of San Telmo. It is a very old neighborhood that still has many of the fancy Gothic-style houses from the late 1800s. It is now know for its cute antique shops and a antique fair on Sundays.

Emily enjoying our walk around the barrio


One of the cool buildings


One of the streets with rain clouds forming in the sky

Close up of building facade

Week 10: Church Celebration with Tango and Belly Dancers

I had the opportunity to celebrate another semi-nearby Lutheran Church's 50th anniversary on Sunday.  This is a larger church than the one that I am working with and it was interesting to see how a bigger Lutheran church functions in Argentina.  

The Lutheran Church in Argentina (United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Argentina and Uruguay (IELU)) is small compared to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) (Main church my home church is a part of) in the US so it feels like a very close group.  The IELU is connected to and is a sister church to the ELCA.  Around Buenos Aires there are only about 2 handfuls of Lutheran churches connected with the IELU so I am getting to know some of the main people involved with the church. 

I guess one interesting thing that has been happening to me while in Argentina is that no one really explains things to me.  This trip to the other church is a great example of this.  The only thing I knew going into this little excursion was that we were going to a church's 50th anniversary celebration of its existence that included lunch.  I had no idea how we were traveling there, how long the trip would take, what time anything was happening, if I needed to pay for my meal or what the meal even was.  In the past I would have been trying to find out all the answers to these questions but now I have learned to just go with it.  I find the little surprises to be fun...it makes it more of an adventure.  So we ended up traveling by bus to a train stop to catch the train to the location of the church.  Then we walked an odd number of blocks arriving around 1 hour later at the church.  

This is Allen (president of the IELU) preaching at the celebration service

After traveling to get to the church in sweltering heat, we sat in on a very interesting service filled with people and music.  There was live music consisting of a guitar, an accordion, drums, among other things (I was in the back and could not see the musicians) that I really enjoyed.  The service ended up lasting from 11am to 1:30pm...I have never been in a service that long it was crazy!  I came with youth from my church and they we SO antsy (and maybe I was a bit too...it was really warm and difficult to hear). 

During the service

Tango dancers at the celebration lunch

So after the LONG but enjoyable service everyone flocked to the gym of the church's school (or what I assumed was their school?).  It seemed to me that a lot of people appeared out of thin air and it was sort of a struggle to find a table.  After establishing "our" table we decided that we needed to figure out how to get our food.  As the youth hung out at our table we went to figure out how to get tickets and eventually our food.  

Turned out that we had to wait in this INSANELY long line to get tickets.  Then once we got the tickets we had to wait in an equally as insanely long line.  Also we found out that we had to rent eating utensils and pay extra for drinks.  It was SO hot in the gym and I was starving so waiting in the lines was a difficult task but in the end we did it and had some delicious chicken and empanadas with veggies.  Turned out that they had some interesting entertainment planned.

Band of young boys (I know at least one of them is a member at the church that was celebrating its anniversary) to warm up the crowd. 

Our table

Fake cakes for decorations (I wished they would have been real...I love cake)

Traditional Argentine Dance and after this there were belly dancers but I did not get a good picture of them (sorry)

After the celebration we decided to treat the kids to ice cream because it was so hot.  We went to a local ice cream shop and shared a huge tub of ice cream.  Man was it good! 

Enjoying our ice cream before heading home

A local dog also enjoying ice cream :)

Week Nine: Visit to Tigre

On Monday November 1st, Emily (other volunteer) and I got to travel to Tigre a city about one hour North of the city and we had quit an adventure!  Tigre is a delta region full of mazes of lush green islands separated by rivers and streams.  The area has an interesting feel to it.  To me, it felt like a mixture between the Florida everglades and a tropical jungle.  It has become a place where many Buenos Aires citizens escape to during the summer.  We took the train and then got tickets to take a boat to one of the many little islands.  We ended up going to the island of Tres Bocas.

So basically we had no idea where we were going when we got to the Island.  When we got off the boat a nice lady was standing there and she handed us a map of the island with a trail that circled the island.  She made it sound like it was a small trail that would not take a long time to complete.  Emily and I decided that we would walk around this path and then return to the city center.  Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into as you will see.

Old ships we passed on our boat trip to Tres Bocas

Man was the water brown!

The start of the path on the island, not many people were around.

We found this cute chapel and decided to eat our bag lunches on its porch

Saw lots of little streams like this one

This is the type of boat we traveled on

Example of one of the nice summer homes on the island that we passed on our path.

This is where the path started to get interesting.  We saw that the path turned into a nature trail of sorts and we were excited to see some nature.

This part of the trail was really like a hike, which we were not expecting.  And we could tell that not many people had been on it.  It was difficult to know what way to go because there were no trail markers.  At one point we had to cross one of the little water ways without a bridge! I found some trees we could use to cross!  Man was it fun!  Here is a picture of one of the many little man-made bridges we used on the trail.

View from the trail

View from the trail

The trail :)

So after feeling lost in the woods for a while, we found our way back to the residential area.  The map was really difficult to follow and we really had no idea how to get back to the boat dock.  We had also at this point been walking for 2 hours straight (a lot longer than we thought the trail would be haha).  We continued walking and many of the locals tried to give us directions and one local told us to keep going straight and not cross the bridge.  We ended up walking for another 1/2 hour before the pathway stopped altogether.  A man there told us that we should have crossed at the bridge...so we walked back and crossed the bridge finding the boat dock just around the corner of trees.

After our long but fun day at Tigre we decided to make empanadas

They turned out well (maybe a little dry but now we know) for our first try!

Overall it was a fun day and man did we sleep well that night!