Navidad en Argentina :)

My goodness...I haven't written on here since before Christmas! Well, it's been a bit of a whirlwind since then, so I guess it's not surprising. I left Argentina a few days after Christmas, spent two weeks at home in California with my family, and then moved across the country to VA to start a new job! I thought I'd post some pictures from my last couple weeks in South America, just to finish out the trip...

I didn't realize how many I had until I started uploading them...but rather than splitting them into individual posts (and possibly never finishing) I'll just put them all up in one long post - hope you don't mind! :)

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The last day with my sweet girls at the Hogar San Francisco. The white coats are what every elementary child in Argentina (as far as I could tell) wears over their clothes at school. Hence the name - guardapolvos (guard against the dust :)



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I spent a fabulous week staying with the Funes family, some of my favorite people I've ever known: Esteban, Rosario, Carmen, Pedro, Juan, Diego, Clarita, and their parents, Carmen and Carlos.



Las hermanas - Carmen, Rosario, and Clarita



Esteban setting up the Nativity set



Carlos Funes - one of my most favorite people! How can you not love someone who calls you "mi hija" (my daughter), has a voice like Sean Connery, and will sit around chatting with you about Chesterton and Tolkien (but in Spanish) :)



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The little chapel where we met most of our dear friends...many of whom sang in the amazingly talented choir every Sunday...



Santiago, Cruz, and their adorable son, also Santiago (aka Santi)



One last Sunday lunch with the cousins at the Abuelita's house :)



And one last Sunday afternoon by the river...



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I spent my last week there with the Taddei family, which was lovely! Their older daughters, Candelaria (Cande) and Virginia (Virgi) are two of my best friends there, and it was so fun staying with them. Especially over Christmas!



Here is their beautiful family on Christmas Eve



Señor Taddei is a doctor, but their family also owns and runs a little shop (one of the kiosks that are on every street corner in Córdoba)

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Spending Christmas in Argentina was AMAZING!!!!! After a traditional Christmas dinner with the Taddei family (traditional for the northern hemisphere, which made it funny to eat in the middle of blazing hot summer down there! :D ) the family exchanged gifts. I was totally impressed by this, because even though they seemed like a fairly well-to-do family, the parents gave each child one nice gift, AND THAT WAS IT! And they all seemed totally content and delighted with their gift. Such a contrast with the present-opening orgy that is often Christmas in the U.S.! Afterwards we headed to Alta Gracia for midnight Mass. It being summer, the Christmas traditions are a bit different...the fireworks started a bit before midnight, and kept up in a continuous roar for about an hour and a half! The Mass was beautiful, especially the music - I LOVE spanish Christmas carols!!

Then we headed to the Abuela's house (she's the grandma of most of my friends) for a party around 1:30am! - babies, kids, grandparents, priest and all! :) After lots of eating and chatting, all the (45 or so) grandkids gathered to open a gift each from their grandma.



A heap of gifts and grandkids :)

But before they could open their presents, they all sang a bunch of great Christmas carols in Spanish, which were so fun to hear - all totally brand new to my American ears, of course. You forget that Away in a Manger and What Child is This aren't universal when you've only ever spent Christmas in the U.S. ;)

There was a bit of a friendly competition going on between the older grandkids and the younger ones, to see who could sing loudest :D You can probably guess who won... :)



Eventually...like maybe 4 in the morning...we all ended up home in bed.

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After not quite enough sleep :) I got up to make my Christmas present for my friends - frosted, decorated Christmas cookies :) Apparently these are not a common item there, as I had to scour multiple stores just to find some cookie cutters of any kind, and when I presented a plate of them to someone, they looked at me with a rather blank smile and said, "What are these?" Ah, cultural differences... :D

In the evening of Christmas, I got to experience one of the coolest things I have ever seen - the annual Pesebre (Nativity play) put on by all the grandkids. If you're like me, when you hear "Nativity play" you probably picture a bunch of cute kids smiling and stumbling their way through the basics of the Christmas story. This was NOTHING like that - it was incredible!! And hour and a half long, complete with an amazing outdoor set, lights, sound system, music, singing, and a script written by the Abuela, often in beautiful poetry! They started in the Old Testament and went all the way through the prophecies of the Messiah, the Wise Men, Herod, etc, etc.



Isabel y María



My favorite part was when Mary came riding through on a real horse!!!



Los Pastorcitos - the shepherds, played by all the littlest grandchildren - so cute!! :)



Note the super-fun Argentinian accent - I love the Italian lilt! :)



El Pesebre

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All right, that will have to do for now - I've been at this for hours! If I feel inspired, I might post a bit more later :)

¡Feliz Noche Buena! :)

Happy Christmas Eve from Argentina!!! Down here we´re all sweating in the heat of summer, while kids everywhere set off fireworks in the streets - it´s like the Fourth of July :) The funny thing is that the family I´m staying with is playing Christmas music in English...so it sounds just like home (other than the fireworks ;-) )

We´re getting ready to head to midnight Mass, after which all these crazy Argentinians (and me too :P ) will probably stay up half the night celebrating...I can´t believe how late they all stay up here...parties don´t even START until 11:00 or later! The other night I left a birthday party at 3:30, and we left early!...sometimes they stay up till sunrise and beyond! And almost any night, you´ll see little kids (babies on up) out in the streets at eleven or midnight! I don´t really know how they survive...oh, but wait, there´s the siesta! ;-) Around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, everything shuts down and everyone who can heads of to sleep for an hour or two or three...of course I can never sleep, not having taken regular naps since I was 3 :lol:

Tomorrow, we´ll all head to the house of the Abuela of most of my friends (they are 45 cousins in total plus the great-grandkids, plus all the friends who can possibly go) for a Pesebre (living Nativity play). Apperently it´s fabulous, with costumes and music, and a script 25 pages long... I´m really excited to see it, after hearing so much about it for the past 2 months :-D

Then...two days after Christmas, it´s home again to the States! I´m finally really excited to head home...it took me 4 months, but I finally really miss my own country...and speaking English...and friends and family...and so many other things there... Just three days more!!! :-D But DANG I´m going to miss so many things here too...and all the wonderful friends I´ve made here...and all the things I love about Argentinian culture... Well, you can´t have everything good in one place all at once, or if you did, it would just mean you´d already died and gone to heaven, wouldn´t it? ;-)

Alright, I´m off!

Love to you all!! Have a BEAUTIFUL Feast of Our Lord´s birth!!

Lots of love,
Genevieve

¡¡¡GRACIAS A DIOS!!!

I´m SO GLAD!!! A change of plans (and tickets) and I AM going to be able to stay here a bit longer, through Christmas! Though I was excited to be heading home, I was beyond the verge of tears at the thought of leaving so soon and suddenly...a week and a half more will be perfect, I think! And Christmas here, too! I´m so SO glad!!

For those of you who were kept awake at night by the excitement of seeing me in a couple of days :D ...well, can you handle a few more sleepless nights ?? :D I´ll be home in a week and a half!

Love to you all!!

¡Hasta Luego, Argentina!

Sigh...Well, it looks like this will be my last post from Argentina :-( It seems I will be coming home a bit early...or rather, coming home as originally planned, in three short days! I worked on changing my ticket, but decided it would be better if I just headed home now. So I will be leaving Argentina behind, a little sooner that I had thought...But this will just mean that I have to come back sooner, no?

When I can, I´ll write a bit more about my last week or two here...

Ah, farewell, my Argentina!! (not to be melodramatic or anything! :)

For those of you in California or Virginia, I´ll be seeing you SOON!!!!!! :) :) :)

Rejoice with me!! :) :)

You might have noticed a change in the title of my blog...I just discovered a MUCH more beautiful word for Dawn in Spanish...Aurora...so much more lovely! :)

My goodness, a lot has happened in the past week or two! When my family traveled on to Chile and southern Argentina, I decided to stay here longer to volunteer. But I´ve been in a bit of a flurry trying to decide how long I would stay for, and what I would be doing afterwards, and then...I was offered a job at my DREAM school, a Catholic Montessori school in northern Virginia! So perfect! So I´ve decided to stay on an extra two weeks, until the beginning of January, and then head home to quickly pack and make my way across the country in time to start work in the middle of January! Who would have thought?! I am amazed by just how perfectly God has worked everything out for me! The one thing that makes me sad is having to leave Argentina so soon! But I hope, hope, hope that God will bring me back some day! And I do still have a month left here. I´ll be leaving the home for girls this Friday, as they will go to stay with relatives or foster families for Christmas. But I´ve found another place to volunteer for the rest of my time here, a home for babies up to age 4 in the city of Córdoba. Some friends have invited me to stay at their home for the rest of the time, and also to join their (huge, fabulous!) extended family for Christmas, so I think I´m set for the rest of my time here :)

I must say, I am in awe of the hospitality and kindness of the Argentinians! As soon as I mentioned I might need a place to stay, I had at least four invitations to stay at different houses! And I really feel welcomed...scooped up and made part of the family is more like it! I even got invited to a wedding this past weekend, having met the bride only briefly in passing. So much fun! I think I will be forever changed in my ability for hospitality by my experiences here - I want to make other people feel as completely welcome as I have felt here...to be a blessing to others as I have been so blessed!

So I am praising God and REJOICING down here as I get to spend another month in this country I love, and then come home to such a fabulous new opportunity. Rejoice with me!! :) :) And please keep me in your prayers, that I can be a blessing to the little ones I´ll be with in the coming weeks, and to everyone I meet.

Lots of love to you all!

Fabulous New Friends and Sweet Little Ones

We´ve made so many fabulous friends down here...half of them are cousins, and the rest are friends or novios, and they are SO MUCH FUN!!!! I don´t think I´ve mentioned yet today how much I LOVE Argentina!! :D



A bunch of the young people we´ve gotten to know down here


Hanging out with friends...Martín, Esteban, Rosario, and Magdalena


Sunday afternoons by the rio...in addition to being a national custom :) this group of young people from the church down here seem to get together most Sundays after church when the weather is nice to head to the river...all you need is friends, a guitar, some maté, folk music, and maybe some choripan (that would be the incredibly delicious Argentinian version of a hotdog - it doesn´t even compare!)




This was just a few minutes before I got dragged in, skirt and all - not that I resisted too hard - it was SO hot :)







And these are from our Dia de Gracias (Thanksgiving :) celebration with a bunch of friends here. It was so neat to be able to share this with them, and to give something back to these fabulous people who have welcomed us so wholeheartedly!


Turkey, anyone?? :D


Yummy! Who knows how, but we managed to get together almost everything needed for a proper Thanksgiving feast...turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, candied yams, apple crisp, and even sparkling apple cider (a family tradition :)


Truly a feast!





They showed us a few of their national dances, and we got to teach them an American folk dance (the Virginia Reel) too, which was so much fun!!


Cande and Esteban dancing the Escondito (I think it´s called)


Julia, Cande, and Magdalena


Morielle, Santiago, and Cande (Estás en casi todas mis fotos, Cande! :D )





Here are the girls from the Home where I´m volunteering and staying right now - they are all so sweet! Laura, Melisa, Ana, Ayelin, Antonela, and Antonela :)


Here´s the outside of the Hogar San Francisco...it´s really lovely inside too.




Here´s the main plaza in front of the Cathedral in Córdoba, the nearby big city. I usually hate cities, but Córdoba has slowly grown on me...


Just one of the many beautiful churches of Córdoba

¡Feliz Dia de Gracias!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!! It´s so strange being in a foreign country for this holiday (this is the third time that´s happened to me!), and have it be just another day for everyone here. My family is planning to have a Thanksgiving celebration with a bunch of the friends we´ve made here...but not till next Monday, which is when we could get our hands on a turkey and everyone could come. Also, my dad will be here (he´s arriving Saturday! :) How weird, celebrating Thanksgiving on a Monday! Well, it won´t matter to anyone besides us :)

PRAISE THE LORD, He FINALLY found me a place to volunteer, a home for girls in difficult family situations, run by some sisters. It´s in a small town outside of the big city of Córdoba, close enough that I´ll be able to spend weekends visiting with friends there and in Alta Gracia. To girls are so sweet, from age 7-13, and the sisters kindly offered to let me stay there, so I´ll have a place to be when my family heads on next week to travel in other parts of the country. I´m going to stay here volunteering in the Córdoba area at least through mid-December, and then I´ll have to decide whether to head back to the States with my fam or stay on longer here. At the moment the thought of leaving Argentina makes me want to cry...but maybe I´ll be ready to head back in a month...who knows!

It always amazes me how God works in my life (it´s happened so many times the same way that I´m finally starting to trust Him to work everything out.) I will have a LONG time (maybe years!) of trying different doors, wanting to do various things or go various places. For the longest time, absolutely NOTHING will work out, and I have a hard time not getting VERY frustrated. But then, all the sudden, a door will open and I´ll fall through it to find that everything is perfectly arranged for me on the other side. And looking back at the time I spent waiting, I´ll realize that I had so many experience, met so many people, was able to serve in all sorts of ways, and grew so much - none of which would have happened if I, in my impatience, had gotten what I wanted right when I asked for it. That was the case here, too. For the past many weeks, I´ve been on the hunt for a volunteer oportunity, first in Uruguay, then in one of the cities south of Buenos Aires. And NOTHING happened, no matter how hard I tried or how many people I contacted. Meanwhile, I found myself meeting all these wonderful people here in the Córdoba area and making a bunch of friends...so now, I am SO GLAD that I wasn´t allowed to leave sooner, before I could realize that THIS is where I want to be. So now I will not only have a chance to serve, but also friends and connections so I´m not just alone in a foreign land.

Alright, I really must go! Lots of love to you all! Have a beautiful Thanksgiving with family and friends. Please keep me in your prayers! And let´s always remember all the people out there who have no family and no friends...especially the children...

¡Gracias a Dios por todo!

Genevieve (to everyone here, I´ve ended up as Jhenny, Jhenafeef, Jhenifer, Sofia, or Sofie :)

Las Bellezas de Argentina

Have I mentioned yet that I LOVE Argentina?? :D A little more each day, but it was love at first sight… Maybe you’ve had the experience of coming to a place for the first time, and finding that you already loved it, before you even knew of it…Ireland was like that for me, too. Maybe it’s because it reflects a little bit of the realm of endless beauty only glimpsed in our best dreams and happiest memories, that we’re always looking for here on earth, and only ever partly find…

Here’s a bit about the past few weeks of traveling before we came to Alta Gracia, and this time with pictures, a video, and some music :)

We started in Luján, the spiritual heart of Argentina, and the most-visited Marian shrine in the world (something like 5 million people per year…maybe more!)


The beautiful cathedral of Luján - it truly felt like a place dedicated to prayer (unlike so many places in Europe, which can get overrun by noisy tourists :-P



We happened to arrive on the 200-and-somethingth anniversary of the founding of the town, so our first experience of Argentina was a fabulous party, complete with two concerts, a hot air balloon, and fireworks to rival the 4th of July!



I LOVE the people of Argentina – again, I’m still figuring out all the reasons why I loved them at first sight :) ... I love how there are so many children and young people and families about. I love how friendly people are when you start talking with them. I love that a bunch of teenagers, children, and cute old couples at a concert all knew their national dances, and spontaneously started dancing, with such poise and confidence.


Dancers, old and young



I LOVE Argentine music. Make that especially…I LOVE Abel Pintos :D He was the second of the two concerts in Luján, and we all LOVED him. I think you could call his style original modern Argentine folk, or something like that :) We bought one of his CDs there, and listened to it all the way across the country. I think we will all forever associate the vast beauty of Argentina with Abel Pintos and his music :)

These next two are just music - two songs of Abel Pintos, from his CD Sentidos (which you can buy on Amazon.com, incidentally :) I hope the quality of the songs is still good - I am absolutely not technology savvy!


Sueño Dorado


Bella Flor


On the way to Sunday Mass...




I was wanting to load a bunch more pictures, but the website is not cooperating...so that's all for now...still more to come... :)

By the way, tomorrow I'll be visiting the place where I hope to volunteer - please pray that everything works out well (and exactly how it's supposed to!)

I LOVE THIS PLACE!!!!

Sorry it´s been so extremely long since my last post - I haven´t had as much time on the internet while on the road here. I´ve been waiting till I could post pictures, and then decided you all would just have to do without them for a little longer so I could at least write something!

So we arrived in Argentina almost three weeks ago now, and within 2 days, I was totally in love. I LOVE this country!! So much so that I actually started writing up a list of 101 Reasons I LOVE Argentina... :D maybe someday when I have it with me, you´ll get to hear a few :)

We were road-tripping for a while here, but now we´ve settled down for a couple of weeks in a small town near Córdoba called Alta Gracia. It´s a medium-ish town between mountains and farmland (blessedly quiet compared to the city!) and the best thing about it is the Latin Mass chapel here that´s full of big Catholic families - very welcoming, loud, singing, folk-dancing, super-fun Argentinian-style big Catholic families :D I love it! Yesterday after church we had more invitations than we knew what to do with! We ended up at the house of a lovely abuela, happily eating icecream, squeezed into the dining room along with at least three of the families, half of whom seemed to be cousins, while the other half were married or dating - it was the most delightful cacophany!! Especially since most of them spoke no more than a few words of English, and we range in Spanish from barely communicative to still-having-to-work-really-hard-at-it. It was so much fun! After icecream and lots of conversation, my sisters and I were invited to go down to the river with all the older cousins/friends/siblings/novios. We crammed into way-too-few cars (I don´t even know if there ARE seat belt laws here :O ) and headed down to the river. What a great group of people. There were probably fifteen or twenty of us, a guitar, a baby, some cookies and maté, and we were all chatting in our various levels of halting Spanish or basic English. Then the guys brought out the guitar and started playing Argentinian folk music (I LOVE the music here!) accompanied by half the muchachos in amazing powerful voices. I love how they actually have a national folk culture here, with dances they all know and folk music that they can spontaneously sing together...though one of them, Santiago, said that young people in the big cities have lost a bit of that culture now, and tend to listen more to regular pop music like we might hear in the US (yeah, actually half the songs I´ve heard in this internet cafe have been in English :P I like their music better!)

On a side note, I love their names here...Santiago, Paulina, Emiliano, Candelaria, Adriana, Esteban, Rosario...they all sound like poetry! The accent in this part of Argentina sounds just like poetry too...even more Italian than in Uruguay! It makes me so happy to be learning Spanish with such a lovely accent :)

For now (and probably for the next of couple weeks) my mom, Morielle, Fiona, and I are taking more Spanish classes three days a week in Córdoba. After a month or more of using all the Spanish we knew, the four of us decided we were ready to learn more intensively. Today was the first day, but I already like the teacher and the approach, and I think we´ll learn alot. Though after four or five hours of speaking and understanding Spanish yesterday, my Spanish brain was NOT functioning today at all! From experience I know it will get better again in a few days :P

I'm still trying to find the volunteer opportunity - at least now I have several options to choose from in different cities - I'm just waiting to hear back from one more person, and then I'll have to choose...please keep praying for me! I'll let you know what I end up doing.

Well, it's late...more to come soon (I hope :)

On our way to Argentina! :)

Just wanted to let you all know that we are on our way to Argentina, so I probably won't be able to write much for a while. I'll post when I can.

Also, I just discovered that my settings were probably making it so you couldn't write a comment on here without an account...so I've changed it, and feel free to comment away! (it's nice to know who's out there reading... :)

Please keep us in your prayers, for safe travels, esp, and for a beautiful two weeks together in Argentina. Also, that I can find a place to volunteer for a while in Argentina...I'm hoping to spend the month of November there, serving in some way and immersed in Spanish. Thanks, ya'll!

Piriapolis...there IS life outside the city! :)

To hear people who live in cities talk, you'd think that nothing else exists, that the countryside is a barren wasteland with no people in it, and nothing to do...EVER ;-P Being in a foreign country, I was almost starting to believe them, even though I happen to know better, being one of those "nobodies" who don't even live in a town, and yet somehow survive living in the desolate countryside :D After three weeks in Montevideo (read: in any city, anywhere) I was about ready to shrivel up into...I don't know what! And I was starting to think that maybe I didn't much care for Uruguay...But then we left the city and...OH!!! It's BEAUTIFUL out here!!!!

We're staying in a small coastal town, Piriapolis, which is gloriously quiet at this time of year (though in the summer it is apparently PACKED). There's a long stretch of beach, the obligatory rambla, little shops, cute homes, gloriously green pastures, and...what I never expected to see in Uruguay...mountains! OK, make that "tall, rocky, tree-cloaked hills." :D It somehow reminds me of a cross between Ireland, Austria, and small-town Virginia. I don't have too many photos yet, so I'll have to post more later, but here are a few...


The beach and rambla...and some luvin' :)
(n.b. one of the very useful facts I learned in Spanish class..."Te amo" is only used (at least here) for romantic love..."Te quiero" would be for everyone else. Not that I go around telling random people that I love them, but what if I wanted to?? I wouldn't want to say it wrong, would I?!? From which you can probably guess that the message on the beach wasn't from me... :)


The view from our front porch :)


The condo where we're staying - we have one side, and the owners live in the other half. They are a really nice young couple, Victoria and Claudio, with two little girls who my youngest sister has promptly become friends with. There's nothing like Spanish-speaking friends to inspire you to learn the language :)

Another very good thing about being here - I feel so much less shy when I'm not in the city! I find myself actually talking with random people (and they talk and smile back), which has been really fun. Everyone here is really nice about ragged attempts to speak the language. I'm guessing they don't get too many people coming here to learn Spanish, b/c whenever I explain why we're here, or even just say "¡No hablo español muy bien!" people smile and are really friendly [unlike some countries, to remain unnamed here, where attempts at speaking their very tricky language most often meet with a cold stare and no attempt at comprehension :-P Picture me, in that country, trying to communicate where we're going next...Lisieux: "Lisoo...Leesoh...Laysyou...Lisoh.......Leeseeuuu" Blank stares...arrggg! :] But people are really nice here...and I haven't felt any of the slight tension that I've felt in other countries when people realized I was American.

This morning we awakened to the almost-night-like dusk of a lowering tormenta, and have been treated throughout the day to downpouring rain and a fabulous lightning show. SO FUN!!! (can you tell I'm a pathetic, rain-deprived Californian? :) Once the rain lets up, we hope to make some excursions into the (beautifully, lusciously green :) countryside.

For now, I need to go...I'm sitting in an internet cafe, and my time is almost up.

Love to you all...¡Te quiero! :)

¡Hasta Luego!

Today was our last day of Spanish class :( I'm very glad to be heading out of this (MUCH bigger than I'm used to!) city, and finally getting to see the countryside. But I'll miss the teachers - I really liked them A LOT! And I felt like I learned a TON in three weeks of classes! It will be good, though, to get to just use everything we've learned, without needing to make space in our (already overcrowded) brains for something new every day. Here's a photo of all the teachers and students at our school. The teachers are in the front - the two lovely ladies on the left are Virginia and Laeticia, and the smiley gentlemen on the right are Juan and Daniel. ¡Los maestros en esta escuela son muy amables!



So we're leaving Montevideo tomorrow to head to a small beach town, Piriapolis. Entonces, this may be my last post for a while (we won't have internet access in the house there).

¡Chau! (for now)

Around the Town...

Alright, are you ready? Here's a bit of a tour of Montevideo...well, the small portion of the city that's within a 20 block radius of here (i.e. seeable on foot :)

I have to be honest that the city is actually more run-down than it looks in the photos. It must have been incredibly gorgeous in it's prime (in the 1940s), when the buildings were new and there was money to keep the streets swept and the sidewalks repaired. So many of the buildings here are amazing inside and out - marble stairs, wood floors, granite countertops, high ceilings, crown moulding, stained glass windows, decorative carved stone on the fronts of houses....Amazing!! But also aging and in need of repair.

So, in no particular order...


The house across the street - if you click on the photo, you can see the beautiful carvings...




PINK!!


This is an auto-repair shop!!


A Castle?? On an apartment building??!


Some sort of cool archer-on-horseback etching...


The churches here are GORGEOUS!!


In the local park, Parque Rodo...