A list of firsts

From living a month in Buenos Aires, I've experience my:

*First transcontinental plane ride.
*First overnight plane ride.
*First time being in a country whose primary language isn't English.
*First use of my passport.
*First time in a city of millions of people.
*First subway ride.
*First public bus ride.
*First taxi ride.
*First time negotiating a sale in Spanish.
*First time learning a new Spanish dialect.
*First experience with street entertainers (I love mimes!).
*First time seeing a store that's open 25 hours.
*First drink of mate (an herbal tea traditional to Argentina).
*First use of a metal straw (to drink hot tea, of all things).
*First time making empanadas and tortas fritas.
*First taste of dulce de leche ice cream (my taste buds will never be the same).
*First tour of a futbol stadium.
*First excitement about futbol (Thanks to the World Cup!).
*First visit to a ranch.
*First horseback riding experience.
*First taste of wine (or any kind of alcohol...it was gross).
*First tango lesson (Argentine tango, different than what they taught us in the US!).
*First sighting of a live armadillo! Granted, it was in a cage.
*First taste of cow intestines (chinchulines).
*First time in my life I actually wanted less meat and more vegetables.
*First tango show.
*First salsa lessons.
*First night in a club.
*First tour of a basilica.
*First time watching a dog fight break out in a cathedral.
*First play viewed in Spanish.
*First pair of Toms...that aren't really Toms. Toms stole the design from Argentina.
*First true TaeKwonDo withdrawals.
*First mosh pit.
*First true "cross cultural experience," which occured in aforementioned mosh pit.
*First tour of a mosque.
*First time sending my laundry out to be done. It smells so awesome!
*First boat ride not for pleasure (across the widest river in the world, no less).
*First time eating at Hard Rock Cafe.
*First time seeing the equivalent of a Broadway show (La Bella y la Bestia)
*First time hearing Spanish spoken with French/Italian/Asian accents.
*First trip to a casino (to change money...nothing else).
...and many more, I'm sure. These are just the few that come to mind.

Lots of firsts, hopefully not many lasts.

Yep, I'd say I had a pretty productive first trip outside of the country!

Lessons from South America

Things I learned in Buenos Aires

*Subways are crowded. There are people on the subways who will gladly stick their hands in your pockets or purses if you do not stick your own hand in your own belongings as a safeguard. Also, when one cannot reach something to hold onto, using TaeKwonDo stances allows one to maintain at least a small sense of balance. Sadly, the same trick cannot be used while standing on the public bus.

*Mate is an acquired taste. I have definitely acquired it and will miss it greatly when I leave. I plan on buying one of the mate cups and taking it with me, even though the metal straw does burn my lips (yes, they drink hot tea from a metal straw). It's that awesome.

*I honestly sometimes can't resist the urge to call people "gringos." For example, when a member of the group is walking a few paces ahead of everyone else calling over their shoulder in English about things like how many dogs there are or what the buildings look like. My response: "Please quit being such a gringo!"

*People in Argentina love futbol (soccer). When Argentina plays in a World Cup game, the entire city stops. Shops close, restaurants turn on the sound to their TVs, and the population as a whole cheers for every goal, save, and good play. I personally am not a sports person in general, but being surrounded by such passion is invigorating! And the sheer energy after a win is enough to knock you off your feet (quite literally if you get close enough to the inevitable mosh pit)!

*There is no true stereotype that fits every single taxi driver. Every single taxi that I have been in has been different from the others, in either good or bad ways. I actually have a new appreciation for taxi drivers. They have to put up with sour natives and sometimes idiotic gringos tourists on a daily basis. Also, if a story begins "This one time when I was in a taxi cab," ten-to-one it's a story worth listening to.

*Don't take the bare minimum amount of money suggested by the trip leader. Eating out everyday (plus not being able to drink tap water) makes providing for oneself slightly more expensive than normal. Thankfully, I saved up enough to hopefully be able to feed myself and still buy some cool stuff while I'm here. (And everyone who wanted a souvenir says, "Hallelujah!")

*Knowing the words of a language isn't enough. To really thrive in a culture, you have to know every aspect of the culture. You have to know the meanings behind the utterances, not just the denotative superfluities that you can learn in a textbook. Yes, the language allows for a bridge of communication, but without knowledge of the traditions and passions of a people, don't expect to ever truly understand the complete language.

*Being homesick and missing home are two completely different things. I can miss the people back in Tennessee and still love every moment of the place where I'm at. Yes, I wish they were here with me, but my life at that time may dictate that I be away from them. And my life continues in spite of their absence. I used to rely on the presence of certain people to truly complete my life...and I got hurt pretty badly because of that. As much as I love the people in my life, they're not always going to be able to be there, but they're with me in my heart, and that's what really matters.

*PDA on the streets of Buenos Aires is almost as frequent as the dog poop on the sidewalks (and let me tell you, there is a lot of caca in this city!). Honestly, I have mixed emotions about this. The first is disgust because that's how I was raised to react. The second is a little bit of jealousy because, yeah, I'm definitely single as single gets. The third, though, is the one that I choose to contemplate: the idea that I'm in a culture where showing love(whether by making out with someone on a park bench or greeting everyone with a kiss on the cheek) is not a taboo . I wonder if their divorce rate is lower here...

*There will forever be a fight between the city and country in me. Having lived in the country my whole life, I dreamed of living in the city with all the hustle and bustle of the "fast lane." I loved visiting Nashville and Chattanooga, and moving away to college has been an awesome experience. Now, having lived in Buenos Aires for a month, I can see both the pros and cons of the city life. I love the convenience of hopping on the subway or taking a taxi to hundreds of beautiful and historic places or being able to just people-watch in the shopping district when I lack something to do. At the same time though, I have a new appreciation for country life, as well: clean air, wide open spaces and roads that I actually feel safe driving, to name a few. I've concluded that no matter where I live, a part of me will just have to compromise.

Wallflowers are pretty, too...

Have you ever felt so completely out of place that it made you want to cry?

Have you ever been the only one in the group to not receive a compliment on your appearance?

Have you ever been that one girl whose dress came down to her knees and actually had sleeves?

That was me the other night.

I already know that I'm not the most beautiful thing to grace the surface of the earth. I know that I'm quite honestly not that pretty by American standards: I'm "plus-sized," I don't have much of a chest, I refuse to fry my hair to get it perfectly coiffed, I don't wear three tons of makeup, and I'm not too keen on the latest styles and trends (especially the whole leggings as pants thing, but that's a whole other topic). I've slowly decided that the only redeeming quality I possess is my eye color.

Basically, I'm not the American beauty. Never have been. Never will be. And I've known that for a long time now.

So why does it still bother me when I have to go out with a group of "normal" people? Why do I still feel the need to compare myself with those around me? It's a curse of the human mind, and I absolutely hate it.

Here I was, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, about to go to a professional tango show and have a wonderful night, and I was worried about how I looked compared to other people.

I slowly realized reasons as to why I can't compare myself to other people, starting with the things that really shouldn't matter (such as how a size 16 can't compare to a size 2...) and ending where it should have started: God's love.

God honestly doesn't care what I look like or how big I am. He doesn't care if my hair is frizzy or my face is broken out. He loves me anyways, so much so that He thinks I'm worth dying for! He loves me enough to want to spend eternity with me. He loves me so much that nothing in this world is big enough to separate me from His love. And I'm worried about what the girls down the hall think?

In the big picture, physical appearance really doesn't bear much weight at all, does it?

I'd like to say that I'm never going to worry about what I see in the mirror again, but the reality is this struggle isn't over. Because I'm human. It's one of those things that I have to daily crucify in order to focus more and more on Jesus every single moment of my life.

No, I'm not going to be a slob. I'm not going to stop wearing makeup completely and never comb my hair in an effort to completely divorce myself from the stigma of society. That's just kinda stupid.

What I am going to do, though, is stop comparing myself to those around me: the styles they wear, their personal expectations of beauty, their opinions about what I should be doing. They don't matter. Yes, if I ask for your opinion about how I look, I want a genuine response. But I'm going to attempt to let myself get continuously bogged down by the comparisons that my own mind loves to make.

I'm a wallflower. I'm not really much to look at. But I'm pretty, too, in my own special way...because God loves me. I'm His princess, and He never lets me forget it.

Let the travelogue begin...

Though I had previously only posted on this blog very sporadically, I feel like now of all times, when something amazing is actually happening in my life, would be the time to insert small bits of reflections into this blog, my technological memory.

As previously stated, I'm in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I honestly don't think it's completely sunk in yet. My friends and family are on the other side of the equator. Wow. The thought kind of makes me feel like I'm standing upside down or something...

I've realized in the last 24 hours that the most valuable lessons that I will learn on this trip will not be in the classroom (even though I have already learned so much from our professor Amalia). The life experience that I gain here will be invaluable to me in the future.

It seems strange to say it, but I really don't feel like I'm away from home. Perhaps traveling is in my DNA. Perhaps Buenos Aires is just awesome like that. Or perhaps I just have the peace of God in knowing that I'm still under His watchful eye. Whatever the reason, I don't feel guilty or bad when I stumble through my words or have to repeat and explain myself in my second language. It's a growing process, but I'm enjoying it greatly!

I think, if anything, this month and all of its new experiences will help me to determine my next steps after graduation in May 2011, whether to teach English in a foreign country or go to grad school in the US. If I adapt well, teaching English is looking more and more like a viable possibility that I would absolutely love (though I don't look forward to all the "I told you she was gonna be an English teacher" comments).

So far, so good.

Musings of a Wide-Eyed Traveler

Yesterday I said goodbye to the green corn fields, abundant Queen Anne's lace and humid sunny afternoons of Tennessee. I crossed paths with the setting sun in Atlanta, Georgia, and when we met again, I was landing in South America.

I write to you tonight from a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I and 24 other Lee students will be living and studying for the next month.

The city is very much different from what I am used to, but it vaguely reminds me of Nashville. Keyword: vaguely.

There are trees lining the streets, and many of the apartment balconies are also bejeweled with green vines and flowers. It's slowly changing to winter here, so the leaves outside my window are all turning shades of brilliant orange. In spite of being a city of 13 million people, there is so much in the way of grass and plantlife. It makes the human life surrounding me seem that much more vibrant!

Much of the architecture has a very European style reflected in it; some of the buildings are quite gorgeous, albeit they are also quite tight fitting in the streets.

Speaking of streets, they all seem to be one-way. And there are no lines painted to differentiate the different lanes. I asked one of the guys from the seminary if that was the case all over the city, and he assures me it's not, but still...needless to say, I'm thankful to not be driving here!

I've seen beautiful buildings carved to perfection with Baroque-style ornamentation. But I've also seen homeless people curled up in the doorways of those buildings trying to get a good night's sleep.

I've seen opulent shops with the trendiest fashions from all over the world. But I've also noticed the street vendors who are probably just scratching out a living selling their wares on la Calle Florida.

Yes, traveling is wonderful, but it also makes me reflect on how blessed I am to be an American, to have grown up in a small town with a nurturing family, to know that I don't have to worry about my next meal or what happens if I get a hole in my shoes. It's nice.

And it makes me so thankful for the things that I've been given. May I soon be at a place in life where I am able to give back and provide even just some of those opportunities to others.

Love like a hurricane

I have thought many times about what the next post on this blog should be, and I apologize for being away for so long, but I think everything that I almost wrote in the past couple of months has culminated into what I hope to convey tonight.

Have you ever had one of those moments where everything that has happened in the past few hours, days, even weeks just crashes down like a rogue tsunami and leaves you standing in what once was a peaceful existence? Tonight my tsunami hit.

I'm not going to go into a rant about what has been happening in my life or what I hypothesize is the cause of my sudden emotional and mental turmoil. I choose rather to simply tell you what I feel in my inner-most being.

No matter what just happened to me, no matter how over my head I feel I have been plunged, no matter how much pain I endure as a result, God is still in control. And He knows what He is doing. And I don't.

"Why would God intentionally hurt you?" you ask. You know, I don't really know that, either. But I do know that He promised to walk beside me no matter what storms came my way. And I know that He had a plan for me before I was born into this world, where He said that we would have troubles.

I can't change what is happening around me, but I can change my attitude about what is happening. About an hour ago, I was honestly on the brink of panicking and heading for the hills, but that wouldn't have solved anything, now would it? I would have come back from my little hiatus and still had a knot to untangle. Repressing and ignoring the problem doesn't help; just ask all the adults in therapy unraveling their childhood problems.

So I can't change it, I can't run from it, and I can't handle it by myself. That leaves me with one option (the one I should have chosen to begin with, by the way): I have to trust God.

Easier said than done, you smirk. Yes, yes it is, but it's the only way that I will come through this alive and better than I was when I went in. And I will gladly give God the glory for what is about to happen in my life. Because whatever it is, someone (*cough*devil*cough*) really doesn't want whatever it is to take place.

My father sings a song that says, "Sometimes He calms the storm, other times He calms the child." And I know that sometimes God chooses to calm me when I want Him to calm the storm. Sometimes I even resist His peace in my life because I don't see the change that I want to see.

But even as I write this, I can feel His peace beginning to calm me and soothe the agitated waters of my mind. An hour ago, I didn't think I was going to be able to sleep tonight. But, as my friends in EVS so often said, "The devil is a liar!"

I promised to keep this simple, so I'll wrap up my wandering thoughts with one final reflection.

This entire week, I have been fixated on the song "How He Loves" by John Mark McMillan (though I listen to the David Crowder version, personally). For those who haven't heard the song, the first few lines of the song says, "He is jealous for me. Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy."

I now feel like I understand what it means to love like a hurricane. I have reflected previously about the purging quality of wind, and if any kind of storm has wind, it is the hurricane of God's love. The past few months have been a build-up for this, the wall of the eye, the greatest force of wind imaginable. The true and unshackled love of God.

No, I don't understand it all. But I do feel like the things that have been blown out of my life by this recent wind were things that God knew I didn't need to cling to any longer. I have to let go of everything around me before I can truly embrace God's love. And now I sit in the eye of the storm, the calm of the storm, leaning against my Saviour as He bolsters me for the second half of the storm, the rest of the trial that will teach me about the greatness of my God.

It is only through storms that we can grow. But God is in the wall of the storm as much as He is in the still small voice in the calm.

So I bolster myself, "with arms high and heart abandoned," to face the rest of this storm that will cleanse my mind and purge my life of what needs to be eradicated.

I can't wait to see what God is doing here.

Transitions

Recently, a professor of mine used Joshua 1:9 as a devotional at the beginning of class. What she had to say about the verse really stuck with me, and I'd like to share it, along with some of my other reflections based around the ideas therein.

As the devotion was originally shared in Spanish (and I assume that most people who read this are native English speakers), I'll do my best to translate the full meaning of the original devotional thought.

I've been dealing with a lot of transitions in my life lately, both present and impending, so when my professor reminded me of one of the greatest transitions in the history of the Israelites, I couldn't help but find peace in what I learned about how God handles the tough times in our lives.

In Joshua 1:9, God is speaking to Joshua, the brand new leader of Israel and the man who is supposed to lead the children of Israel into the promised land. Having spent years as an assistant to Moses, being tossed into the spotlight must have been a frightening thing for Joshua.

Twice before this verse, the Lord admonishes Joshua to "be strong" and "very courageous." The verse in question, though, sums up nicely everything that the Lord had to say to the new young leader.

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”

God takes this opportunity to bolster Joshua by reminding him that He will be with him wherever he goes. While the idea of God being present through all our trials is indeed key, that is not what stood out to me (nor to my professor when she presented this verse).

God did not label Himself as "the God of Moses" or "the God of your forefathers." He specifically said, "I am YOUR God, Joshua." It's as if God truly wanted him to understand that he was chosen and that he wasn't just walking in someone else's faith.

God chose Joshua; now all Joshua had to do was choose God. Joshua could have chosen to not be the kind of assertive leader God had called him to be. He was quite a young man, and I imagine that some of the people (especially the elders in the tribes) probably had a real issue with his appointment to leadership, even if the Lord did command it.

Not to mention that Joshua was going into a very unfamiliar situation. All the reports of the land in front of him showed that it was indeed hostile territory and that a war was basically inevitable.

All I can think is how hard it must have been to really hear God say, "Be strong and courageous" when such a daunting task loomed in the future.

Though in my mind I picture Joshua to be a much greater warrior and confident leader than Gideon was in the book of Judges, I still get the impression that he still had his doubts, perhaps not on God's ability, but possibly on his own.

But how can one be discouraged when even the Lord is telling you, "Hey! You've got this! Be strong! Be courageous!"

In the same way, I feel like God is calling to us as he did to Joshua in that time of great transition in his life: "You're my child! I'm your God! With Me, all things are possible! I won't give you a task that My grace cannot provide you strength to complete!"

The thing that stood out to me most about this verse, though, is that it wasn't a suggestion. It was a command. Don't be afraid. Don't be dismayed. Be strong. Be courageous.

That being said, to be afraid and dismayed about the future is to be in direct disobedience to God. To even lose our courage is not following God's command. It gives me a whole new reason to quit looking at what I can't do and look at what God is doing through me.

And why can we leave fear behind and embrace the courage we need to face the battles of life? Because our God is with us. Always.

May I never cease to praise Him for His lovingkindness and His marvelous presence in my life! In the light of His goodness and grace, how can the troubles of this world compare?