Buena Vida

Part of the reason I wanted to go on this trip was to see God working in Argentina. Not because I doubted that he is, but because I just wanted to see it for myself like I did in Tanzania. Last night I realized I had been getting so wrapped up in being here and trying to figure things out that I havent been looking to see God working here. So I asked Him last night to show me his love here. I wasnt really sure how I would see it, but I definitely did this morning. One of my friends and I got on the bus as usual, but two guys from the UC Davis program got on as well at another stop and we hadnt seen them before. We started talking to them and probably 5-10 minutes later the bus broke down and we had 20 minutes until school started. Fortunately, one of the guys was fluent in Spanish and helped us ask a woman how to get a taxi. As we were getting off the bus and onto the taxi it dawned on me that this was God showing his love for me in a simple, but awesome way. And it wasnt in a ¨santa claus¨ way like Donald Miller talks about in Searching for God Knows What. He anticipated my needs and provided a way for them to be met. God is so incredibly good and I love how he makes a whitness to himself in the most simple ways. It shows how humble he is that he doesnt always express his love in some big extravagant way. Man I love my God.

And today, so far, has been a great improvement from yesterday. After the placement exams I was feeling kind of disappointed because I didnt do very well on the oral part. Ive never had an oral exam before and couldnt remember how to say anything. Then, I was really looking forward to our tour of the park and downtown Mendoza, but when we got on the bus, we found out that the whole tour would be in Spanish. I mean, yes, I did come here to learn Spanish and immerse myself in it, but at the same time, I really did want to learn about the city and not just guess from context clues. Our tour guide was really nice though and we did speak with her in English some. Plus it was good to get to hang out with other Baylor kids.

Okay, I'm going to try and make plans with other Baylor people.

¡Ciao!

¡Primer dia de la escuela!

Today was the first day that I went to the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. We didnt have any official classes today; instead we had an orientation with the Argentine program director. I'm really excited about all of our weekend excursions that we're going to take- there's only one weekend where there isn't one planned.

My first two full days in Mendoza were good, but kind of hard. One of my friends had told me that I would become pretty frustrated during the first week with the language barrier. Maybe I'm less patient than she is, but I became frustrated within the first two days. I felt bad because I really wanted and still want to converse with my host family, but right now I'm very limited in my ability to do so. It also seemed that by the end of the second day both my host mom and host sister were kind of frustrated with me. Today was better though, probably because I spent about 7 hours at school.

Tomorrow we are going on a tour of the city, which I'm really looking forward to

Llegado en Argentina!

After getting a late start in Dallas last night, we made it to Santiago this morning. Unfortunately, since our flight was late and we had to go through a swine flu health check line, about 7 of us didn't make it onto the flight to Mendoza. Our professor stayed behind with that group, but Claire was one of them.

My family is great. As I said I'm staying with a mom, Marta, and her two children, Belu and Manuel. They are the youngest of six and Belu is the only girl. Communication so far has been interesting with my incredibly limited Spanish, but they have been patient and I hope they will continue to be so.

Naps are kind of a big part of your afternoon here, which if you know me, I'm all for it lol. Tomorrow is a holiday and I think we may be going to explore the city, which I'm excited for.

I'm so thankful to have made it here safely and to have gotten such a great family- God is pretty awesome.

I'll update you again as soon as I can!

Sarah

Here we go.

If you've ever had a conversation with me before about blogging, you probably know that I love reading other people's blogs, but I haven't been very supportive of making one for myself. There have been a lot of reasons behind that, but I guess that doesn't really matter now lol. 

So why am I now creating a blog? Well, I'm going to be in Argentina for six weeks studying abroad, and I've had several people ask me to keep them updated while I'm over there. I'm quite bad at corresponding through email, so I thought that maybe a blog would be a more appropriate medium of communication. I've also really felt like God's been leading me to create one for this trip to share what He is doing while I'm down there.

While I'm in Argentina I'd really like for everyone who is reading this blog to pray for the following things if you would:

• That I would be missional with my host family 
  
• That I would be missional with the American students around me
  
• That God would give me confidence in going into this trip
  
• That God would overcome the language and cultural barriers that I'm presented with
  
• That God would give me patience with my host family and vice versa
  
• Safety in travel and during the time we're there
  
• Good health
  
• That I would study hard, but still enjoy my time down there
  
• That I take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves down there
  
• That I would really rely on God for strength in all areas
  
• That I won't get so busy and caught up in things that I put God second
  
• That if God is trying to reveal something to me about where he is leading me post graduation while I'm down there, I would see it and seek after it.
• That I won't get too terribly homesick
• That God would calm my parent's nerves while I'm there :-)

I leave May 23 for Argentina and I will be back in the U.S on July 4th. The family I will be staying with is a mom and her two daughters who are my age. She has four other children who are already grown and live in the US and Canada (so hopefully they'll know some English if we get in a confusing situation)

Thanks for reading and I can't wait to start sharing about my experiences down there!

Sarah

p.s- feel free to share this with anyone I know that I may not have their email address!