I´ll miss you argentina...

I think this will be the last blog for this internship. Today will probably be my last day with internet. I loved every minute and I´ll be glad to be home. Good thing I kept a journal and took lots of pictures. If you have a few hours we can sit down and I will show you them.. haha.

I´ll miss most of all my new friends ... here are some photos of some of them.

Milanesa

Many have heard me talk about milanesa. It is a popular food dish here in Argentina. It is a thin piece of meat (beef or chicken) that is bathed in an egg micture then coated with bread crumbs. It can be cooked in the oven or fried on the stove. (I prefer the oven). Today as I was getting ready to put my milanesa in the oven Clary brought it to my attention that the milanesa looked like the shape of South America!! IT DOES!!! It even has tierra del fuego at the bottom (part of argentina). Use your imagination!

Concert and Dinner

We have had one of my mission companions visiting these past few days (Vanina). She was my last comp in the mission and she is from Buenos Aires. We went to a concert the other night in a really nice concert hall. The kids that were seated on the balcony above us picked me out as a target to throw wads of paper at. For the first half hour I had bombs dropped on JUST ME made out of the program paper. So I looked at one of the guys we were with and I said, lets get them! So we went up stairs and saw them through the curtains and told the usher about it. It was actually really fun and harmless to get them in trouble and they lauged about it too. (They were 10 years old). Anyways they stopped throwing paper at me finally! The concert was good, and it was fun to see it with Clary who actually knows music! She taught me how to play part of twinkle twinkle little star now on the violin!! Last night I made Tartas (kinda like kish) with my friend from Buenos Aires and we invited over other friends for dinner. It was so FUN!!! I love this group of young single adults! Vanina (my comp from Buenos Aires) is still here and it has been so fun to be able to talk about the mission over and over again with her!!

9 de julio

Argentina Independence Day- and of course we made a cake! We make cakes for every occasion now! We went to the bus station to say good bye to one of the sister missionaires that I taught in the MTC and then we went on a bus ride that was about 40 minutes long to the outskirts of santa fe to a city called Rincon. I loved it! we were with about 40 other young single adults and we ate really salty chicken, listened to a bishop and his wife speak, sang the national anthem, played soccer on the river beach, and ate the cake we made. All very good activities. It was so fun to spend all day with the young single adults!! We love them... and are getting sad to leave them!

I sleep walk... uh oh

So apparently I sleep walk. The other night I woke up while I was trying to get out of the window. While I was opening it Clary woke up and asked me what I was doing. My reply was ¨I´m trying to get out¨ It was then I woke up and I said,¨I´m hilucinating¨. Talk about weird night. I had dreamt that I needed to get out of a door (not a window) and their was a curtain in front of it. In the dream we were locked in somewhere. Ok- so now I know i´m not safe to live with because I try to get out through the windows. I´ll never get married! HAHA!

leaky wall and hot drinks

This was one of my ideas to our leaky main water switch. Our shower wasn´t working so hot- so someone came to fix it and ended up creating another problem. So I cut into some water bottles and made a little gizmo to make sure our floor doesn´t flood, like it has! In the shower there is a bucket saving the water that drips, so i do save water- I promise!

Also, I´ve taken a liking to non-caffinated hot drinks... which is very Argentine. These are all of the different types of ways to stay warm. Mate, Mate cocido (in packets), mint tea, chamamille tea, malta, and hot chocolate. I will be bringing some home with me! I did, however, read over the word of wisdom again to plan out a healthier way to live- and I came across Hot drinks as not being a good thing... so I need to cut back on all of that.

Rosario-Flag Monument

We took a day trip to Rosario- where the monument to the Argentine Flag is. We had amazing service on the bus- they even gave us extra sandwhiches. We loved it! Once in Rosario we asked around how to get to the monument. We had no previous thought out plans, and it was a super adventure! We´ve decided that we are crazy, we just jump on buses and travel the country (but always check in with our manager of course). We spent the day meeting nice ladies in book shops and little breakfast restaurants. We seem to make friends where ever we go! I love meeting people! We also went to a museum that happened to be displaying Mexicos revolution and tons of pictures of Pancho Villa. Interesting that we learned about Mexico while in Argentina. While at the monument we walked around and went took an elevator to the type to look out over the city. This is where belgrano made the flag for Argentina. We took good pictures and slept on the 2 hour bus ride home. (Come to find out july 1st is canada day, so their flag was flying high along with the Argentine Flag).

The Museum in Rafaela- Book of Mormon Times

All I have to say is - the Book of Mormon is true! We went to a museum in Rafaela and there were three parts to it. The first part were old kids games, second part was the history of Rafaela (our hotel is part of that history- OLD), and the third part is on the Candelaria people. What caught my attention to this exibit was the date the civilization lived- check this out 0-700 ad. There were a lot of pots, arrow heads and other things that they found. Another cool thing is these people lived in ancient times where now is where I served my mission-jujuy, tucuman and salta. I couldn´t believe what I was seeing! Most of the placs on the wall with descriptions just kept saying that the name of these people are unknown- but they have been given the name of Candelaria. The Book of Mormon totally talks about these people! HELLO!!!

Rafaela

We went to teach the workshop in Rafaela wednesday. We didn´t ever get a list of people who would be attending, but we went anyways. After the worst 2 and half hour ride of our live on a broken nasty bus we got the church building a half hour before the workshop was supposed to start and no one was there. We waited and right when we should have been starting the workshop, a member showed up with his daughter in law. We were so happy they came. Four people ended up showing up- funny thing was they were all from the same family. So we decided to not stay in rafaela any longer than needed, so we taught the workshop in two days instead of three and we taught the second day in their house. They didn´t know it was four hours so hadn´t made arrangements, so we decided it would be easier the next day to just go to their house. We went to a hotel that was not nice at all. It had three beds in one room and didn´t give us towels, so we left quickly in search of another hotel. We found another one, but still wasn´t that great-oh well. We went to dinner that first day at a restaurant and I ate too much. I hadn´t felt well - because I have a crazy runny nose right now... so we went back to the hotel and watched TV. The next day we went to a museum and walked around the town. I bought a book that is famous here in Argentina ¨Martin Fierro¨and it is in english and spanish. We went to the Acosta house and taught the second day of the workshop. It was amazing!!! We loved teaching them. There are two in the family who aren´t members of the church and that was neat to spend time with them. They took a big board and let us use it as chalk board. We left right after the work shop and went back to Santa Fe... we don´t want to travel anymore we have decided.

Happy 4th of July

Today is INDEPENDENCE DAY! Oh how we love the United States. Clary and I are wearing patriotic clothes in remembrance of our USA! We sang all the patriotic songs in teh hymn book and she played her violin along with it. We made some movies but youll have to see those later. Also Clary made a cake with bananas in it and later we will finsih it off by cutting it in half and putting dulce de leche in the middle of it and some yummy cream frosting made

out of cream and powdered sugar. We are hoping to buy a firework candel and take the cake to our favorite families house to celebrate. There is also a youth dance we were invited to chaperone, I think, so we may go there too. A special thanks to Martina McBrides ¨Independence day¨song, it is the only patriotic song i have on my computer so I sang it three times at the top of my lungs!! Thank you country music!!!