MENDOZA: famous for wine, but thanks to a good eye at Independence Park I chugged down a cool glass of Grape juice!! But, the vineyards were absolutely GORGEOUS even from the limited view via the bus window.Below, mate gourds for sale at an artist fair. For all you Argentine connosiours, you'll know that mate is a way of life in Argentina and for those who don't know, research it a little.
Here you see me at the Cerro de la gloria...commemorating the triumph of General San Martin who camped here in Mendoza before crossing the Andes to liberate Chile. This statue is on the top of a hill in a 500 hectare park dedicated to the General. In the middle of a desert, every tree and flower in the park was brought in from another country or other climate...there's not a single native tree in the entire park because the local climate is too dry to naturally promote trees. So, the town spends millions of pesos to keep everything alive, including wilting palm trees, brown pine trees, and scrawny sycamores. It's really pretty in its own way, but the artificiality of it all just didn't appeal to me and I can't help but think about teh possible damage to the local ecology that they are promoting...oh well, guess I could take it up with Al Gore or something.
Next leg of the trip took me into Chile with new friends in the sprawling urban metropolis of Santiago. Here you see me in Viña del Mar, a nearby town on the Pacific Coast. It was chilly with freezing cold water, but beautiful sands and lots of seashells that I now have in my Paraguayan home.
This is part of the presidential palace called La Moneda where they sacked Salvador Allende in the famous coup d'etat in the 1970s.
Climbing a small hill overlooking downtown Santiago, I saw one of the most beautiful Nativities ever!! Pure wood and immaculately carved, this life size Nativity was only missing one thing...the baby Jesus!! I asked why the manger was empty and they said that the Chilean tradition was to leave it empty until the night of the 24th so that he was "born" on the 25th.
Here I am with my new friends Marylyn and Orlando, native Chileans and friends of a friend of Mimi. We are looking out on one of the miradores of the hill onto the capital city of Santiago complete with 7 million inhabitants. They laughed at my Argentine accent and I laughed at their Chilean phrases and jargon. They invited me to go on vacation with them in February and while it's incredibly tempting, I don't know if I could handle more Chilean slang or the 2 weeks I would be taking off from working...
A gigantic cruise ship in the Valparaiso harbor....ooooohhhh.....
Christmas Eve dinner with the missionaries at a member family's house in Concepcion. They were incredibly giving and made a spread to die for!! Then, if that weren't generous enough, they gave everyone a present...including me. Since they didn't know my name, they put "to the friend of Sister Reavis' sister..." on the package. It was hard to be so far from home and from the Christmas preparations of Utah, but their love was really touching.
Christmas DAY in Chile!! I woke up to a saddening rain but luckily it cleared out for a midday sun as we collected snail shells and sea shells on the beach with a local family. It's not the same without the snow, but a different experience for sure. It was really humbling to see another part of the globe and say a Christmas prayer while hearing the crashing waves and watch the flocks of seagulls circle the bay.
After Christmas in Chile, I went back through Argentina almost all the way to the Atlantic Coast to meet up with old friends in Buenos Aires. In front of the second church built in South America, my dear friend Zulema and I pose for a last pic before heading back on the plane. I also spent the afternoon wih some of the girls from the singles ward...things are basically the same they report, but basically good.
Well, for those of you that haven’t been tracking my blog, you might think that I’ve run off to some tropical jungle and disappeared from Western civilization; for those that have been tracking my blog, you’ll know that isn’t far from the truth. Despite the current difficulties of the official start of Paraguayan summer, the end of the calendar year has always been a natural time of reflection, especially for a hopeless romantic and over-analytical person like myself. Personally, too, the end of the year has always been a time of reflection as it also signals another birthday (the 6th for those of you who might not remember). So, I thought I’d sum up what I’ve experienced this year and I’m writing you all because, in one way or another, you were each there with me along some part of the path.
Things have really come full circle this year. Though a chronological description would seem most obvious, I find that I can’t start at the beginning of the year without mentioning where I am today. I just got back from a two week jaunt starting in Buenos Aires Argentina (on the Atlantic coast) tracking all the way to Santiago and then Concepcion Chile (on the Pacific coast) and back. Coincidentally, I ended up seeing some of the same wonderful people in Buenos Aires at the end of the year that had been so pivotal in my life when it began. Having met Mimi Guzman through my internship in Buenos Aires, I headed back to Argentina to accompany her and thus swept again down memory lane at the close of another year.
I started out the year in a panic to sell my contract, organize my courses for graduation, and go through training to fly down to Buenos Aires where I completed a 3 month internship with the Church Employment Resource Services. Together with my companion Laura, I had the opportunity to teach and be taught about the value of the individual, the power of self-confidence, and the awe-inspiring influence of our Heavenly Father’s love for His children. I studied Argentine culture, women and the labor markets, and locked myself in our bright pink apartment to study astronomy as the time crunched in on me. I made new friends and lost some old ones, spent a lot of money on empanadas and masas finas, got unlucky in love, cried over the violation of personal space when my backpack was stolen in the busy bus station, and learned that a medium-town girl from suburbia Utah could cut it as a city girl in the sprawling metropolis of Buenos Aires. I spent many hot hours trucking around the subway, the bus system, or walking the long blocks while surrounding by a constant layer of cigarette smoke, pondered my relationship with God and my future as I strolled the long plazas of the Avenida Independencia, and smiled every time a local would comment on how good my Spanish was or assume that my companion was my visitor.
In another whirlwind of paperwork, project planning, and facilitator meetings, I jumped back into American life for a short 4 weeks before leaving on another jet plane…
Extending my graduation and amidst enormous time and social pressures, I headed off to the highlands of Guatemala. Despite a strong Argentine accent when speaking Spanish, I worked on eliminating my American accent in my 3rd language Maya-K’iche’. I made forever friends with the humble host mother Juliana as she shared her home, her family, her knowledge, her language, and her heart with me. I worked to make things work in a new town with new contacts, organize and put up with a group of very independent BYU students on their first research venture, and polish old research with new leads for publication. I soaked up the sun on the beaches of El Salvador while making new friends with locals along the way. I successfully wore traje tipico (the traditional K’iche’ clothing) for a full month and got a little better at my Guatemalan weaving. Constantly soaked in the summer rains, I spent a lot of time around the wood-burning stove, listening to family news, stories, and even local mythology. I made a promise to return (if not earlier) for the quinceñera (15th birthday celebration) for little Teresita, the 5-year-old heart-stealer of my host family.
Reluctantly leaving the loving home of Santa Maria Visitacion, I spent 6 weeks back in Bountiful with my parents, taking advantage to visit my sister Jennifer before she put her home up for sale, as well as visiting other family and the wedding of a good friend from high school, Ashley Ammon. Since I’ve spent the last 3 summers in Guatemala, hers was the one of only 2 weddings of high school friends I have been able to attend in person. I worked to overcome my homesickness for the highlands, spent long hours writing papers and doing research, and struggled to face leaving for Paraguay with basically no contacts, little information, and lots of fears.
But, as time waits for no man, my day arrived to head on another long journey to South America where I currently find myself in a small apartment along the busy Ruta
Preparing for Christmas was an emotional challenge as the traditional Christmas carols, shopping outings, and decoration parties were now tinted with the blazing heat of the Paraguayan lowlands. No snow. No pine trees. No apple cider and sugar cookies. No family. Instead, I got a glimpse into South American Christmas with giant glowing balls made from cut up 2-liter plastic bottles, life-size and miniature manger scenes in every home, along the sidewalk, and in front of the major businesses, and a 5-hour sacrificial walk up the hill surround Lake Ypacarai to celebrate the mythological miracles of the Virgin Mary.
Joining my good friend Mimi, I escaped the rays of the tropics for a while and took in the cultures of Argentina and Chile. In Buenos Aires, I went to my first-ever tango show, enjoyed my first taste of fresh fish from the Rio Parana in Rosario, tasted fresh-squeezed grape juice from the world-famous vineyards of Mendoza, darted through the busy streets of urban Santiago, Chile, dug into the sand of various beaches including Viña del Mar, Valparaíso, Lenga, Laraquete, and Lota, collected a ton of beautifully perfect white seashells from the freezing cold water, and spent Christmas contemplating the vastness of God’s creation while tucked into a secluded alcove along the coast where the Bio Bio River meets the ocean. Then, I had to head all the way back…after long hours of nauseating bus rides and a short stop over in hot springs outside of Mendoza, I got back to Buenos Aires on the 28th and immediately changed my plans of touring the city to attend the funeral of the wife of my second manager. While briefly, I got to say hello to other managers and friends, while blessed by the help of one of the office’s volunteers who lugged my backpack around so that I could chat. Heading back to the city center, I visited with two of my best friends from the young single adults group in my old ward and got caught up on ward news. I went shopping in the buy-in-bulk section of El Once, Buenos Aires, before heading to spend the night with a dear friend Zulema, the office secretary.
Whew. I’m sorry that I couldn’t put this into some cutesy Christmas card to send to everyone, and to be honest I had planned to do more before Christmas, but as you are all feeling I’m sure, time just flies. There have been a lot of emotional ups and downs, heartaches and euphorias, new cultural lessons, constant linguistic whirlwinds from Spanish to K’iche’ to English to Guarani, and a growing desire to find my place in the world and participate in something a little more permanent than a temporary internship. I am increasingly grateful for the health and physical strength to keep roaming the globe, but moreso for the incredible blessing of the Church network to provide an instant home and instant friends wherever I am. As I am swept into more personal questions and ponderings about the nature of the human experience, I am blessed to be grounded in the gospel of Jesus Christ and know that, despite the lack of permanent answers now, someone much more qualified than I will sort things out in due time. I know that God loves His children all around the world and has provided each one with an individual potential regardless of surrounding injustices, suffering, and exploitation. I hope that I can make a dent in helping remove some of those obstacles to facilitate that personal potential and somewhere down the road realize my own. Tentative plans for the coming year? Paraguay until August of 08 and then grad school wherever the Lord sees fit to send me…
Thanks for accompanying me along whatever part of the journey you were part of and I hope to keep your company in this coming year. May God bless each one of you with a successful, happy, and exciting 2008 alongside friends or family, colleagues or strangers and may we all work to take advantage of every renewed day of life that we are given to grow closer to Him. Lots of love,
Kristine
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