recoleta fair

I read about a weekly fair at a park, in a part of the city known as Recoleta.  There is a very famous cemetery nearby where Evita is buried. We have been to the cemetery a few times, but we haven’t been to the fair. I wasn’t even sure they would even be having it because the weather was marginal. In the end, we decided to jump on the train and just go and see. Apparently, not all of the trains were running today and it was a crush. Even before we got to our destination, I had to tell Doug that I was too claustrophobic. We exited early and took a taxi to our destination.

About half of the vendors were missing, and it was hardly crowded at all. Perfect for shopping! And we did :)

Brianna got a couple of necklaces and a belt. I got a couple of nativities and some shoes. Really, I am so excited about my tango  nativity!

and my homemade shoes!

 

 

 

 

On the way back, the train was a lot less crowded, and we had some great music  from this 70-year-old entertainer.

conference rolls

Rolls have been a tradition during general conference at our house for so long, and I am pretty sure that they have been blogged about at almost every, if not every general conference.

Yesterday as we were leaving another newly discovered and fabulously delicious bakery, I mentioned in passing that it was hard to drum up the energy to make rolls when we have such incredible bakeries, within walking distance, of the house.

Brianna referenced “the tradition.”

Later, she sent me an email with a recipe for Blueberry Cinnamon Rolls.

Hmmmmm.

They are not beautiful to look at, but they were delicious. Maybe even better than the apple tart that I raved to my family about yesterday. We actually frosted them after they were baked with peach icing.

So we had Blueberry Peach Cinnamon Rolls and

our traditional favorites to keep us physically filled while we were being spiritually fed.

I know we are missionaries and all, but it seems like we heard a lot about missionaries this conference.

What a blessing!!!!

la tortuga

We have/had a turtle in the backyard that has been hibernating. It even has its own little hibernating basket. Sister Benton asked us to watch out for its waking and to remember to feed it. She said that the gardener had asked for it, but wondered if we wanted it and we told her yes, we would enjoy a backyard turtle.

It did finally wake up  a couple of weeks ago and then it disappeared. I was chatting with Maria (our house helper) one day and telling her that we hadn’t been able to find the turtle and she told me that the turtle was lonely. She said that she has a turtle at home and took it because it was sooo sad. I didn’t say anything to her except for, “Oh.”

The missionaries have asked about it, but we had no choice except to report that it is at Maria’s house. But then yesterday…

…we looked out back and saw the turtle! We rushed out to feed it some radish tops and apples, which it loved!

So I am guessing that things didn’t work out in the relationship with  Maria’s turtle.

Anyway…we are happy that it is back.

party prep

In an unusual set of circumstances, we ran into our Bishop for our ward in Argentina when we were in the MTC for our Mission Presidents’ training. We talked with him about our activity in the ward. The previous mission president did not have children with him. Therefore, most Sundays they did not attend the ward, but rather, attended the wards and branches throughout the mission.

This is still something that I am working through. Of course, I want to visit the wards and branches in the mission with my husband, but, I also want to share the Sunday experience with Brianna in a ward that feels like home.

Well, back to the MTC. Bishop Paz forewarned us that the parties start late and end early in Argentina. In other words, the parties start at 11:00 at night and end around 6:00 in the morning. He advised that we let her go as long as she knew that she had to make it through church the next day.

So…it’s party night. We told Brianna that she had to be home by 3. Her friends wanted to come over late this afternoon and eat “real” macaroni and cheese and then “get ready”. It was a warm afternoon, and Brianna set up lunch out on the patio.

Afterwards, it was girl stuff. Their friend, Gonzalo decided that this would be a good time to take a nap.

not planned

I have been looking forward to today because Doug and I finally had an opportunity to play tennis this morning. However, my racquet felt like it weighed 50 pounds, the wind was blowing off the river and the court surface seemed like some kind of rubber since the balls were bouncing way high all over the place. I played terribly.  (I don’t think that I have ever cried over tennis before. Seriously, even at my best, I wasn’t good enough to cry over tennis. But today, I was so devastated that I cried! and  asked to go home after about 45 minutes.)

We stopped off for pastries and orange juice on the way home. I discovered about a teaspoon of sand in the bottom of my glass, AFTER I had consumed most of it.

Since Doug told me that we could do whatever I wanted today, I decided to pull myself together and asked to go downtown to a multi-cultural fair. He said that it looked like it was going to be a food fair, but I told him that it said there were going to be crafts. 

We decided to take the train. My husband loves to walk cities so, at the end of the line, we started our walk.

We walked and walked and walked. It was great because it was a beautiful day. I wanted to enjoy every second of it because it is the only warm and sunny day we have had, or are going to get for at least another week.

I have been wanting to capture  pictures of these advertisements for Cristina, and I had the perfect opportunity. Her husband used to be the President of Argentina, but he died and now she is the President.

 

I also enjoyed the sun shining on some of the downtown buildings.  

We stayed at the food fair for about 20 minutes.

 

Then we walked over to Puerto Madero where I took a picture of this lighthouse for all my lighthouse lovers on the east coast.

We  had an incredibly delicious lunch at Bice.   We walked some more along the port. We sat in the sunshine. We walked some more. We waited on benches in the sunshine for the little tourist train to take us back to the real train station.

 

We both fell asleep on the way home. Luckily, I woke up one stop before ours and woke up Doug. We plowed our way through all the people who had joined our car while we were snoozing

–permiso- permiso- permiso- permiso- permiso- permiso-

and exited the train just in time.

phillipe and regula

Tonight we had dinner at a Peruvian restaurant in Chinatown, Buenos Aires.

Phillipe, who was born in Bolivia, and Regula, who was born in Zurich, joined the church in Switzerland. They have lived all over the world in various capacities with his employment. The Kradolfers served their mission in Arizona. They have now lived in Argentina for six years in his capacity as director of temporal affairs for our area. To read more about this fascinating couple click here.

petrobras

We are taking a P-Day on Thursday this week because there were too many things going on last weekend and the beginning of this week to manage it sooner. We had a bunch of errands to run and one of them was to get gas for our car, which I call, “The Beast,” because it is so noisy. It takes diesel fuel.

The first thing you have to do is pull onto the marked square.

When it is your turn, one of the guys in the yellow and green comes out and asks you what kind of gas you want and how much. After that, he/she goes to work, putting the the handle into your gas tank.

A funny little side story about our car. I guess I should tell you first that it is made by Toyota. It reminds me a lot of my Highlander except that it is quite a bit bigger. It is called a Hi Lux. I don’t know if they sell them in the US. Anyway, because of the ash falling from the volcano and the general winter weather nastiness, the car was dirty when we arrived and it was a couple of weeks before we had time to take it to a car wash. We took a walk while we were waiting, and when we came back, we couldn’t find our car, at first. Doug thought our car was light gold. I thought our car was dark grey. When we got home, we asked Brianna what color she thought our car was. She looked at us in that, you-guys-are-so-weird kind of way and then answered, “Tan.” As you can see, it is light silver.

If you want, you can get something to eat at the Spacio 1, while you wait. It only took us 25 minutes to get gas today,  maybe, because we didn’t have the windows washed. 

I jumped out of the car to take a picture of the refill truck and the lady taking care of the operation.

 

The diesel fuel costs about 4 1/2 pesos a liter. That works out to about $1.15 a liter. After you fill up the guy asks you if you want to pay the bill in one payment or in three installments.

Another worker saw me taking pictures and asked me, “Para que?” I told him that I keep a blog and since we are living in Argentina now, I share things about my life on the blog about this country.

So then he smiled and posed.

 

Buen dia!

what a difference a year can make

For a while now I have been thinking about all the changes in my life the past year. Really, that night a year ago when I fell out of bed is kind of like the end of that period of my life and something else quite different followed.

I guess there are two thoughts that follow:

One is to love and enjoy the good parts because you never know how long they last.

Two is that a year can make a big difference in a person’s life, whether we make that happen for ourselves or whether circumstances take their course involving us.

p-day

We normally wear our name badges, called plaques here in Buenos Aires, except when we are having a P-Day and being parents, which would be today.

One of the elders gave us these cute matching sweatshirts, made for us by one of the women in the ward in Moreno where he serves. There are two unique things about these sweatshirts that I love. The first is that we are still wearing our names. 

Pte. is the abbreviation for Presidente and Hna. is the abbreviation for Hermana

The other is this great logo. The symbol at the top is the symbol for baptism (you can see how it shows going under the water).

in the world

Brianna was so thrilled that I was invited to a party being given by the mom of  her friend, Marena. That is because Brianna is a party girl! But, unfortunately, I am not. Nevertheless, I  baked mini-cinnamon rolls for the dessert that I was asked to bring, called the remise, arrived 45 minutes late because that’s what they do here, put on a happy face and entered the house.

Marena’s mom is Brazilian so many of the women were speaking in Portuguese, which shattered my confidence at first. I was truly hoping that I could understand some of what was going on. I turned to someone next to me and said, “Please tell me that they are not speaking Spanish!” If you could imagine a modern day Tower of Babel, this was it. In actual fact, there were very few English speakers, although almost everyone knows enough English to say hello, followed by the traditional Argentine kiss.

There were three tables of us, so about 50 people.  I learned about the husbands that are diplomats and those that watch over the Proctor and Gamble, Colgate, Ford,  Bosch  and various other enterprises here in Argentina. Of course, we shared information about our families and pretty much everyone had 1 or 2 children.

I soon became aware of my distinctness. The first surprise--that I have 4 children! the second surprise-- they are all girls! the third surprise -- 3 of them are married! the fourth surprise --I have 10 grandchildren! (I might as well have said that I have 100 grandchildren because the shock value would have been the same. LOL) The final and ultimate surprise--we aren’t here for business, but as missionaries for our church.

Truly, everyone couldn’t have been nicer. There was lots of food (traditional Brazilian and a gazillion desserts), picture taking, music and even some dancing. Yes, I ate and no, I did not dance. In the end, I stayed three hours before I did the rounds…kissing everyone goodbye, of course!

 This is Lara’s mom. Next to mine, her story was the most unusual. She is a single mom with one daughter. She a business executive for a worldwide automotive parts supplier. They are from Germany and have lived all over the world. I think that she speaks 6 languages, but she claimed that she is only fluent in 3. English was certainly one of them. They will finish three years in Argentina in November and probably be sent elsewhere.

villas

Villas  is a slang word for  the Spanish words, villa “village” and miseria “misery”. When we lived in Argentina before, we used to be able to see a little bit of this shanty town  from the freeway, but now, it has grown very close. As we were traveling across the overpass, I grabbed my camera and captured these pictures of where the very poor in Argentina live.

Normally, these settlements consist of shacks made of whatever can be found. The streets are usually not paved. Sometimes there is a network of  internal passages that link the different areas. The villas miseria have no sanitation system, though there may be water pipes passing through the settlement. Electric power is sometimes taken directly from the grid using illegal connections. Sadly, these towns continue to grow. The populations of the villas in Buenos Aires has more than doubled in the past 20 years.

19 birthdays

I didn’t go into the office today with my husband. I have been thinking about about my 19 birthday boys.

 

 

I decided to make each one of them a candy treat.

They will be most happy about the alfajor cookie on the top.  An alfajor is a traditional Argentine treat. It consists of two vanilla cookies, glued together with dulce de leche (caramel), then the whole thing is dipped in chocolate. There are many companies that make alfajores, but we think Havana in the gold wrap is the best.

While I worked, I listened to Luis Miguel sing songs in Spanish.  One of the missionaries told me that he learned English by listening to American music. I am hoping that works the other way around as well because I have birthdays galore coming up!

p-day in san isidro

The centerpiece of San Isidro is the Parroquia Catedral de San Isidro.

It was build in 1898 in the neoclassical style. Since it is about 20 stories tall it helps Brianna and I find our way around as a reference point. Today, however, I was shopping with my husband.  I wanted some boots for walking on the cobblestone streets and he wanted some sweaters to wear under his suits to stay warm. He picked out my boots and I, sort of, picked out his sweaters.

 

I actually wanted him to get a light blue sweater, but he didn’t think that was a good idea. He did get several in the end, including this navy blue one.

 

 

Then we went to lunch at the  cute restaurant across the street from the catedral. It is in the top floor of this building and even in winter, it felt like we were dining in the leafy treetops. It was recommended to us by one of the guys that sold us sweaters. Neither one of us were huge  fans of the food though. And when I used the bathroom to wash my hands, I realized too late that the plumbing for the sink was broken and there was a waterfall all over my new shoes :(

Fortunately, they survived their unexpected bath.

The office elders were tasked with buying a new video camera for the mission today. They met us at the house to show the President what they had chosen.  Suddenly,  I was chosen to be the subject of the video. There was only one thing for me talk about.

chinatown

Buenos Aires has a Chinatown right in the middle of Belgrano, which is actually a high rent district for expats and wealthy Argentines. We went and checked out the shops and grocery stores, but not the nearby homes or neighborhoods. The shops and streets were crowded with others who appeared to be doing exactly what we were doing. I saw Soy Milk for the first time since our arrival, but didn’t purchase it, since it was fresh and in glass bottles, which didn’t seem like a good idea on the train. And, as it turned out, the train was very crowded on the way home.

We shopped a little bit.  Brianna got a cute scarf, earrings, nail polish and of course, sunglasses!

first day of school

Can you see her there just above the post box talking to the bus lady? She helps the driver and makes sure that everyone gets safely on and off the bus.

It is 2 degrees C (about 35F) outside and dark. I wave goodbye and say “Have a great day!” She is sooooo excited. When the same big bad orange and white bus showed up after school, I ran outside to snap a picture. She wasn’t exactly delighted about that.

But she took it in stride and then told me all about the wonderful people that she has met and how good or crazy half of her teachers are. Each class is 90 minutes and she thinks that is a very loooong time. On the bright side, she has a 15 minute break after each class and an hour for lunch. Today she did schedule A with her first four classes and tomorrow she will do schedule E with her last four classes.

After school we walked to Papel Norte and bought school supplies. Then she did homework until it was time for YW. Another school year has begun.

florencia

Maria’s daughter came and spent the day with Brianna. She speaks  very little English and Brianna speaks  very little Spanish, but they listened to music and baked cupcakes for Brianna’s friend that is having a birthday tomorrow. I love that my daughter can “talk” with anyone. It is such a great talent!