Well I need to catch everyone up on the past few really busy days. I would be blogging more, but the internet at the church only alloys us to have skype, but not access our internet sites. Therefore since when I return home at 10:30 every night, I go straight to bed and am too tired to blog. Por eso, I am trying to write this one here at the church today during my free time, and that way I can just add it tonight when I get home and do nothing more.
The past week has been an amazing one to say the least. It’s so funny (funny meaning ironic) the way that God works. We were really upset to have to leave Buenos Aires to come to Chile, and now I’m in LOVE with Chile. Santiago is absolutely beautiful, as you can tell from the previous pictures posted, and the people here are just as “linda”. The church family is seriously just that, a family. Over the past few days we have become really close to Annie, the cleaning lady, and Fernanda, the secretary. Everyone knows them here because they are like “tias” to everyone. Tia here is an endearing term to anyone older than you. They are both so fun and light hearted, so needless to say we have tons of fun with them. They both speak pretty good english, so we’re learning spanish while they practice english with us. We’ve worked out a pretty good system. Annie loves Celine Dion, and so when we’re cooking lunch or dinner in the kitchen she comes in and sings and dances with us. In order to describe Annie, I can only quote her to try. When we first met her, these were her first words: “Hola I’m Annie. I’m 18 years old and “loca” (that means crazy for those of you who don’t know)”. Needless to say, we’re in love with her. She’s far from 18 in age, but her heart and spirit are seriously around just that. She’s seriously LOCA, and there’s never a dull moment in this church because of her and Fernanda. Fernanda lived in Canada for a few years, so her english is much better. When we made pancakes the other day for lunch, she was so excited to see Maple syrup in Chile. She begged to try some, so we of course obliged. I can’t fail to mention she’s about 5 ft tall and weighs MAYBE 100 lbs, but it’s cutting it close. Everyone here acts like they’re really concerned with their weight. We have been making a lot of cookies and desserts for our party we had last night (which I will mention later in the blog), and everyone here (the women at least) act like they can’t eat much of that because it will make them fat. They’re all seriously less than 120 lbs. Needless to say, that makes me, Jenn, and Katie feel awesome since we eat that kind of stuff all the time. I told Annie that my philosophy is that I’m going to eat all that stuff while I can (aka while I’m still young and my metabolism still exists before I get too old to enjoy it and it seriously catches up to me).
We have about a 10x better kitchen to cook in now that we’re in Santiago. The apartment was great, but just VERY small and we had to buy pots and pans in order to cook. This place is stocked and has anything we need, so we’ve (or I guess I should say I have) been taking advantage of these benefits. Everything, as far as food goes, is still really cheap here, but more expensive than Buenos Aires. You can buy kool-aid type packets for like 30 cents here, but they’re fruit juices instead... and they’re heaven. I drank a whole pina (pineapple) one today by myself. All you do is add water. Voila! We found this out when we were getting ready for our party. Annie told us to just buy lots of those and make them as needed. This was best choice as far as spending the least amount of money possible. We spent a few days baking because the people at the church told us how much they loved brownies and peanut butter, but how they never eat that here because it’s so expensive (quick update on PB here: it’s super expensive because its imported, therefore no one really uses/buys it). We made 2 types of brownies... one that had candy bars in the middle :) and the other without. We made a HUGE batch of no bake cookies... which they love because of the peanut butter. We also made chocolate chip cookies from scratch, but those didn’t turn out very good because of the altitude messing with our cooking. It’s really strange how that affects the food, but we don’t notice until you actually try it. We also had chips and cheetos to serve, along with coffee and tea. Needless to say, the party was a hit. Karaoke, great food, and fun people is an automatic good time. The music choices here are seriously awesome. Everyone in Chile LOVES the 80’s, and that just happens to be my favorite choice for karaoke. We opened with “My Heart Will Go On”... in Spanish. That was a sight for sore eyes. Me, Katie, Jennifer, and Annie (the cleaning lady who’s obsessed with Celine Dion) belted our hearts out, and cried a little from laughing so hard when Annie grabbed me from behind, lifted my arms, and reenacted the scene from Titanic with Jack and Rose on the edge of the ship. Then some of the jovenes (young people) got up and sang a couple fun songs in Spanish... more that we didn’t know. At this point we decided to take back the mic with a couple of women who read with us. Us three sang “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” by Whitney Houston with Adela, Carola, and Helena. It was AWESOME. Immediately after me and Katie decided to sing QUEEN with one of her readers, Fernando. Of course the missionary here thought it would be hysterical to pick “Fat Bottom Girls” as our Queen song. We just went with it. It was really funny, but we stopped the song half way through when he finally played “Bohemian Rhapsody”. If you want to see the funniest thing in your life, get spanish-speaking natives to sing “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Not only is this hard song to sing in English, imagine beginners to intermediate-level spanish speakers to try and sing alone. SO FUNNY.
After that it was time for a break. We sat down, but since we have such amazing voices (hah), they requested our singing again on Michael Jackson’s “Bad”. Of course once Michael played, we had to get up and sing again to honor our old friend. In the end, everyone sang a lot, and I can’t wait to upload pictures.
This morning I didn’t have any morning readers, so I went with my host family, the Perkins, to see their oldest son’s 3rd grade play. It was so precious. All four kids go to this private school that teaches half the day in english, and the other half in spanish. This obviously helps with kids becoming bilingual since all their teachers speak both languages too. The play was really cute, and Isaac was one of the 4 main characters. He and his 3 siblings went to travel around the world and “learned” how to say certain things in different languages around the world. It was really a cute play, and I loved getting to spend some time with the kids since they’re always asleep when I get home around 10:30 every night. After the play the two youngest, Simeon and Enoch, came home since their school day ends at 12:30 anyway. We all three road in the back seat and it was really cute when they fought over who got to sit by me :) They’re precious, and I can’t wait for Sunday when we get to all go to church together.
Today has been a long day to say the least. When I arrived at the church building around 11:45 am, I had a reader that came immediately at 12 pm. He was a new reader, and I really liked him a lot. We ate lunch at 1, white rice and onions, and then I had several more readers this afternoon... all back to back. We had cereal for dinner, and now I’m waiting on my last reader to come today at 7 pm. Tomorrow is going to be a grueling day as far as reading sessions, for Saturdays we work 10 am to 3 pm without a break for lunch. I have a reader every single time slot, but I’m excited to get to work on vocabulary with my readers. Here almost all my readers except for 2 are beginners, and it’s really tiring at the end of the day when my head has been thinking only in spanish. I hate being such a bore when I go home to the Perkins house, but I can’t hold my eyes open long enough to even skype my parents. Tonight I’m going to try to head to bed as soon as I get home and rest up for my full day tomorrow. After reading sessions we’re hoping to cook lunch and then head to a museum for the rest of the day somewhere in the city.
This weekend we’ve got a lot on our plates. Sunday and Monday are our two days off, and of course Sunday we’ll be attending our first church service. I’m really excited to see what it’s like, and then after service we have been invited to eat at Kelly and Julie Grant’s tomorrow with them and their four kids. Then Sunday night Jeff, the missionary who helps out with LST, has invited us all out to go to dinner with him and see a movie. This is his excuse to get Katie and Jennifer out of his house because his wife has some kind of group meeting at their house Sunday night. Either way we’re excited. Monday is our big day out though with Jeff’s wife, Penne. We’re getting up early in the morning and heading to the beach!!!!! Valparaiso and Vina del Mar are our destinations, and luckily they’re right next to each other. We’ll most likely get to spend the whole day there, and then return late that afternoon, rest a little, and be ready for our last week of readers. This upcoming Thursday here is a holiday, so the church will be closed, and reading sessions will also cease to exist for the day. We’re hoping to spend that day doing something fun too, or maybe just hanging out with our families. We love them!! I’m going to be so sad to leave these beautiful people. Their hearts are so sincere and loving, and their whole lives are lived for God. Either way and religion aside, they’re beautiful people inside and out. I pray that maybe I can be as humble and patient as they are, and I especially pray that one day I can return and continue these relationships I’ve established.
Loving life.
Loving God.
Annie B
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