Mar del Plata :)

Well, about a week and a half before Easter weekend (yes, I’m going to talk about Easter weekend, that’s how far behind I am in blogging :/) Ana asked me, “So, I don’t know if you would want to or not, but I was thinking about going to Mar del Plata this weekend and I was wondering if you and Bailey would want to go with me.” Of course! Mar del Plata is another big city in Argentina about 4 or 5 hours from Buenos Aires but the difference is that it’s on the beach! So, Bailey and I packed our bags and got ready for a long weekend free from classes and chilling by the sea.


The trip started out on a fun note Thursday afternoon when we hopped on a convi (a type of van/bus) whose driver listened to 80s music from the U.S. the entire way there. (In that moment, I thanked God that I was born in ’89 and never had to endure that music when it was popular.) We arrived that evening/night and found out that the apartment that Ana and Cacho own there is about half a block from the water. Amazing!

The very next day, Bailey and I greatly surprised ourselves by getting up very early to go watch a sunrise over the water. Even though it was a little cloudy, the colors were absolutely amazing and the reflection of the sun on the water seriously left us speechless. Of course, we took a million pictures, but none of them really captured the beauty. After that, we turned back into our lazy selves and went back to bed for a couple hours :)

Despite our hopes of laying out all day and getting crazy awesome tans, it was pretty chilly the whole time we were there so we only really laid out on the beach once or twice. Instead, we spent a lot of time walking up and down the beach or the nearby sidewalks and observing what was going on. That first day, one of the sidewalks was absolutely filled with older people dancing tangos, milongas, waltzes, or pasodobles to the music pouring from the speakers that a group of musicians had set up. Let me tell you, some of those people that you would think looked too old to even walk well were dancing better than I could ever hope to!! Another time, we passed by a tango show on that same sidewalk that was run by a whole family of dancers, including the 9 year old girl who danced like crazy.

The next day, we went walking with Ana and went into the casino near the beach just to have a look around. There was a guard there who stopped us to ask our ages but didn’t even ask for ID to make sure we were lying! That afternoon, we went on a bus tour with Ana that took us all around the city. One of the main stops was a statue of the Virgin Mary where a lot of Catholics stop to pray or ask for a blessing. Also at that stop was a miniature of the city of Bethlehem. The next big stop was the port which is famous for the seals (lobos marinos) that hang out there. There were about 15 of them all piled up together, waddling, fighting, and roaring (I never knew that seals roared, but that’s what it sounded like to me).

Another afternoon, Bailey and I decided to go out for coffee at a famous café that is housed in a sweet medieval style building. There, we pulled out a book where we had recorded quotes and memories of our other two roommates at Grace and absolutely died laughing for about an hour. (If any other Americans happen to go to that café, I apologize…you will probably be judged in advance because we were so ridiculous!) That night, Bailey and I hit up a local theater to see an a cappella singing group and a group that danced some Chilean folklore.

Of course, one of the main highlights of our time there was…the FOOD!! We had: ice cream; empanadas; pizza (topped with garlic, tomato slices, and oregano); cow tongue; chocolate cones FILLED with dulce de leche; fresh fish; churros filled with chocolate, dulce de leche, or cream; and milanesa napolitana (a thin slice of beef slightly breaded and fried, smothered with pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese). I think I ate more delicious foods in that one week than a whole semester at Grace!! (No offense, Alpha Dining.)

Now for a couple random stories from our time there: First, one night we went with Ana to browse the shops that lined a pedestrian-only street in the downtown and stopped for a moment to listen to a saxophone player on the side of the street. I heard two male voices sing along rather loudly and looked up to see two flamboyant cross-dressers belting out the lyrics. Another day, Bailey and I went to sit/lay out on the beach for a bit when all of a sudden two guys came up right to where we were laying and starting laying out clothes on the beach that they had designed and wanted to sell to us. By now, we had learned to not make eye contact with any of the vendors but these guys were so in-your-face that even that didn’t deter them!

Last but certainly not least of the stories happened on Easter morning (for the first time in my life I didn’t go to church on Easter :/) when Bailey and I decided to go for a walk on the beach and look for shells, find cool rocks, etc. Out nowhere, three men started to talking to me and asking me what I was collecting (probably because it was cold that day and Bailey and I were two of maybe ten people on the whole beach). They started chatting it up with Bailey and I, asking a million questions that we were sure to give the vaguest of answers to all the while trying to find a way out of the conversation. Eventually, after finding out we were living in Buenos Aires, they said “Oh, let’s go out sometime and grab something to drink.” “No. We don’t go out.” “Well, just grab a drink somewhere.” “No. We don’t drink.” “What? How can you not go out or drink? What do you do?” [At this point, I almost said that we always are hanging out with youth group friends from our church, but then I realized we weren’t at church on Easter morning, so that would definitely look like a complete lie. I decided to go with the “We study all the time” answer.] Well, apparently these guys weren’t too skilled at identifying patterns because they didn’t get the picture by then that we were completely trying to shut them down. They asked if we had boyfriends, and I have never been more relieved to be able to say truthfully that I do! Poor Bailey, though, had no out and so the leader of the pack immediately pounced to ask for her phone number or email address. “No.” “Why not?” “I don’t give my email address to people I don’t know.” “But we could get to know each other!!” [The last time I heard that line was in junior high.] At this point I just started walking away even though they kept talking and threw a “Have a nice Easter” back at them as I fled. As we scurried away, Bailey and I spent the next 15 minutes coming up with a plan for the next time that happened and decided we’d pretend to speak French and not know any Spanish…Bailey can pull it off and I’m just hoping they don’t realize that I’m repeating the only three phrases I know, “I’m tired. I’m hungry. Where’s the bathroom?” Moral of the story: girls, walk away as soon as possible or speak an unidentifiable language; guys, if a girl says no several times in several different ways SHE DOESN’T WANT TO GO OUT WITH YOU!!

Well, enough of the silly stories. Overall, our time at Mar del Plata was simply a great time of relaxation and fellowship. My favorite times were the meal times when we sat for an hour or two afterwards chatting about anything and everything or when we stayed up until one in the morning playing SkipBo with Ana. It was such a blessing to get to know her better, to relax, rest, and recharge together without a schedule and without a rush.

God definitely used that time and that atmosphere to teach me a very simple but very valuable lesson. One night, God laid on my heart the conviction that I was always looking ahead to the next thing and never taking the time to enjoy the moment in front of me. He used the simple illustration of a dinner to prove His point: that night, I rushed through eating soup to get to eat fish; when I was eating fish, I shoveled it down because I wanted to eat my apple; when I was eating my apple, all I could think about was the chocolates we had bought to enjoy after dinner. But once I got done eating the chocolate, I realized I hadn’t really enjoyed it that much and certainly hadn’t taken the time to enjoy all the other great foods. It’s silly, I know, but God used that to show me that I worry and think so much about the future, about what is coming next, that I rush through life without taking in the joys and simple pleasures of each moment. Well, I wasn’t sure why that came to mind, but I went to sleep that night thinking about it. The next day, I decided to read a bit of the book The Rest of God that I had started but left off in the middle of a chapter and hadn’t read in a few weeks. I opened up the book and find nothing less than a chapter dedicated to EXACTLY what God had been showing me the night before – leaving behind a habit of worry and instead being awake, alert, and fully in each and every moment with eyes open to see the blessings God gives rather than planning or pondering the future we can never know. Honestly, it completely blew me away that God had prepared my heart to read exactly that, and I spent the rest of my time at the beach living with eyes more open to little joys of each and every moment.